thank you thank you good morning everybody those of you who are here in person and those of you who are here virtually I was going to say good morning but I understand it may not be good morning to everybody who's watching it's morning here but it may not be morning where you're watching thanks for the introduction I really appreciate that I'm hoping I can remember to include some of the points that you included in introduction as I present today so we'll see how that goes first of all it's a pleasure and an honor to be here presenting for California Southern University someone came up to me before the session said well you've presented before it says yeah but never like this when there's cameras looking at you and people are located all around the world and the gentleman said well just be yourself I says okay well I'll be myself but I hope that I hope that works for all of you but now it's a pleasure to be here and as part of my introduction I'm not what you would kind of call a line operator a person who's there on the front lines of customer service per se I don't work behind the front desk I don't work in housekeeping I don't work in the kitchen or in restaurant or food service but as an HR person who's kind of been at it for a long time you learn the the customer service and the importance of the relationship between selecting developing and retaining your exceptional talent that really is what makes sure that customer service stays on course and we have a lot of processes and systems in place that are really kind of part of our culture and part of the way we do business around the world so that really helped us get there so bear with me if I drift off topic but again my main focus today will be talking about customer service service but really from the idea of putting people first whether we're talking about the people who are the customers or the people who work inside our building there's a real there's a real link between caring for people in such a way they're interrelated we'll spend some time also talking about engagement and an engagement for those of you in the business world or in the work we'll have heard about the word engagement and we use the word engagement as it relates to our associates or our workforce and my premise will be that if you have a highly engaged workforce they are more well equipped to deliver exceptional customer service so well spend a good amount of time talking about what we do as a company to engage our workforce and to make sure that their leaders are exceptional at doing that in their departments and I will also say not everybody is great at it in terms of leadership so we profess and we believe in a lot of things that drive associate engagement but not every manager in every building is exceptional with that and we like to recognize those who are I got to find my my clicker here and move on to our next slide so the vision of Marriott is to be the number one hospitality company in the world and there are a lot of hospitality companies in the world you all know them we do that by looking at the elements you see on the screen here of the values the values of our company the things that measure our success what our strategy is as well as what is the purpose I'm not going to be covering all of these bubbles today I'm really going to be spending most of my time talking about values and strategy with a little bit of discussion on success measures but wanted to give you kind of a loose idea of what the agenda will look like today I would tell you that really the distinguishing factor or the differentiating factor our company other hotel and hospitality companies have beautiful facilities and buildings all around the world everybody has that and the customers expect that they want a nice facility where everything works everything is in working order it's clean people are friendly and hospitable everybody wants that but the things that make it different no matter where you go and it doesn't have to be in the hospitality business it could be in a supermarket it could be at a movie theater it could be in a bank if people even actually go into banks anymore I don't know if they do but it's that service piece that really is a differentiator so when we have people that interact with guests we like to call them moments of truth this moment of truth it they happen hundreds and hundreds of times times a day these moments when one individual has the opportunity to interact with another individual to either solve a problem or provide something that that guest is looking for that's really where the magic happens it's those instances when you as a worker or an associate has the opportunity to interact with a guest and how well equipped are you to meet those expectations of that guest or even exceed those and that's something that we've learned over time that is I think it's kind of inborn rather than trained you can train some of it and you can educate people on how they should behave you can provide them with scripting and language that is appropriate and language that isn't appropriate touching on that briefly kind of a pet peeve of mine and it's become a pet peeve in many of the hotels where I work when people say to you or you do something and the person says back to you no problem no problem in our in our world is something that has a negative connotation when you provide a service for someone and they say thank you you go no problem was there a problem no we we like to replace that with it's my pleasure is there anything further I can do for you so I I think that the no problem issue may be generational to some degree but we really try to mold people to get into this mindset of talking about it's my pleasure to serve you it was my pleasure to take care of that issue for you so it's little things like that that can make a difference the language it use the scripting that that sends a positive positive message to the guests when you're when you're serving them so let's flip to the next screen here so who are we what is what is Marriott made up of who are we and you can see on the screen here that we are made up of over 300,000 employees or associates worldwide you'll hear me use the word associates employees interchangeably we use the word associate mostly in the hotels but they're interchangeable Marriott operates in I think this week we're in 74 countries around the world we have 18 brands some of the brands that you may have heard about or are familiar to you you may have heard of course you've heard of Marriott hotels you drive down the freeway here in Southern California and there's one down the road in an Irvine there's one at Los Angeles International Airport Newport Beach all over San Francisco all over the East go Europe everywhere else we have 3,700 hotels worldwide it's a huge number we have grown immensely and particularly in the last 20 years this number of employees 300,000 includes those of us who actually work for Marriott and some of us who work for what we call our franchise partners the franchise element of Marriott's business has really exploded over the last 15 years and some of that is because the the financial model really for franchise partners or for the owners of franchise operators really works a little bit better in terms of costs sometimes the costs associated with being part of the Marriott package with all of the benefits that we offer also can be a cost issue because you want you want entry into the worldwide reservation systems you want entry into the other benefits and so forth that the company offers so sometimes it makes more sense from a business model for Marriott to be operated under a Marriott flag but managed by a company other than merit and those are our franchise partners and they're included in the 300,000 that I'm talking about today as you can imagine with a company that has grown internationally I think when I joined the company we had I don't know a hundred hotels maybe that and that was of course many years ago thirty four years ago and now we're 3,700 so the growth has been really phenomenal but as we've grown internationally we've learned immensely from that we've learned that in order to do business in foreign countries you have to do a lot of learning about the culture of where you're doing business I think of an example of when we first went into Asia I believe Hong Kong may have been one of our first Asian properties and what we did there innovatively and we talked a little bit about innovation as we go through today that it's routine to work a six-day Work Week in many parts of the world in our world here in the United States that's not really typically the norm it's more norm that you would work five-day workweek more typical than six well one of the hotels that we opened in Hong Kong we instituted a five-day workweek that was something that was kind of earth-shattering for them it was something that they weren't used - but it was something that they found valuable I mean it was something that they believed was was different and good for them and Marriott took that from their core values of working in the States they transported that to working in a foreign country that's not to say that we would ever want to impose our culture the way we operate here in the US into other countries around the world that that doesn't work either but obviously then we have a very very diverse customer base as you can imagine operating in 74 countries around the world but really what kind of binds us all together as Marriott associates worldwide is the set of core values that we have and how we operate under this set of core values I think you'll find this in a lot of large companies but I don't know if they all do as good a job as Marriott does in bringing those core values into practice every day and you can imagine in a large hotel let's take a let's take a hotel like the San Diego Marriott Marquis and Marina down the road from us here in Southern California that hotel has last count I think it's about thirteen hundred and fifty guestrooms it's a pretty large hotel probably close to a thousand associates working that building that's not to say that there are a thousand people working there every day but they have a thousand people on their payroll you can imagine the DB the the front line leaders ability to motivate and energize those associates every day to deliver on every one of these core values and deliver on every one of these guest satisfaction kind of factors it's not something that's always very easy but it's something that we always focus on just like an any other thing you do in your life you have some people who are very good at delivering service some that are kind of okay and some that aren't very good at all so to make sure that everybody is trying to deliver against those core values and the focus on customer service although not always 100% attainable is always 100% focus of it and we'll talk a little bit later today about how we measure that how do we know that we're doing well at delivering exceptional customer service how do we know that the leaders that are leading these associates in these buildings how do we know that they're doing an excellent job of motivating those people providing the opportunities for them to grow and so forth so they can feel like they're part of Marriott family and they can deliver better service simply state it so let's sum flip to the next slide I show this picture there's actually kind of three or four pictures kind of morphed together here on the screen but the individual in the middle of the two individuals in the middle of this picture are J Willard Marriott senior and his wife Alice sheets Marriott this picture was taken in 1927 the you can see the car on the Left I don't know if it's a Model A or a Model T but it's an old car but probably from the Year 1927 when he and his wife drove across the country from Utah to Washington DC to open a nine seat a and W root beer stand in the nation's capital that is mr. Marriott senior the former chairman of the company standing in the doorway of his what they call the hot shops the hot shops were all over the place on the East Coast I'm a pure West Coast guy I've never seen a hot shop before but they're all over the East Coast and there he is standing in though in the window I'm sorry he's standing in the doorway the even back in those days him he developed these set of core values and they grew over time but the one that really kind of stayed at the core of it was this issue of putting people first and making sure that you have a focus on people that was really what he was all about but to go from a nine seed a and W root beer stand to having 3700 hotels worldwide multinational multi-billion dollar company is really amazing there's not a lot of companies that have the sustainability go to go from I mean we're at eighty five working on our 86th year of being in business that's that's pretty amazing in this day and age that we have that kind of sustainability something we're very very proud of I think my next slide is a video so I think we're going to take a look here at mr. Marriott's the current mr. Merrit senior of course passed away some time ago but bill Marriott Jr who until recently was the chief operating officer of the company he's handed that off to another individual recently we'll see a couple of minutes of him talking about these core values of the company so let's take a look at the video I think everybody's favorite picture of merit is the original picture of the root beer stand where my father's standing in front when his arms crossed I think about the very humble beginnings and that hole in the wall nine stool AAW root beer stand no way were they thinking about anything back then that we have become today the hotel business is a highly personal business we're taking care of people away from home putting people first means listen to their concerns and I think that's really what we mean by giving people an opportunity when you look at the fact 50% of our general managers came out of the early ranks and the average general managers been around for 25 years that says something about the enduring culture the core value of the company it's in my DNA to make sure that we've got a good product for our customers I try and visit between 250 and 300 hotels a year and I spent a lot of time worrying about are we really doing a good job when our customers where are we falling down and why and how can we fix it and that comes into the adage of success is never final which means we're always looking for a better way to do things I've always been a change maker we've always looking over the hill for the next opportunity we recognize there are different kinds of customers different age groups different demographics different cultural backgrounds we want to have a product that appeals to all of them who are not too old to be cool I think a curing with integrity has been a core value of married for a long long time ever since we were formed as we've grown our business around the world we've been very very careful to obey the law and do the best we can to provide service to our customers that is done with integrity a hotel is a central part of every community we've always been investing in our communities we did everything we could support the many charity of what causes in the community maybe gives back to us big time because the more you're involved in the community the better is for business the more business now hotels might attract I think my favorite word is more or hotels more rooms more satisfied customers more opportunities for employees and associates to move up in the ranks it means more countries means more cities a lot more innovation new ideas more success more profitability for shareholders and more growth more alright I'm not sure the lights come up yeah there they go that's perfect thank you I'll tell you just a couple of quick things about Bill Marriott he is he is a tough customer I don't mean a tough customer as a guest in a hotel but when he comes into the hotels and he does hit 250 to 300 hotels every year he's got to have a lot of frequent flyer miles well I take that back he probably has his own plane so it's probably not that but when he comes to visit a property he is just a stickler for details I mean it's unbelievable he will look at guest rooms he'll look at ballrooms a look at carpet he'll look at paint he'll look at how the rooms are made he'll go into the kitchen he'll make sure that in the kitchen that the the temperature gauges are all the way they're supposed to be he'll make sure that the food is all labeled he'll make sure that people everybody has a nametag that they're crisp looking so it's kind of interesting to watch him come to a hotel or right before he comes to the hotel there's like a cleaning frenzy and people are just going crazy you know we like to be like that all the time and we talk amongst ourselves in the hotels that you know why do we go through this craziness when Bill Maher has come we should have that same passion for cleanliness and excellence every day and we do but when the Chairman's coming it's a little bit of a different picture he talked about the general managers coming from among the hourly ranks I was talking with one of the one of the audience a little bit earlier and says what should I talk about my education background it's been a long time since I've been in academia so this is a little bit of a new setting for me but our business is the kind of business that you may not necessarily need an advanced degree for as witnessed by the general managers who worked their way up from potentially a van driver from a front desk clerk or from a culinarian up through the ranks it's the kind of business that gets into your blood and you just enjoy it and that's what happened to me I came out of a the University of California Santa Barbara I have a bachelor's degree a very basic bachelor's degree with a major in Liberal Arts with a minor in foreign language has really nothing to do with the hospitality industry but I think when they hired me there's here's a person that seems to have the the spark of personality that would work in our business and the beauty of it is once I got in the amount of training and development that they gave me and allowed me to grow and allowed me to explore new things and and do what I was good at I think that's really kind of the message if you have a team of associates that work for you oftentimes we get we get caught up in the issue of finding the things that they didn't do quite right and wanting to correct those things or discipline rather than letting them soar with their strengths and finding out the things that they're exceptional at reinforcing that and finding the right path for them and that's what happened with so many of the general managers in in our business I've worked with many of them who have worked their way up through the ranks and they've been around for a long time we we know that we have great retention rate amongst our management staff compared to others in the hospitality industry and it has something to do with our culture I really believe that let's see in his video he talked about it being a highly personal business when you think about the fact that you're caring for people away from home when you have that mentality to say you're in you're in my home you're a guest in my home I'm going to treat you different than if you're just another body checking into a business if you follow me you want to make sure that they feel that exceptional service when they're there and you have to do that by listening to their concerns he talked about making sure that the product is always excellent you know we we typically were a what I would consult we I would call us conservative in nature we didn't have a lot of flash and a lot of glitz in our business but you could always count on the consistency of product of service wherever you went you get a Marriott burger in Newport Beach you get a Marriott burger in Miami or maybe you get a Marriott burger in Berlin but you get a Marriott burger that's the same wherever you go and there's something to be said for that consistency whether it's a food product or it's the room and how the room is laid out and the kind of services are offered inside so that product excellence is is exceptional he mentioned that success is never final this you know embracing change in being willing to try new things what does the customer need does the customer need different things now than they did 20 years ago what are their expectations and although we made that may have been our nature as we began to recognize what the customer needed we had to be able to to flex and Bend with those new new needs of the customer think about it from a technological standpoint particularly or even what a lobby is laid out like you'll you'll notice as you look into a lobby in a hotel anymore you'll see what we call the great room or these rooms a room that's a lobby but it's also a social gathering place there may be food and beverage served it's a big open space rather than just a lobby with nothing in it besides a front desk and an elevator we go to check-in that's something that the customer has demanded over the years something that looks a little bit different not unique to us but it's something that we embrace as part of change he also spent some time talking about integrity doing business with integrity there's a couple of lines that he uses I want to share those with you he says that how we do business is as important as the business we do and I think you talked about living in a world that's highly litigious and a lot of compliance and so forth there's a lot of things that we have to do very carefully not only in our own country but around the world so doing business with integrity is really part of who we are it is part of our core all of the managers in the Marriott Hotels once a year participate in an affirmation that they have done business with integrity over the past year they ask questions have you ever seen this anything that looked unethical to you no no no but if you did can you share that with us so they really reinforced this important importance of working in with high levels of of ethics super super important he says that if you can't get it done by doing it the right way don't do it don't cut corners don't try to do something a little bit you know go take a shortcut somewhere go through all the steps and processes that you need to to ensure that if had there ever been an audit or something that someone was investigating books are looking at how you handle certain transactions that it was done with integrity and there would never be any question obviously that you know people who don't act with integrity in any business you know suffer the consequences of such but it's it is part of our core values and and who we are serving our world the importance of being involved in community is also extremely important to us from a core value core values perspective the spirit to serve that we have and I'll show you a picture of a book in a few minutes called the spirit deserve that was really written by Bill Marriott it's really that spirit that makes our culture more vibrant there our willingness to care and work with others and be active in the communities where we do business and it makes the business stronger and it makes the world a better place one of the live participants or live audience take was asking me about sustainability and how we operate with sustainability whether it's conservation energy conservation the use of water we've done some work in the Amazon rainforest protecting the rainforest there we offer to our guests many times in many hotels I'm not going to say every hotel we offer them whether they want to have their bed changed everyday or not now at home we don't change our bed every day and I think that there may have been a long-standing expectation that when you go to hotel your bed linens get changed every single day you still they will do that but they will also give you the option to say you know what you don't need to change my linens today it's a water saving it's an energy saving its helps the productivity of the business as well you've got people doing maybe not as much intense work and hey I don't need my bed linens change every day but there's a sustained sustainability piece to that charitable work we're very big in charitable work a couple of the large things that we are involved in as a company our Children's Miracle Network we also do work with the Habitat for Humanity locally here in Orange County we're very active with the Second Harvest Foodbank working with the food bank that's down here at the great park in Irvine so it's another part of our core values serving our world means that we have to be involved in the in the communities where we do business it's very very important so those are some of the values that we just talked about we talked about the pursuit of excellence that you know taking putting people's first take care of the associates the associates will take care of the guests it sounds very simple and basic but that's who we are at our core take care of the associates the associates will take care of the guests and kind of the addendum to that that's not really written the guests will return and if you think about the ability to have the guests return again and again that's a good solid business model but it starts with the front line associate it goes to the guests the guests return beings brings business back and that's why putting people first is so vitally important to us so here's the spirit to serve book I think it was published in I want to say 99 98 I can't remember the exact date of the publication but I thought I'd read this quote from the book when he says dad he's referring to his father Bill Marriott senior J Willard Marion he says dad felt very strongly that the concerns and problems of the people who worked for him were always worth listening to in his eyes a successful company puts its employees first I couldn't agree more he continues when employees know that their problems will be taken seriously that their ideas and insights matter they're more comfortable and confident in turn they're better equipped to deliver their best on the job and to the customer everyone wins the company the employee and the customer I think that that's that just kind of encapsulates the philosophy of putting people first I would also tell you that we operate kind of on what we would call a balanced scorecard approach to our business it's kind of a three legged stool if you want to think of it like that we have associate engagement or the level of satisfaction that your associates working for you feel you have the level of satisfaction that the guests experience when you stay and of course it's a business you have the financial excellence as well so we're there always has to be a balance you have to put people first could be the guest could be the associates that's those two legs of the stool but we're in business to make money and there is a its profitability that we're also looking for so you have to have all three of those pieces together or the whole package doesn't work well I would also argue that pardon me if you put too much emphasis on one of the legs of the stool the stool becomes imbalanced I know a hotel that did an exceptional job or has done an exceptional job of driving great great profitability to married international into the owners of their building sometimes however that could have the effect of maybe because I'm making such a strong focus on the financial side that I may miss the customer piece or I may miss the associate piece because I'm so focused on making money so my message is you have to make sure you have a balance of all of those for it to the business to wholly be successful so I thought this quote was was very telling here's that quote again put people first take care of the associates and they will take care of the customer so how do we put people first what are the some of the things that we do to put people first I mean I would say it sounds easy but you know sounds easy does hard you know it's not as easy to just say hey we put people first but unless you really put people first I would ask how how do you put people first what is it that you do that proves that you actually do put people first and here's some examples you have to provide tools and training these are some of the things that we measure when we measure the level of engagement of our workforce we want to know do you have the tools necessary to do your job do you have enough linen to make the beds do you have enough pots and pans to cook how about your uniforms or you have enough uniforms or your uniforms in great shape if you don't have those kind of tools to carry out your job every day it's a little bit difficult to feel like you're providing the highest level of customer service so provide tools and training on how to do the job in terms of the selection process I would say here you know hire for attitude rather than hiring for experience and I mean that that kind of kind of makes some people shiver that you know you've heard the stories about people being overqualified for a job or it's it's a tough call but I would rather hire somebody that demonstrated through their interview that they have a capacity to deliver great service I can they could even teach me how to check people in and out of a hotel that's not my forte but I could learn those mechanical steps but can I learn that ability to provide exceptional service I think it's something that you have to have inside you like said earlier you can learn some of the verbage in the language and the behaviors that you demonstrate but if it's already in you it makes it a lot easier for you to be successful in their job rewarding excellence this is or could be a recognition piece it could be reward in terms of financial reward I mean a salary a competitive salary is obviously part of that but we want to make sure that the people feel recognized when we survey our folks we find that usually one of the the areas where I think businesses suffer most when you ask people well you know do you feel like you're paid adequately for the job that you do I think if you ask for a show of hands everyone says oh yeah I'm feel like I'm paid adequately for the job either I'm paid well well you could always make more people will always be satisfied to make more but you know paying people competitively is just the price of entry you got to have that but what about the recognition piece what about the recognition beyond just getting a paycheck do I feel valued do I feel important and does the boss that leads me make me feel valued that's a form of recognition and if I'm recognized and I know that they value me valuing me also takes into consideration that they knew who I am they know what my problems and concerns are because I tell people you know when you hire somebody even though you hear this this comment about well you know you leave your personal problems at the door I think that that's an unexpected what's the word I'm looking for an unreasonable expectation because when you hire people you bring people into your will you hire the whole person with all their baggage and all their positives and so forth that you know people are having personal issues if a manager is so engaged with their people that they know what's going on in their world within limits of course that really sense says that you value me and I'm important to you and therefore I'm more willing to go out and go the extra mile in terms of proton service to the guests opportunity to learn and grow we've learned over the years that sometimes more than the last couple of things I've talked about particularly with adults they need to learn and grow that's extremely important to them so we've taken great lengths to make sure that our associates have and as technology has changed huge amounts of learning opportunities online for them classroom learning of course for some of the standards that require but there's a lot of things that I could go out as an associate access online whether it's about public speaking whether it's about balancing my checkbook any of these things could be life skills could be work skills that that's another indicator that we value we're going to provide you this stuff that's going to help you in the real world and it's going to help you in your work world Israel as well and to build Marriott's comment about people growing on the job that's how do you get to the next level and share the opportunity to grow and learn new things leadership has to be accessible I don't want to beat a dead horse with this issue but the the leader in our business that stays behind the scenes in their office all the time unless they work in accounting they they aren't as successful it's important for them to be available to their people so management must be accessible and they need to know that they were heard when I say we hear you we have this process when we do an engagement survey and we gather data about our associates we ask for their feedback we actually put posters in our hotels that says we heard you and we list the things that they brought up as the top three or four concerns that they had in their department that would indicate hey if you could work on these couple of things for us as a department we'd be golden we'd be even more happy and excited about working here than we are already so they've got to be they've got to know that they've been heard so in terms of strategy that was one of the other other buttons of the circles in terms of achieving our vision we talked about I'm not going to touch on all of these but some in order to reach that goal of being the number one hospitality company in the world we've got to make sure that we're in tune to the next generation of travelers and I would say from an HR person's perspective and the next generation of workers that are coming into the workforce of the workers that are coming into the workforce are much much different when I then when I came into the workforce their needs their motivations are very much different same thing with travelers the travelers you have to be in touch with what these this new generation of travelers is all about Gen X Gen Y the future guests right in terms of brand distinction in innovation in differentiation is critical from brands we have a lot of different brands in Marriott I mentioned and every client or traveler may want something different they may want the economy they may want something that we would call extended stay residents in they may want a resort experience they may want a ritz-carlton experience ritz-carlton for those you don't know is also part of the Marriott family so every brand is is innovative and different and it's it's really tiered towards a certain profile of customer portfolio power is really about you know do we have loyalty to those brands is do we have a wide enough portfolio that could really service all of the different guests that we're looking for and then technology technology is one of those things I was talking to one of the one of the audience earlier about you know it's funny how sometimes you go to the smaller more economical parts of economical hotels and they'll offer free breakfast and they'll offer free internet but the more higher up you go in the chain in terms of more expensive more luxury you don't get anything for free and III think that technology though is one of those things that we have really really worked hard to although we don't always offered free in all of our buildings we've placed a lot of focus on technology and building technology because that's what the new generation particularly needs we expect it and when technology doesn't work believe me in a hotel it's a nightmare it's horrible owner preference I just touching briefly on the owner preference piece is that Marriott years ago used to own a lot of the buildings that they operate they do not do that anymore they are not the owners of the buildings that you see with the Marriott name on them other owners own them reads real estate investment trusts and so forth generally owned owned the businesses and Merritt operates them so Merritt is the management company that that operates the hotel on behalf of an owner so but we want owners to like us more than they like Starwood or Hilton or Hyatt right but owner preference is key because they're the ones that are going to help invest in making sure your product is up to date that you have the technology and so forth because funding for changes and so forth in hotels that you need to make on a regular basis don't only come from Marriott they also come from the ownership group as well we talked a little bit about global growth this is a slide that's a little bit of an enigma to me I can talk quickly through it but rather than do that I think I may just skip on to the next slide if you're okay with that so I wanted to get into a piece about what we call service excellence training service excellence training is a piece that after an associate has been hired with us within the first 30 days they must have attended a service excellence class it's a full-day class and service excellence talks about at the bottom focusing on associate associates inspiring performance they want the guests expect to be able to be inspired when they're there to do what they need to do you we have to focus people on exceeding the expectations of those guests we want to make sure we act professionally and we have to be empathetic and compassionate the word empathy comes up a lot in the world of service delivery and talk about that in a second but in the upper right hand corner we've learned through a lot of research that the customers want to be able to perform to connect and to recharge I mean it sounds like you've really kind of cut it down to a very basic three things but when they come when we say perform business traveler wants to be able to to do the things that they need to do to be successful in their business to be productive to connect connect could be connecting with other people could also be connecting through the internet and they also want the ability to recharge it's my home away from home do I have a place to go to a gym - I have a relaxing area to go to go to that's what the guests are looking for and we train against that I have I think the next slide is a card and I'll show you that in a second but this is what we know about the guests I think that this data is maybe about a year maybe two years old but it hasn't changed dramatically since that the average age of the guests is 45 years old they're college educated they are sixty-two percent male and 38 percent female 72% of them are married and many with children and they make about 24 trips a year now that's not everybody but that's kind of the prototypical Marriott guest I would tell you that you talked about making 24 trips a year there are people who for example at the Irvine Mary the Irvine Merritt is a business hotel that's really their core is is it's it's a business hotel we have people that spend a hundred nights a year at that hotel I mean that would be grueling for any of us I think to spend a hundred nights in a hotel but it's part of the business that they do so but again you've got to be ready to you imagine this person that comes a hundred times through the doors of your hotel the ability I mean you have a great opportunity as a service deliverer to recognize that guess you've seen them you know 99 times before you're using their name you know about their family you know where they come from you know where they're going and to have that kind of interaction that personal attention to that guest especially for the ones that come back again and again and again has a huge level of value but this is what we focus on so this is the basicscard I brought one with me today I carry it with me it's part of my uniform it's a fold-out deal it looks like this I'll talk about the brand standard standard on it very briefly I want to spend a lot of time on it but this basicscard is every it's five days a week the weekends are reserved for a review of the prior week but each one of these has one of what we call our genuine care basics so we are in the fifth week of the year for us and so that would be like week one so one two three four back to week one the basic today is to prepare prepare says prepare for each guests arrival plan for VIPs and Marriott Rewards guests ensure I have the right tools and information so this is something that's reinforced every day we have what we call a daily standup or a huddle beginning of every shift everyone groups together they talk about the VIPs in house they talk about the basic of the day they ask for examples from among the staff can you share an example for of being prepared how what can you do today to be prepared so it's acculturating this issue of this basic one a day every day no matter where you are in the company the basic of the day today is prepare so it's a consistency it's company-wide and it's something that's easy for everybody to latch on to and you carry it with you and the brand standard audit means that we have auditors that Marriott hires an outside company and they come in they audit your performance and they they spend time in your building they order room service they use a spa there's a spa and they ask everybody let me see your basicscard and do you know what the basic of the day is so reinforcing that helps to deliver the service on a positive positive sense so I wanted to show you a couple of examples of things that we do to kind of energize and motivate our associates I don't know if any of your Spanish speakers or not but we have a translation on the left-hand side we have this picture the thing that we call a comic effect on the perfect bed this is a way that we talk about our survey information and we talk about is everything completely clean what's the completely clean score what is your housekeeping doing are they doing an excellent job so this was something that was developed at one of my properties where we wanted to kind of allow the the ladies and housekeeping to feel excited and motivated towards achieving what they call the perfect bed and on the right-hand side of the screen you see they're completely clean scores completely clean is one of the questions on the guest satisfaction survey but the comma perfecta was something that's a big sign it's in the room they talk about it every day and it energizes them for that week they're going to focus on making sure that the bed is perfect next month it may be the perfect bathroom or it may be the perfect floor the perfect carpet whatever but it's just a way in that department to energize those associates to make sure they have a focus on cleanliness in this example which is their job but it's one kind of fun thing and the tracking of the scores and which housekeepers are doing an exceptional job how they're doing compared to all the other hotels and married on those scores so they can feel motivated to be number one they'd like to be at the top of the heap I think in this particular week it looks like they're like one one one hundred out of 277 properties not bad I mean not at the top at working in the right direction I want to spend the next couple of minutes talking about engagement I've kind of touched on it briefly but it says here that it really means going beyond alignment making sure were just all on the same page to really make sure that you have the hearts and minds of your associates to the shared values that we have as a company so engagement is a very huge part of what we do in Merion and I want to spend a couple minutes talking about what's our strategy behind engaging our workforce it's kind of a three pronged approach we do an annual survey we do it once a year it is just a snapshot it's not something that's being asked all the time but from the time of survey to the time we receive the data back we get into a data sharing process we do a debrief and feedback and then we do action planning behind the results of that survey so let's move through this rather quickly so these are the what we call the drivers of associate engagement engagement these are the things that make me feel like I willing to go above and beyond as a member of the team at the hotel that I work at these are the five major drivers of associate engagement you can see them listed there I really kind of highlight the the first two because when you look at a survey that's about it's a technological survey it's all done online when I you started company they did in pencil and paper and mailed it in now it's all done online and you know technologically you think of our workforce sometimes may not have high degrees of written communication skills sometimes or technology comfort isn't always there either but you'd be amazed to see the growth of how associates have become more and more adapt using adept at using the technology to conduct their survey it's it's really an amazing thing when necessity becomes I've got to use technology they learn to use technology it's really fascinating but leadership excellence and the quality of my life at work have more a huge probably 50 to 60 percent of the questions drive around leadership excellence and quality of life at work so you think about that leadership is really the key we ask a lot of questions about it's about equally divided between my immediate supervisor does XYZ agree or disagree then there's a quill number of questions about senior leadership does senior leadership do XYZ and we evaluate senior leadership and we evaluate frontline supervision my argument is is that really where the rubber really meets the road is with that frontline supervisor the person that really drives engagement you could have an exceptional general manager inspirational motivational general manager but if the person that's there face to face working with these bodies and groups of associates every day if they don't have it it doesn't matter how great the leadership is at that at the top so that's a critical role that frontline manage your supervisor person is unbelievably important so so here's what we do after we debt we data share we debrief and feedback we look at comparisons how to how did a hotel or a department do year-over-year how do they do versus the total organization so you look at a kitchen department at in San Francisco how did the kitchen department at the San Francisco Marriott do in comparison to that same kitchen department a year ago how do they stack up against the total hotel how do they stack up against Marriott as a total organization we measure that really the better focuses am i improving year-over-year maybe less important of how I compare to the rest of the organization as am I making progress upward on my level of engagement year-over-year we also sometimes there's a little bit of a delay you get the data back and maybe 30 60 days before your sharing I said when you took the survey back in June this is what it looked like does it still look the same you got to gather current state information from them so the snapshot that you took in June it may not be a reality bed time you get to August or September so you have to kind of level set once again to make sure that the the mood that they provided for you in June when they took the survey is the same today so if you're thinking about surveying associates or talking about the value of doing that make sure you discuss the time lag piece ask the people how they do and one thing that's key in these follow-up meetings is you gain departmental consensus we would say if if you could pick as a group the top three things if we worked on we could make it a better place to work for you what are those and they agree as a group and then leadership puts in motion things to pick off those three or four things that they chose as being the single your most important things to work on in their department we use an external facilitator when we say external I mean external to the department I may come in facilitate a meeting for them we have what we call a senior work environment manager that goes to properties and that scene your work environment manager typically will go to departments within hotels that may be struggling from an engagement perspective nobody from the hotel is there with them it's a little disarming for them they don't have to feel like they're talking to a member of the team that's an outsider they work for merit but they're outside the day-to-day operation of the hotel you get a lot more honest feedback I think when you operate like that rather to have another member of management team from within the building isn't quite as powerful so the action planning piece for me is the single most important step you can ask people to survey you can gather data but if you do nothing with that data you're shooting yourself in the foot you've got to go back and make sure that you've listened to them then you put a solid action plan in place that they're published that you report those findings up to senior management in terms of how you're doing on those action plans they're monitored monthly and quarterly to see are we reacting to the things that the survey said and checking back with your people it could be departmental meetings you see at the bottom and the index done survey data I don't need to talk about that but the action planning piece is a single single most critical part of surveying asking how well you think your people are engaged or not I draw attention to a book here by Beverly Kay and Sharon Jordan Evans it's called love them or lose them this is an awesome book for follow-up for engagement and it's really a simple little tool I would recommend it if you have any interest in this it's set up like an alphabet there's 26 letters and each of those letters A to Z is a strategy for building engagement it's an exceptional tool to use we have a program that we call engaging the hearts and minds of your associates and it's tit talks about we know we were told many years ago that there was going to be a labor shortage happening I don't think it's happened yet do you have the economy you know went into the tank but at some point in the future there will be a shortage of labor particularly in the kind of business very labor intensive business that we operate in there will be a shortage of labor so what we have to do is we have to make sure that we retire and retain the best of the best so how do you do that you do it by engaging the hearts of minds of your associates and the book is called love them or lose them love them meaning the care and feeding of your exceptional associates and all of your associates will make them want to stay you got to hold onto them you don't want them to go somewhere else because in a labor shortage that would be very bad for you but this is an awesome book I would encourage you to take a look at it again frontline leader is the key on in measurement strategy and engagement they people want to be provided with provide meaningful and challenging work it's got to be a job right like it's interesting and challenging for me think about making the job challenging and interesting for a housekeeper who's cleaning 14 rooms every day just think of it as a challenge how do you do that how do you motivate that to be challenging you make it fun you do the Kama perfecta you do something to where they feel engaged and excited about the work they're doing and see how making that room completely clean plays into the overall satisfaction of the guests so making work challenging and meaningful is very very important respect I don't think I need to say much more about respect everybody I don't care what level you are you want to be treated with respect as an individual and that's critical listening and follow through and be visible and available to your to your people some quick metrics here about higher engagement within Marriott one of the questions we ask is did you experience a problem when you were with us we know that if you have a highly engaged workforce that the guests are 11% less likely to experience a problem here's some statistical data for you to say that high engagement does translate to higher levels of guest satisfaction turnover in highly engaged workforces in our hotel populations the 20% reduction in turnover and again we can't speak enough I think there was a comment about the cost I think the the dean who presented talked about the cost of turnover we've measured that you know depending on your job if you lose a general manager a senior sales executive the cost of that turnover is immeasurable in terms of loss of productivity knowledge loss people walk out the door you lose knowledge getting back up to that level is incredible and then for properties and the finance people love this that the productivity is 14% greater among the hourly workforce if they're highly engaged and productivity means you're spending less on labor based on for each room that you have to clean or operate you have less of that so I want to talk now about how we measure guest satisfaction we call it GSS if you hear me using the acronyms dacron mgss it means guest satisfaction survey these are some of the key drivers these are not all of them and I'll show you a chart in a second there's an overall satisfaction question and for us and for those of you who are maybe Marriott travelers at some point in time we want you to be completely honest on your survey because anything that's a 7 or below it might as well be a zero for us so but be completely honest that's the only way we can get better we look at the arrival and departure experience they are actually asked what was your arrival experience alike alike how about your departure how was staff service overall staff service overall is one of the things that rests in my in my area I am tasked with making sure that the staff service overall is action even though I'm not a frontline person I want to make sure that there there are some subcategories to staff service overall like skilled and well trained felt empowered to make decisions those kind of things impact how the kind of staff service that will be delivered to our guests everything in working order TV remote doesn't work internet doesn't work the hot water doesn't work everything in working order is another key driver as well as room completely clean and I'm going to show you a couple of reports that we get on this we call it there's a pulse report that will look at a particular hotel and it would it would compare it to the brand and when they say the brand it's like if I'm talking about a ritz-carlton they will take my ritz-carlton they'll compare it against every other bits Carlton to see where I am am I ten out of a hundred and my 40 out of a hundred and my 80 out of a hundred where am I on that list so there's a comparison for like product they're not going to compare a Fairfield Inn to a Ritz Carlton but they'll they'll segment it by brand to determine how are you performing compared to all the other hotels in that brand and you can look at for a specific market there's an area vice-president in this part of the world that covers all of Southern California she can look at all of the hotels in her area and determine how are my hotels doing as it relates to guest satisfaction so she knows where she can place attention and there's some very very rigorous accountability for lack of a better word when guest satisfaction scores fall below a norm that they should be at there's a huge degree of accountability from that area vice-president to the local general managers and conversely down to the executive committee and operating managers if those service scores are not being maintained so it's business and it's part of how we're you waited and so forth so it's it's very important that we do anything we can to lift scores sometimes there's a concern that a product or an aging product might might impact service scores I would tell you that in Marriott you might have a tough product they may give you a little bit of leeway but still you may have a tough or struggling product that's in need of a redo and you won't get it till next year potentially the year after the expectation though is even with a tough product your service has to shine in fact it has to shine more in a struggling product than it does in an exceptional product and then we have an opportunity map and I'll show you that in a second each property is targeted with the certain drivers that apply just to that property based on a prior year's data these are where your opportunities lie and it allows the properties to then the properties I'm sorry the hotels to focus on what areas of guest satisfaction they should really put their energy behind and we get that from a report so this is kind of a little bit of an eye chart I just want to give you an idea that where it says pulse report you see down at the bottom the property key drivers this example you know the name of the property has been you know hidden to you know protect the innocent but you see across the bottom there you have a January to June window and then you later in you will have a July through December window so this is an obviously in early reporting it's a very fresh report it's maybe a couple of weeks into January that you can see the in this example if you look on the right-hand side because the the January to June piece and the 2013 year-to-date piece those are the same numbers because we're just in January but you see it on the right hand side we compare it to the brand so how are all the other hotels in the Marriott hotel brands again this is just standard Marriott hotels how do we compare you can see on that first one room comfortable for relaxing this particular property was at a seventy six point five on a brand standard of a brand average of 82 staff go down four or five bullet points you see staff skilled and well-trained operating in an 80 7.5 against a brand of 88.1 pretty darn close there so you can see the scores here are pretty good they still you know it's early in the year they're going to look at this and measure this from January to June perspective but then I wanted to tie that back to what I mentioned before which is the opportunity map it's completely impossible to read but I will tell you that these items on the bottom left-hand side of your screen are the same things that you see here on the right-hand side of the opportunity map this is through software that Marriott has contracted with an outside company to gather this data and show us where the highest opportunities are well you'd think why would you go first priority's second priority third priority fourth priority the part on the right hand side if you notice at the top those are the more high importance so focus on the high importance even though this dark green slide is it's actually third in the importance of key drivers but it's of higher importance to the guests so those are the areas that you would focus so the opportunity map is reflected over here in the property key drivers it's a great little tool to tell you where you can go and look deeper down off to the left of each of those boxes I've circled you see a check mark which is just a it's a trend graph you push the button and it'll show you how you're trending on that particular question over the last six months or a year the left of those two little boxes to the left of the actual data you can click on that and it'll provide the actual guests comments and responses on that particular question so it really allows us to dig very very deep to know what exactly what things actually happen to that customer which then allows us to go back and either retool reprocess or rework our processes to make sure that we're focusing on the things that you begin to look at a trend and see the kind of issues that crop up again and again and again that's where you put your energy I mean it's the you know focus on the things that you have happening 80% of the time not not focus on the things that only happen 20% of the time but this allows you to a really deep here particular comments positive or negative about an Associate guest interaction or a potentially negative associate guest interaction we have to address not only the exceptional but we also have to address the the challenges that some of our associates have and being extremely hospitable with their guests yeah it internet speed is over a bathroom cleanliness I would tell you that in this day and age Internet if internet is not where the expectation is the internet works all the time and it's free right and it works at a high speed yeah it works but it's slow that's a debt becomes a dissatisfied even though you have it even if it were free right oh yeah right so I guess this is kind of a closing slide it says exceptional customer service can only be achieved if every individual that interacts with your guests has a passion for service and feels like a valued member of your business so that's just kind of tying the high engagement the passion for service on the part of the associate is what Nets you exceptional customer service and I think with that we're just about ready to move in any questions might start with some from the virtual audience and I'll let the in-person audience here have a moment to gather their thoughts I like this question when you when you interview potential employees potential associates in your opinion what are some indicators that can tell you if that candidate is someone who's likely to be service oriented well we the questioning and I would tell you that we use we partner with a company called Aon Hewitt and the initial stage of interviews are actually will screen out persons who don't seem to have the answers to questions that would indicate that they were screened for hospitality then of course there's face-to-face interviews that happen so I think the question is kind of what what are you looking for what kind of thing is you seen that would indicate that they would be great service well I would say that questions have become more and more behavioral over time so what we will do is we will ask questions that are behavioral in nature meaning tell me about a time when you had a challenging interaction with a guest or in your past job or a team member in your school or wherever it might have been and tell me how you resolve that problem that's an example of a question that would indicate aha they're drawing on real-world examples where they show that they could they could demonstrate teamwork they can demonstrate friendliness warmth and I think a lot of that face to face piece you pick up pick up on that just from a face to face interview great with so many properties around the world and so many brands how do you walk the line of being consistent in terms of service but still you mentioned that it was important to also allow for cultural or regional you know differences in taste or custom how do you walk that line between consistency and catering to specific tastes well I think I think that I'll go back to my brand comment that we know that a person who who comes Tuesday at a Fairfield Inn for example knows that they are not going to receive all the bells and whistles that you receive at a ritz-carlton therefore we design the services for the particular customer for that brand in other words customers have been identified to have certain hot buttons and needs that they have based on the brands that they would go through whether it's luxury tear whether it's your signature or whether it's your economy so we have to make sure that we we model that depending upon what brand the guest is staying at you wouldn't expect the same at our Ritz as you would at a fair field in so we target the services that are offered in a building based on the brand that we operate so I don't know that so much of a fine line is it is just saying you're here this is what you can expect if you're staying with this brand this is an interesting question and your in your opinion how have customers expectations regarding service evolved over the last couple of decades over your career Wow they've changed a lot and I think that you hear someone made the comment about you know the customers King well when when service is in particular I think it speaks well to a tough economy when the economy is tough the customers are much more discerning because they're much more conscious about where their dollars are going and so if you go back we can go back five years but we can go back further than that that once you establish a certain level of service well then that becomes that doesn't become the pinnacle that becomes the baseline so then what do you get what do you have you done for me lately where do you go next how do you take it up to another level another level so I would say that the customer expectations even today continue to grow higher and higher and we just have to be ready for them I think that when you see room rates dropping you know the the willingness of a property is say well we would normally sell this room at a hundred and fifty dollars but economy being what it is we're going to have to sell it for $99 the customer doesn't have any different expectations when they're paying ninety nine is when they were paying 150 so I think it's just a continual ratcheting up of what the customer experiences and Internet as an example the use of technology much more demanding knowing that they have so many choices and you know the market is filled with options for people in looking for hospitality looking for hotels that they know that they can demand more and more say well over at the other place I got this can you do this for me and you see more and more that much more demanding customer that's one more from the from online that will turn to the room here a learner mentions terrific presentation what advice would you give to organizations that might not have the infrastructure and resources of a mayor at a smaller organization that are looking to build stronger employee engagement and therefore customer service what should a smaller organization focus on or tips strategies yeah I think that and we talk about resources I mean we have the the benefit of it we'd like our surveying for example we do our surveying internally but it's provided to us from an external provider so I think that since you don't have the the ability to grab something like that in-house I think if if you're serious about it and you're serious about driving guest satisfaction through a more engaged workforce I think you have to be willing to invest the time and the resources to go out find somebody that can conduct and debrief that survey for you or else you're not going to know the level so even if you may not have the ability internally I think you have to be willing to take that investment you know putting your money where your mouth is in terms of investing in the survey by an outside vendor to help you get real and there's plenty of them out there my question actually goes along with the answer you give as far as the surveys I know as a customer we're not always thrilled to you know put in the time and effort to fill out a survey are there certain steps or do you do research on how to increase the completion rate of the surveys we do I'm not a hundred percent familiar with that but I know that in any given month there's a maximum that we any property will can get a maximum but there's also the chance that if enough people didn't fill it out you may get a low number of surveys and that would obviously impact your score you know each excellent and each horrible score weighs a lot more if you only got 30 surveys than if you got 75 or 100 surveys so you can't really control the response rate because it's completely voluntary it's all done electronically it's all done by email it's no paper surveys in in room there's in room pieces that people can provide surveys with but the real thing that counts are the ones that we electronically mail to our guests and it is a little bit of a crapshoot in terms of being able to drive those numbers we can't force them to take the survey but they research it all the time I've stayed at Marriott over the years probably 20 30 years while in the military and I've traveled in just about every state and state at Ritz and Fairfield and I can tell you that whether I say to Fairfield Ritz the bids were always comfortable it was always good rooms were clean that was while I was in the military and it was subsidized by everybody's in here taxes so I stayed at Marriott now in later years the one area that I didn't see you cover is economically how do we afford to stay at the mirror because it is the best and I prefer ceated merit than any other place but economically it's difficult today I guess you wait me if they with lower prices hi is that uh yeah that's uh that's a tough one I mean economically how do we you know we'd love to have you and I think that if you have economically outgrown in the wrong direction to stay in a in a you know what we would call a full service versus a select server for extended stay property we'd love to keep you as a loyal customer but I think if you know there comes a point at which we decide every day we call them revenue managers I don't know if you've ever heard the term terminology revenue managers revenue managers are the folks that determine what a given hotel will sell their rooms at any given time of the day or the week based on business trends how many check-ins how many checkouts what is the market demanding and I think I would say and this is maybe sound a little a little oversimplified that you have to shop around I think if you shop around you can find reasonable rates no matter what the product is or else you may have to trade down in terms of going from a luxury tier to a standard to a select service that's that's about all I could give you that you made me want to work for Marriott all right but you know a couple of interesting things in what you stated the you know the survey you said you compare to other brands are you comparing to other hotels or just like you said you compare a wrister or other rates and other area but you compare do you compare also to other hotels in that class on the guest satisfaction side yes we do we we don't at the property level this happens at the regional and at the corporate level they have a very good handle on where we stand compared to our major competitors like Hilton Hyatt Starwood they know because obviously those hotel companies also serve in they survey their guests and they're trying to find out what they're doing so in recent years where we had an exceptional advantage in terms of how we compared to our our competitors that gap has narrowed somewhat which put a little bit of nerves in the world of Marriott if you will so we didn't you know our brand our brand preference over our competitors that gap has been narrow they were quickly catching up to us that that reinvigorated re-energizes so we could really put more focus on the guest B so we could widen that gap once again but it is other brands but not an employee in the employee associate world but in the guest world yes we do okay and two other quick question you know and I could testify that I mean I've stayed in Marriott in Amman Jordan or an Orlando or Palm Spring and and even going internationally I feel like I'm still in the US I mean the way everything is and so the consistency is amazing that the question I had you said something interesting you said the ladies of housekeeping so do you guys not hire men to do housekeeping oh that's it for an HR guy that's a tough one we absolutely do but the vast majority of our workforce who make rooms are female and when you meet and there are typically a team of housekeepers and a team of what we would call you like this term HR wise it's we call them house persons a house person in other parlance would be a Houseman but they're the ones that are doing the delivery of linen they're doing the general clean so there are a team of men that work in housekeeping as well but they're typically not the bed makers and the bathroom cleaners typically in our in u.s. culture Tony I want to thank you for a nice presentation first off my name is Steve Holliday and I'm starting a ethnography class today as well for your presentation which is an evaluation of cultural aspects of the diverse workforce we have in the US and even internationally because I've done my fair international travel as well and married hotels have a standard of excellence around the world I can attest to that too so my question is what type of a ethnographical study does marry it perform when they go into a new worldwide market are evaluate a hotel in the US with the diversity change in its workforce just because of the way the world is changing these days the global environment and what points particular points would marry it can use and such in such a evaluative study Wow that's that's a biggie i I think internationally and I can't speak to it from a personal level but I know that when we began opening more businesses internationally that let me back up at one point we were able to staff our hotels our executive and our management staff hotels we would staff those from the US well as the world has become smaller and hospitality has grown throughout the world we then were able to staff those hotels not with leaders and executives from the US but leaders and executives from the markets in which they work so that that really played to our advantage so as US and our competitors and everyone began building and growing we didn't have to worry about bringing expats from the u.s. to China or to Hong Kong or to Vietnam or wherever they are India where they might be doing business we now can rely on locals who've worked in the in the business in the market to tell us how things work here so I don't know so much that it's studied specifically I mean you know the demographics of when the research and development are people going the feasibility folks are going and they're looking at hey we're going to build a hotel in X location they know what the ethnic makeup of you know the age the the whole demographic piece they know what that is what they may have missed if they've never done business there is how is business done in that world and they've got to do business the way business is done in that market so in terms of study the ethnography is at which because that was that was a new word for me how did that I know that helped to answer your question or not it did and it sounds like you have Mary at least has some type of substitute study programs that are in place to evaluate the local markets and also the conditions there before mark entry is made yes and from the revenue management the cost control standpoint it actually makes sense to not use expats - absolutely does you and especially if you can hire local people who are bilingual our triangle whatever so I got thanks for the response my pleasure I'm a little confused uh you're talking about having a linear model across all of the hotels and the brands yet your data mining has to be different from each culture how do you make the comparison between cultures if you've got a linear model well when I talk about what would we for example the data that I showed you on the screen here like this for example this is Marriott hotels US only we're not being compared to the others other parts of the world that's something the numbers are smaller internationally from full-service properties that data is collected separately so they do do separate they do do separate surveys and I can't speak to whether or not the survey questions are identical in other parts of the world this is all the US data that was providing okay well let me give you an example of this from your questions that have been asked we've got a couple of people here that have talked about wherever they go in the world in the blue Marriott's absolutely identical and then another group saying that in each little corner there's been a diversion to match the local culture oh okay you can't do both I would argue that maybe you can to some degree I mean that you can have I use the Marriott Berger example now you know Marriott Berger may not go well in parts of the world but it may still be on the menu for the people who travel from the US that doesn't mean though that menu offerings public space offerings services in general can be tweaked to the local market but some standards must remain in place in terms of service I was just trying to figure out what you drew the line I guess I don't have a great answer for you a question about the social media with it's no secret that in in today's age a dissatisfied customer as you know has more potential reach can be louder than than ever before what does Marriott do about that you have people that you participate in do you offer reviews for example or you monitor social media sites and comment on them what yeah we have you know ecommerce people who who not only are talked about the marketing of our hotels but are also monitoring all social media you know TripAdvisor you know Facebook Twitter any of those kind of things that we just have to monitor you know you hear ads on the radio but you know some person can just put some horrible nasty comment about about you out there I think generally though you have to look it over the broader the broader base you can't take one comment and say that defines us we recognize that we study it but we also have to be careful not to take one comment and say that well that means that the entire experience was bad for everybody we need to see if there's patterns developing and we can use social media to find out if patterns develop that way just as we would from a regular survey you know you talked a lot about the employees and you know I agree 100% that you know a happy employee will represent you well and the customers will come back I feels like when I go to Trader Joe I feel like that just like Marriott it's like a happy environment how do you rate do you have a rating system for their satisfaction at work I mean you have charted almost everything but how do you gauge perfectly happy employee and how do you reward them let me go back to this back to this piece that was kind of a two-part question I think you talked about rewarding as well you know I don't know that I'm going to reward you for being engaged per se but in order for you to be engaged there's there's certain there's a certain price of entry I've got to provide you with competitive pay and benefits I've got to provide you with a comfortable work environment I've got to provide you with great leadership I've got to provide you with growth and opportunity those kind of things will say okay you're you score high or you feel high on those particular topics and you'll evaluate me in a certain fashion I would tell you in terms of it value we would evaluate your ability to provide exceptional service though so every and again talking US market every hourly associate in every supervisor and every manager different for manager supervisor separate and rank-and-file hourly associates they are all evaluated on the same criteria in terms of their performance but we don't use a link between hey you're highly engaged that you get a better rating but likely you would because if you're more engaged you're going to be delivering that exceptional service does that answer your question and I actually I was trying to see how you can al you ate their their satisfaction level so how do you gauge that all employees are happy actually working for you or if the morale is down or see what I'm saying yeah we this this tool and there is about a fifty three question survey that we do once a year and it the questions that we asked are chunked into these five top these five categories huge majority of them around leadership and quality of life at work some on teamwork personal growth and total rewards but we asked 50 questions and then since I don't know and we have to keep it confidential I don't know how you know Consuelo answered the survey but I know how everybody in that department answered the survey so you start by gauging the the the engagement health of that particular department then you look at the engagement health of the whole hotel and it becomes clearly obvious that certain departments seem to have a higher level engagement than others right so without finding out that you know the managers typical MO is a oh I want to know who answered bad on the survey who gave me a bad rating that's kind of this typical I want to find out who marked me down on the survey we don't approach it like that we approach the department as a whole we dialogue with them gather information from them about okay what's working well what's not working well what do we need to do to make it a better place to work and you tell us and then we ask that department as a group to define what their top three or four things are that doesn't mean that one disgruntled employees issue is or is not going to get on that top four it might or it might not does that help yes okay yes Tony my interest is in actioning the drivers of associate engagement in particular the leadership excellence so I kind of have a two-part question first of all what skillset or leadership dimensions are you actually measuring and secondly based on what Marriott has learned from the annual survey what is the most important leadership dimension that you've identified we measure under leadership excellence we measure recognition for a job well done we measure whether leadership listens to and acts upon the suggestions made by employees both at the senior exec level as well as at the line supervisor level so that those are a couple of things that we really think are important listening to me and acting on the things that I bring to your attention and rewarding and recognizing me beyond a paycheck showing recognition and appreciation and what was the second part of your question that's a loaded question everyone would answer that differently for me personally I think you have to be a leader who sincerely shows a sincere interest and care for the people that work for you I mean and I there's many ways to demonstrate that you know there's always been this talk about gee I don't socialize with my workers right because that could be dangerous but I would tell you that from a personal perspective I think it is okay to socialize with the people you work with you just need to know where that line is because you need to get into knowing who these people are not in extreme detail but you need to know something about them beyond the fact that they're checking people in or cooking food or making beds every day so you need to learn the the leaders ability to learn about the whole person is going to make them a better a better leader it's a learning model absolutely I think we have time for just a couple more here obviously Marriott's a world leader in terms of service but as I think you alluded to you know no company bats you know that's a thousand in this regard it you're at piñon what are them just a couple or the most common or most critical service-oriented mistakes that you see made let's see well I go back to some of those drivers I'll flip back just to kind of refresh my memory here if I can look for them I'm not so sure that these are there I think what I would say is let's say that there's a service failure of any kind I didn't have the room type I requested I couldn't check in at the time I you know my breakfast was late breakfast is huge by the way breakfast is huge and it has to be on time has to be hot I think what we've learned though is that the ability to have what we call a service recovery so something happens in improperly how well do we do it recovering what we often see from a guess as you know I try to check in my room wasn't ready I was anticipating an ocean view room I didn't get an ocean view room however the service was so exceptional that I kind of overcame that I think that if I could say there's a general a general service failure that happens I think it's maybe timely responsiveness to issues I brought something up I was told that I was kind of that problem would be resolved for me and I waited half an hour I went in two hours and still no results so I think that that ability to service recover is really key no matter what the problem when that went wrong the ability to service recover is really the key
