Conclusion

To answer our main question, and its sub-questions, we did some research online and went to see the actual hotel by our own eyes. Our conclusion is that the Marriott hotel and all of its brands are all about the customer experience; striving for the best and highest is there main goal. By making the guests feel at home it resulted in a huge international name in the lodging business over the years.

Marriott’s marketing mix is globally the same, and is therefore unique in its kind. The hotels are located in all kinds of places, to attract every sort of customer and reach the biggest group of guests. Promotion of the Marriott is nowadays done by the internet, this being one of the most important ways to promote a brand. Of course the old-fashioned way is still being executed; TV-commercials, flyer, brochures etc., this to reach the maximum amount of potential guests to stay in their hotels. The core product of the Marriott is their hotels, or better specified, their rooms. Marriott has different kind of hotels with all different styles. All of the brands have the same concept, but they are specified to places and target group. We think that that is what the Marriott makes so strong. They have one concept, but they found a way to make that concept work in different places and for different people. That way they can attract a lot of customers. Every Marriott brand has a different price. That's because the different brands want to attract different people. And this formula makes the Marriott so popular; it is a place for every kind of customer.

The concept of the Marriott is already working in the Netherlands, since the firm has several locations and is therefore successfully functioning. Although it hails a different kind of guest, because of the fact that an American guest has not the same needs as a European or Dutch guest, the Marriott is good in adjusting and getting the best result out of it.

Question list for customers and manager

(We put this list on the blog because then you can see we thought about the questions we could ask the customers and the manager. As you can read in the message ''ERROR'' we unfortunately weren't allowed to ask the questions.)

Questions for customers:

Hello! We are students from NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences. We are taking part in a summer course at the Northern Arizona University and the Arizona State University. For this purpose we would like to have an interview with you. We want to interview you about your experiences with Marriott. The interview will take about 30 minutes.

First we would like to have some general information like your age and do you have company during your stay like your family or friends.

What do you expect of the Marriott?
· Is this your first visit in a Marriott hotel?

How do you experience staying in Marriott?
· What is the reason that you have this opinion?

What do you think of the price/quality ratio of the Marriott?

What do you think of the location of this Marriott?
· What do you think of the parking place?

Why did you choose the Marriott above other hotels?

At what point do you think the Marriott could improve?

Thank you very much for your time and sharing your experiences about Marriott with us.

Questions for the manager:

Hello! We are students from NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences. We are taking part in a summer course at the Northern Arizona University and the Arizona State University. For this purpose we would like to have an interview with you. We want to interview you about your experiences with Marriott. The interview will take about 60 minutes.

Can you tell something about the history of Marriott?

What’s the target group of Marriott?

What is the business formula the Marriott hotel and its franchisers?

How do you carry the business formula through the hotel and its staff?
· What kind of theme and ambience do you want to create in Marriott?
· What kind of entertainment do you have in Marriott?
· Is there a difference in furnishing between Marriott and other hotels?

How do you communicate with your staff about the business formula?

What’s typical about Marriott?

How do you make Marriott attractive?

What do you do to promote Marriott?
· What is your marketing strategy?

Are there any demands as regards the location of Marriott?

Thank you very much for your time and sharing your experiences about Marriott with us.

Main question

The main question in our survey is: What’s the concept and the “Branded Customer Experience” of Marriott? We want to know this because we would like to know if a concept like Marriott would work in the Netherlands. To answer this question we have a couple of sub questions. These sub questions are:

- What’s the history of Marriott?
- What’s the concept?
- What’s the marketing mix?
- What’s the branded customer experience?

First we have to know the history of Marriott because it tells us something about how the hotel chain has changed during the past. Maybe the concept of Marriott has changed during the years. Then we have to know what the concept is because the concept is the main factor to create a customer experience. If you don’t have a good concept, you can’t create a customer experience that fits the target group. If we know this, we will find out the marketing mix of Marriott. The marketing mix is important for the concept. The concept has to be based on a place, promotion, product and price. Otherwise it isn’t a good concept. With al this information we can discover the customer experience. And when we find out the customer experience we will end with a conclusion. In the conclusion we will imagine if the concept also will work in the Netherlands.

So our main question is: What’s the concept and the “Branded Customer Experience” of Marriott? We will answer this question and its sub questions by interviewing a manager of a Marriott hotel and customers of the hotel chain. In a interview with the manager we try to find out the concept of Marriott and in interviews with customers we try to find out their experiences. It’s also important to ask the manager what he thinks the customer experience of Marriott has to be. If the experience that the Marriott wants to send out doesn’t match with what the customer experiences you can say the company has a problem.

Branded Customer Experience

Branded Customer Experience

The main goal is to make the guests feel at home as much as possible. To realise this, they offer loads of facilities nearby. Some examples are the shopping mall; Arizona Mills Mall and the many boating and fishing spots at Tempe Town Lake.

When the guests arrive at the hotel, they will be received in the impressive lounge. They will get a warm welcome from the reception desk and will be guided to their impressive rooms. Their rooms are filled with all kinds of luxuries. A big living room, large bedroom and a bathroom with a bath and shower. There is also a kitchen in all rooms. When our guests leave in the morning they can leave a note, so we know what they would like to have in their fridge. The hotel will do all the shopping for the guests, so they have what they like when they return later on the day.

All guests can enjoy their breakfast at our Gatehouse. Here they can choose between many different kinds of breakfast, included many egg dishes, fresh fruit or bagels and waffles.

There is also a large café for further relaxing. Like a cup of coffee or some thee. Here you will also find the daily newspaper, so you keep in touch with the world.
Outside we find a pool and a whirlpool. Here can our guests enjoy the lovely water, or just get a tan in the sun. We also offer multiply sport facilities. Like a fitness center, basketball course and a tennis grit. There is also a large golf circuit for everyone that is interested.

As you can see we offer our guests a lot of luxury.

But that’s not all!

For businesspeople we also have a big meeting room. Here we have everything you need, like AV equipment, high-speed internet and overnight delivery.

Our concept in short; “You name it, we have it”.

Personels Influence

How can our personel contribute to this formula? A simple answer really. Our personel is always friendly and polite. They will see to it that any request made by the guests is filled in. They will also provide suggestions to our guest when they see fit. By doing so we provide an extra service, so our guest do feel even more at home.

Typical America

What makes the whole concept typical America? Probably the way everything is offered to the guests. It is a large hotel with many facilities, all possible, because of the big area they have available.

Would this be possible in the Netherlands? I think not. In the Netherlands we don’t have many areas with big proportions of land. Also the weather isn’t as great, so a big swimming pool would not get the same effect. It also seems that the people in the Netherlands don’t want the personel to keep on questioning for our comfort. We prefer our rest and to do things more on our own.

Guest experience

Overall satisfaction
100% of travelers (1 of 1) recommend this hotel 5.0
Hotel service 5.0
Hotel condition 4.0
Room cleanliness 5.0
Room comfort 4.0

Scores are based on a 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) rating system.

Most recent review and rating for Residence Inn By Marriott Tempe in Tempe
All reviews displayed are submitted by customers who stayed at this hotel. Only the most recent review is shown.

A traveler from Titletown USA, WI recommends this hotel

Posted: 16-Jul-08

Wonderful staff and customer service
Speedy check-in and check-out. Never saw housekeeping (meaning, they never disturbed me while I was in the room) but whenever I got back to my hotel room later that day, it was clean. The front desk that was very prompt in taking care of any issues. Also, breakfast in the morning was always hot and fresh with a lot of variety, with attempts to accomodate all types of tastes (and great breakfast staff). I rated some things a "4" only because of cosmetic issues (like, more convenient lighting - a switch for the lamps versus turning on each individual lamp would have been nice, the door closing a little quieter - worried about disturbing the other guests, and if there were a few items for washing dishes in the kitchen - although, housekeeping did wash any of my dirty dishes which I could have cleaned). Nice location if you have business in Tempe or don’t want to be in Phoenix - hotel was right across from the Arizona Mills outlet and there is a CVS on the corner. Other stores, restaurants, gas stations right off of Baseline Road and I-10 access right down the street. Overall, it was a very nice hotel and would stay there again.

Traveler's tip on dining
They had complimentary breakfast each morning and Mon-Thurs a lite fare of a dinner, but do not have a restaurant in the hotel. I had one Arizonian tell me of "great" chain restaurants - not my idea of great eating when I’m on vacation. I was only in AZ for 5 days and it would have been nice to know of restaurants that were unique to the area but yet, well-received by travelers as well as the locals. So, before you go, if you like food, do a little research.

Source: http://www.expedia.com/pub/agent.dll/qscr=dspv/htid=306691

The Marketing Mix

Place

Marriott has hotels in a lot of countries like the USA, Thailand, Argentina and so on. There are also three Marriotts in the Netherlands, all of them are in Amsterdam.

The hotels are located in all kind of places. There are hotels next to the highway, nearby the airport and there are also hotels in the centrum of cities. This can mean that the Marriott wants to attract all kind of people. Bussiness people will stay in hotels next to the highway or nearby the airport and the hotels nearby the airport will also attract travallers who have to wait a long time before there next flight is leaving. The hotels in the centrum of cities will mostly be filled by tourists who are on a citytrip. Although, you can't deduce the target group on the base of the place.

Promotion.

There are a lot of ways to promote a hotel. Nowadays one of the most important ways to promote a brand, in this case a hotel, is on the internet. Marriott has a extensive and clarifying internet site. It has a lot of information for the customers and you can also book online. But ofcourse there are lots of other ways to promote a hotel.

First of all we want to say that we think that the Marriott most of all wants to re-attract the customers they already ''have''. Of course they also want to attract new customers, but we expect that the Marriott in their promotion campaigns most of all wants to attract the customers they already have. That has consequences for their promotion campaigns. You can also see this on the internet site. For example the site says "Live it up this summer. Stay the weekend, pay with your Visa card and get a $25 Visa gift card". Marriott also sends regular customers letters and e-mails with special offers.

We haven't found any ways how the Marriott tries to attract new customers but we guess that they try to do that with banners on internet sites and folders at Tourist Information Offices.

Product

The core product of the Marriott are their hotels, or better specified, their rooms. Marriott has different kind of hotels, they have the following brands:
* Marriott Hotels and Resorts
* JW Marriott Hotels and Resorts
* Renaissance Hotels
* Courtyard* Residence Inn
* Fairfield Inn
* Conference Centers
* TownePlace Suites
* Springhill Suites
* Marriott Vacation Club

Each brand has its own style or theme. For example we take Residence Inn. We visited two Residence Inn hotels and what mostly attracted our attention is that they have a really cousy lobby. It was a quite and cousy place with comfortabel couches. That's why we think Residence Inn's target group is elder people because it's a calm place to stay.

All of the brands have the same concept, but they are specified to places and target group. We think that that is what the Marriott makes so strong. They have one concept, but they found a way to make that concept work in different places and for different people. That way they can attract a lot of customers.

Price

Every Marriott brand has a different price. That's because the different brands want to attract different people. For example they can ask a high price from business people because their rooms are mostly paid by the company they work for. So business people don't really care about the price. But on the other way families want to pay as less as possible because they already have a lot of costs. The price also depends on the fact if the brand has more facilities like "Renaissance Glendale Hotel & Spa".

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to ask the customers questions. So we couldn't ask what they think about the price/quality ratio of the Marriott. Our guess is that most of the customers are satisfied about this because Marriott is a big company and they have lots of customers. They wouldn't have so many customers if the customers weren't satisfied with with what they get for their money.

Staff

Because we weren't allowed to ask the customers questions, we also haven't had much contact with the staff of the Marriott. So we don't really know how they try to assign the concept to the customers.

Made by Petra

The Concept

The associates of Marriott are trained to go above and beyond for the customers of Marriott. It’s their job to make sure guests have the best possible experience while staying in the hotel. As a global company with 3,000 lodging properties in 68 different countries and territories, Marriott has guests who vary in background, language, tradition, religion and cultures. Marriott tries to make their guests feel like at home as far as they possibly can.
Marriott operates and franchises hotels under 15 different brands. All the brands provides a standard packing of services what have to be in all the hotels and also a packing of their own services. The brands can be very luxurious or more moderate. Because of the different places en themes of Marriott hotels, every brand breathes another atmosphere.


From the day J. Willard Marriott and his wife opened their first nine-seat root beer stand consistent quality and customer-focused innovation have been hallmarks of the company. Prior to its entrance into the timeshare arena, Marriott studied the industry very carefully. In listening closely to the shared experiences of existing owners, it became clear that the timeshare concept had great potential, but in practice was often poorly executed.
By applying its integrity and customer care to the timeshare industry, Marriott demonstrated that a respected hospitality company could be successful in this area without diminishing its brand image. As a natural extension of Marriot’s core lodging business, its vacation ownership offering became an endorser product that actually enhanced owners’ and guests’ perception of the company and created unprecedented customer loyalty.

In keeping with Marriott’s most cherished tradition of service, the Marriott Hotels & Resorts brand is, itself, a fresh take on luxury, providing detail-oriented personal and dependable service. From the luxury features you expect to the smallest details that delight, JW Marriott prides itself in providing those unexpected touches that elevate each guest’s stay.

Marriott's commitment to global diversity is illustrated by the workforce of Marriott. The workforce mirrors the demographic trends that we see in the communities today. Marriott prides it selves in embracing the unique talents, perspectives and backgrounds of their associates, their greatest asset. Marriott's 151,000 associates hail from many nations, speak more than 50 languages and work under the Marriott banner in 68 countries and territories around the world. Simply stated, more than half of our workforce is comprised of minorities and women. Whether it's Marriott’s high standard of customer service, nurturing the communities in which they live and do business, or providing their associates with a clear path for growth and opportunity, Marriott's "spirit to serve" philosophy is the common thread that is woven through the business of Marriott.

ERROR

After we tried to talk to managers of four different Marriott hotels, by telephone and personally, they told us they won't permit any assistance. Because of their policy we are not aloud to talk to hotel guests.

After we told our supervisors we went on with the assignment and will do our very best to get the best result.