2018 Guidelines for Travel Agency Consortia Relationships
Marriott’s Global Sales Organization and Distribution teams have been working across Continents to revise our strategy and approach with retail agencies, TMCs, and Consortia. This is consistent with our efforts to harmonize and consolidate agreements, policies, and programs across Marriott’s portfolio of brands in support of the integration owner value proposition. These guidelines and policies are consistent with our distribution strategy and integration objectives: to drive the most profitable revenue to hotels as possible by leveraging our scale, while limiting disruption during the integration. A complete list of programs is included in the 2018 Guidelines for Existing Travel Agency Consortia Relationships, which is available on MGS.
Centralized Agreements
Going forward, we will centralize agreements and participation with select non-luxury consortia and travel agency programs to improve performance monitoring, and to ensure that we have the appropriate relationship management coverage for all hotels. These changes are intended to bring the following benefits:
- Expanded marketing exposure and performance measurement
- Consistent account relationships with the support of dedicated account managers
- Reduced individual hotel participation fees and concessions
With the above benefits in mind, the Global Sales and Distribution teams have begun to create new centralized agreements with the following consortia: ABC Global Services, CCRA Travel Solutions, Travel Leaders Group, THOR, and TravelSavers. Other agreements will be negotiated during the remainder of the year. Agreements with Altour (which will remain a part of Radius agreement through 2018), Andrew Harper (part of Travel Leaders), and other subsidiaries will be covered under centralized agreements with the applicable consortia parent organizations.
Consortia Participation for Luxury Brands
In accordance with our centralized agreements, 2018 guidelines for all hotels allow for continuation of status-quo luxury consortia relationships (invitation-only at best-available rates, with value added amenity exceptions). Luxury programs include American Express’s Fine Hotels and Resorts, Hotel Collection, and Centurion (only for St. Regis through 2018) as well as Virtuoso, Signature Travel Network, and Travel Leaders Select. The luxury consortia programs are evaluated by hotels on an annual basis to ensure they are driving high value and profitable business.
This information will be shared with properties around the globe via the August 14 Weekly Update and Week Ahead emails.
