Originally Posted by
Adelphos
I’ve met a lot of the CEOs involved here, including Arne, Capuano, Frits van Paaschen, Nassetta, Hoplamazian, etc. Never met Bill Marriott. But in terms of CEOs, industry people universally said Arne is the best in terms of vision and industry relations, followed closely by Nassetta. Frits van Paaschen was disliked in the industry and by shareholders. You can talk about high spending elites all you want but Starwood lagged Marriott and Hilton in delivering paying guests to US hotels. Hoplamazian seems fine but the Pritzkers run Hyatt.
I thought Stephanie Linnartz should have been elevated to CEO over Capuano (I said so in this forum after Arne’s death), she would have been unlikely to say something like this in an interview no matter how true it is. Nevertheless Capuano is a serious developer and will make owners happy and grow the company.
I’m really glad to read this. I have listened to pretty much every Arne Sorenson interview on YouTube. Somehow his talks have become my go-to workout noise whenever I don’t feel like listening to audiobooks. He was my favorite out of all the big hotel executives (though I know he gets a lot of hate on this board). RIP.
But if we are being fair, Arne Sorenson basically said this exact thing (scale over benefits for loyalty) many times as the SPG merger happened. From the start, he always talked about leveraging scale and using a diversity of options to be the ultimate value proposition for guests. Perhaps he said it in a less inflammatory way but… IMO the intention was the same. I think Bonvoy would continue to have gotten worse, even with Arne.
IMO the fact that Starwood’s model clearly did not work is all the validation needed for Marriott to continue to gut SPG. Why pay for these benefits if they’re not actually attracting guests in tangible numbers?
Originally Posted by
Dreamwalker
IMO you just said loyalty to guests in a different way. You want my loyalty to use your website and to feed your customer the franchisee. That requires loyalty from me the guest to accomplish that.
I think your just talking around loyalty for guest. Do I believe we are the reason for these programs no, but our spend is needed to fund whatever the reason is. Ie could be your points or could be to keep up with the Jones. Ie Hilton or whomever.
I understand SPG struggled. I wonder why if Hyatt is asset heavy too. To my knowledge it doesn't franchisee out. Did IHG start that trend? I feel like Hilton and Marriott were asset heavy when there namesakes still owned the primarily. I guess the Marriott's still do?? I can't remember.
You don’t need to be loyal to Marriott. You need to a) book with Marriott directly and b) consider Marriott as a credible option when choosing hotels. I don’t think Marriott thinks it’s worth being the indisputable best option for people like us. People fundamentally misunderstand loyalty programs.
Also, I really don’t understand where you’re coming from with the Hyatt asset heavy comment lol. Hyatt owns more hotels than many of its competitors but it’s been pretty clear they have shifted their focus away from O&L to F&M.
The entire industry (including Hyatt) shifted to asset light. Starwood sold itself because it couldn’t shed its assets quickly enough. Hyatt didn’t because it could.
https://skift.com/2019/03/06/hyatt-d...hter-approach/