Marriott's biggest bet isn't hotels

[00:01] sunglasses. >> true. Yeah. >> Um you know, [snorts] I was walking by the JW Marriott here. I mean, it's it's packed. I've seen people in and out of

[00:14] Lions. You have so many brands. That's just one brand in the portfolio. How do >> Well, we've got brand leaders across each sector. We tend to bucket them in three categories: select brands, premium brands, and luxury brands. And And the

[00:31] brand leaders, among their most important responsibilities, is ensuring that each of the brands in the portfolio has a well-articulated distinct positioning. If If your strategy is to have such a broad brand portfolio,

[00:44] comes with it. >> notice those differences? >> For sure. For sure. And I think if we're fair with ourselves, there's still work to be done. Bill Marriott loves to say success is never final. And I think as

[00:56] it relates to positioning the portfolios within the brand, that's work that that is ongoing. >> What brands that you've launched in the past 2 years are on fire, and why have you launched them?

[01:10] >> Uh CitizenM, I think is a great example. Uh it's a brand that we acquired. And uh It's a tech-forward brand. It's got a European design aesthetic. Um modestly

[01:23] sized rooms, but very efficiently designed. So, I think that's on fire. And then in the organic side, I would point to something like Studio was part of our entry into the midscale tier. It's an extended-stay focused

[01:38] midscale brand. And I think in a post-pandemic world, where people are so nomadic, uh the ability to move into a product like that that's efficient, temporary assignment, if they're trying out a new city for a few months, uh

[01:54] for us as well. >> Walking up and down this I guess it's a promenade of events packed and I realize well, I'm I'm getting old. There's so many like young people at this event and how are they booking hotels differently

[02:07] today? >> Well, so maybe on the first one one of the things we're so excited about just last week we launched a beta test of something called Ask Bonvoy which is a plain language search capability within

[02:21] >> Yeah, exactly. >> what they want. They want to search in plain language. We've got 10,000 hotels. We just opened our 10,000th hotel this month. We're in

[02:34] our 10,000th hotel this month. We're in 146 countries and the ability in plain language to search a portfolio that broad I think is what that next gen consumer really wants in travel. What do they expect in the hotel? Really depends

[02:48] on trip purpose but what they always want is warm genuine care. They want reliability. They want the Wi-Fi to work so they can do all their streaming of course. I think food and beverage is

[03:00] increasingly an important attribute and really across all quality tiers. Even if it's a Fairfield Inn and it's a grab and go, they want it to be high quality, they want it to be nutritious all the way up to ultra luxury. Food and

[03:14] beverage in many ways when I started in this business there were certain pockets of the world where the reputation and quality of food and beverage drove room booking decisions. I think that's across quality tiers and across geographies

[03:28] guess my mom and dad they would care about thread counts at the hotel in the reinvent the dining experience at your hotels? You have 10,000 hotels. >> The two words that come to mind to me are local and authentic. You know, I I

[03:44] think there are some core menu items that people want everywhere but if I go to India, I want the richness of those those regional cuisines. And so, hiring local, having local culinary talent, being creative with menu design, those

[03:59] >> into the wellness trend? I And I bring this up because I I stayed at one of ago, and it was a like the facial experience I got a facial. I've never got a My first facial came at your hotel.

[04:13] >> Good. Yeah, I you know, but what's interesting to me, I love that you use the word wellness because I think early people thought sort of combined the idea of wellness and spa. And spa is spa is

[04:26] certainly a part of it, but the wellness and the longevity focus of many of our consumers has grown exponentially. And you may have seen we entered into a joint venture with an Italian company called Lefay, and that'll be a

[04:39] our entry into luxury wellness. They have some amazing resorts. We think we can grow together quite aggressively. And that desire for well-being is something we hear from consumers across every demographic.

[04:53] I'm still calling Airbnb a competitor. They have made a big push or or a desire to be an everything app. You go there in app, you book everything, whether it's the company in that direction? >> Well, I think what we want you you look

[05:08] at the history of loyalty platforms all through the travel vertical on the hotel side and the airline side, and it they were fairly rudimentary. You would enroll, you would stay, you'd earn points for a hotel stay, and ultimately

[05:21] you'd accumulate and redeem those points for hotel stay. And while that facet of Bonvoy is still foundational, we've got much broader aspirations for the platform, and a lot of those aspirations around experiences. So, you think about

[05:36] some of the partnerships we have with the the AMG Petronas Mercedes team in F1, the work we're doing in partnership with Visa for the FIFA World Cup. Bonvoy is increasingly viewed by our nearly 300 million members as a platform

[05:51] once-in-a-lifetime experiences. >> Um we've still have seen tensions in the your latest earnings call. I mean, travel over there is is pressured. Now

[06:03] that things have eased up just a touch, any improvement in your business there? ground it, and we talked about this on the call, the Middle East region, while extraordinarily important, represents about 3% of our global rooms uh supply,

[06:19] uh and about 3% of our global fees. Uh we expect RevPAR will be down in Q2 plus or minus about 50%, but I was just in London with all of our Middle East general managers 2 weeks ago. And in talking to them, this is certainly

[06:33] anecdotal, but their view is as soon as travelers both in the region and internationally have a sense that the the tensions have in fact settled, they expect a very deep recovery. >> I saw I talked to the CEO of Elf Beauty.

[06:48] cosmetics here at Can Lines. They said the glowing consumer has shown, I think, the past few weeks as gas prices have come down. What are you seeing this summer travel season? >> saw it in Q1. Uh the prior few quarters

[07:03] we'd seen flat or even slightly negative RevPAR in the select brand tier, and we were up low single digits in Q1, which was a really encouraging sign. As we look towards the summer, in the US, we had a great Memorial Day weekend. Uh we

[07:18] feel good about forward bookings on 4th of July. And even here in Europe, we see pretty solid bookings of inbound international. So, we expect the summer >> You've negotiated uh really amazing deals in these these co-branded credit

[07:31] to be up what, 35% this year to almost a billion dollars. How are you dispersing that money to hotel owners? I'm sure you saw that journal story. >> Yeah, yeah. I I read it. Listen, the um if your business model is 10,000 hotels

[07:46] of which we own 20, the collaboration and the communication we have with the and the communication we have with the owner community of the the other 9,980 is a top priority. And the the success and the performance of the owner

[08:00] community and the brand are inextricably linked. And so on a proactive basis through advisory councils, through periodic meetings, through account meetings with individual owners and franchisees, that dialogue goes on every

[08:14] day, principally from a proactive perspective, but in this instance in a more reactive perspective, we need and want to see that owner community and their businesses thrive and succeed. And so the dialogue we have is ongoing and I

[08:29] always viewed Marriott as like a family-ish company. >> Yeah, I mean most of these relationships with these owners are multi-decade relationships. Uh all of us have gladly and willingly entered a sector that is

[08:43] by its nature cyclical. And so we work really collaboratively to try to help both sides of that equation navigate the inevitable cycles that we that we >> Good to see you, Anthony. Enjoy. I know you got a lot of cool events here at

[08:56] Cannes Lions. Hopefully hope to attend one of them.