FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Marriott.com website : bugs, glitches and outages
Old Oct 31, 2018, 10:03 am
  #432  
MGJ2727
 
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 148
I don't know who runs IT at Marriott/SPG, but they should be fired. I'm in the IT services business (and our company helps clients migrate to the cloud, modernize their applications/systems, etc.). If they had a cloud-based solution, there wouldn't be such a ....-show with website never working properly, etc. The CIO (Bruce Hoffmeister) has been with the company since 2011 - legacy CIO. Let's hope he's fired soon. He's spent too long at Marriott and probably has a lot of loyalties going on, but his failure to lead the organization from a digital perspective is horrific. Here's an excerpt from an interview with Marriott CEO where he cites technology as the biggest risk.

THE BIGGEST RISK INVOLVED IN THE INTEGRATION WITH STARWOOD

Even with such strong 2017 earnings numbers thus far, Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson said, “I think we’re off to a good start on the integration [with Starwood], but I think we are by no means declaring victory today. We have a got a lot of work ahead of us.”

That work includes tackling, perhaps, the biggest risk or threat to the success of Marriott’s integration of Starwood: figuring out the technology platforms that would link all of its more than 6,100 hotels worldwide, which Marriott hopes to complete by the end of 2018.

“I think if we identify one [risk] it’s going to be around technology,” Sorenson said during a call with investors and financial analysts to discuss the first quarter. “It takes longer and it costs more than any of us would like. … We have to make sure we are moving as quickly as we possibly can. These technology platforms will really allow us to drive the revenue lift we believe is available by having one reservation platform and one loyalty program and of course, secondarily, also allows us to deliver these technology platforms at lower costs for our owners, because we’ll be supporting one and not two.”

Sorenson noted, for example, that the company’s recent investment in PlacePass, a tours-and-activities metasearch platform, is one example of technology that Marriott wants to be able to link to its loyalty programs and all of its dot.com sites.

“Technology would be, probably, the thing that we are maybe most frustrated by the cost and time associated with it,” he added. “[We’re] maybe the most fearful about it, but also most convinced it will drive upside, longer term to the entire portfolio.”

Integrating all the technology systems involved throughout all of Marriott’s hotels and legacy Starwood properties would indeed be a complex feat. It remains unclear whether Marriott intends to transition all legacy Starwood hotels onto its older mainframe technology platform called MARSHA, which was originally developed in the 1970s.

In an opinion piece for Hospitality Net in 2016, former Starwood senior vice president of technology solutions, Israel del Rio, expressed concerns that Marriott is forcing Starwood properties to abandon their newer mainframe tech platform, Valhalla, for Marriott’s older one.

Whatever decisions Marriott ultimately arrives at regarding its technology platforms for reservations and for loyalty, it’s clear they will have an incredibly significant impact.
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