E-Business CIA-1 Review of Case Study

E-Business
CIA-1
Review of Case Study
Case Study: Marriotts Customer-Focused E-Business Strategy
Author: Konakanchi Prashant
Link: http://astro.temple.edu/~wurban/Case%20Studies/Marriott's%20Ebusiness.pdf
Submitted to,
Prof. Vijaya Lakshmi
Submitted by,
Kunnam SP Dheeraj
Reddy,
1528116,
L1.
Introduction:
In 1927, J. william Marriott (william) had set-up a nine-seat root beers shop in Washington.
Later william started serving hot food along with root beer and had named the shop as The Hot
Shoppe. In 1929, Hot Shoppe was officially incorporated as Hot Shoppes, Inc. And then in 1937,
Hot Shoppe ventured into airline catering at Washington airport, serving the Eastern, American
and capital airlines. In 1966, the company ventured overseas, acquiring an airline catering
kitchen in caracas, venezuela. In November 1967, its name was changed to Marriott Corporation
(Marriott). When it comes to hospitality industry Marriott International is a world leader. It is
headquartered at Washington in the US. In year 2003, it had a network in excess of 2,600
operating units in the US alone. It is spread over 65 countries across the world with 145000
employees. Marriott is the first hospitality company to have win the CIO- 100 award from CIO
magazine for four consecutive years i.e. 2000-03. Its diverse portfolio of different hotel brands
includes JW Marriott, Ramada international, Courtyard, Renaissance, The Ritz-Carlton etc.
Analysis:
The website and E-business system:
The website had information regarding hotel directories, reservations, meeting planners, details
of travel agents, and also a suggestion box. Customers can choose any hotel from the wide range
of hotels under Marriotts portfolio. Customers can also make reservations on the website by
providing the date of arrival and departure details, and also number of people. The website was
so user friendly that no customers faced difficulty in operating and navigating through it,
including first time customers.
The unique features of the website were the 'Meeting Planner' and travel agent sections.
The Meeting Planner section targeted business customers who conducted frequent
meetings.
The 'Travel Agent' section was targeted at travel agents, providing them the required
information regarding the codes of different hotels and their respective queues so as to
enable the booking of available accommodation through the major travel reservation
networks.
Marriott has also employed a four pronged e business strategy and by employing this strategy
Marriott was able to have greater control over the companys worldwide operations.
The E Business strategy:

The Marriotts e-business strategy was mainly aimed at transforming itself from a property
focused company to a customer focused company. The e-business strategy focused mainly on
increasing revenues earned per each customer. The four important objectives of this e-business
strategy included personalizing the service offerings based on the preferences and needs of the
customer, cross selling, enhancing the brand loyalty and awareness, and serving the customers
proactively.
Findings:
In 1999, Marriott earned revenues of $150 million from online bookings through its
website.
Estimates for the year 2000 indicated that every month the website received 3 million
hits, making it one of the largest viewed websites in the US hospitality industry.
By 2002, the website emerged as a money spinner for Marriott with online sales of $1
billion.
More than 75 percent of all the Marriott international reservations were made through
mariott.com.
The user-friendly website provided great convenience to all Marriott customers including
tourists, business customers and travel agents.

Through the suggestion box, users could e-mail their suggestions on improving Marriotts
services to the customer service and guest relations department
Suggestions/Criticism:
One touch which is a customer service initiative was launched at only selected Marriott
hotels, Resorts and suites, Renaissance hotels. It should implement this service at all the
hotels and resorts throughout the world so that customers can access wide range of
Marriott services.
Marriott has launched a service called personal planning service for the customers who
plan their vacations only at selected resorts. It should be offered to the customers across
all the resorts throughout the world.

Whatever services Marriott is offering, has to be offered across all the resorts and hotels
so that the operations can be streamlined across all the resorts and hotels, and that there
will not be any dilution of the brand Marriott in the minds of customers.
Franchisees are an important segment in the company. So Marriott has to be very
cautious in choosing an owner or franchisee partner as the financial performance of
Marriott depends on how effectively it would manage its owners or franchisee partners.
Marriott should focus more on creating opportunities which would generate revenue
rather than simply responding to the needs and demands of the customers.

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E-Business

The E Business strategy:

tourists, business customers and travel agents.

all the resorts throughout the world.

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