The hospitality giant may feel unfairly punished by the fine – because the company itself was not responsible for the breach – but has said it does not intend to appeal the decision.

A cyber-attack on Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide in 2014 is estimated by Marriott to have left the records of 339m worldwide guests vulnerable. Marriott acquired Starwood two years after the breach. The attack remained undetected until September 2018 and was reported in November 2018.

The true number of guests affected is unclear because some guests may have had multiple records. 7m of the records related to people in the UK.

“Personal data is precious and businesses have to look after it. Millions of people’s data was affected by Marriott’s failure; thousands contacted a helpline and others may have had to take action to protect their personal data because the company they trusted it with had not,” said Elizabeth Denham, Information Commissioner.

“When a business fails to look after customers’ data, the impact is not just a possible fine, what matters most is the public whose data they had a duty to protect.”

Marriott said it regrets the incident but makes no admission of liability. It also stated that it continues to be committed to the privacy and security of its guests’ information and has reassured guests that Starwood’s network is no longer in use.

The ICO has acknowledged the work that Marriott has done to mitigate the risk of damage suffered by its customers and the measures it has put in place to improve security.

The fine comes just two weeks after the ICO hit British Airways with a £20m fine for a failure to protect the personal and financial details of more than 400,000 customers.

“Within just two weeks, the ICO has now issued a fine of £20m to British Airways and £18.4m to Marriott. These are the two highest confirmed fines in the history of the ICO in response to significant data security failures by both organisations,” said Chris Combemale, CEO of the Data & Marketing Association. “Given the dramatic fall in revenue that the travel and leisure sector has experienced during the coronavirus pandemic, these fines send a very powerful message to organisations that they must invest in keeping their customers’ data secure. Otherwise they will face penalties that could prove far more costly to the business.”

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“Marriott International is constantly looking for ways to innovate and bring value to travellers and Marriott Bonvoy members as part of our partnership strategy,” said Rajeev Menon, President, Asia Pacific (excluding China) at Marriott International. “Our collaboration with Grab is one way we are designing a more seamless travel experience by leveraging the expertise of a super app in the region.”

Starting from next month, GrabFood will begin to feature around 600 restaurants and bars from Marriott’s portfolio across Southeast Asia.

This will be followed in the first quarter of 2021 with the launch of a pilot in Singapore that will enable people to make payments via GrabPay at participating Marriott hotels. And restaurants and bars that already accept GrabPay will soon be able to notify guests in the vicinity of participating hotels about promotions and events through ‘Merchant Discover’.

Marriott will also work with Grab on marketing campaigns that make use of GrabAds’ audience data. And, finally, the pair will link their respective loyalty programmes, expanding the benefits on offer to Marriott Bonvoy and GrabRewards members.

“We are excited to partner with a world-renowned hospitality group like Marriott International that is at the forefront of delivering customer-first hospitality experiences,” said Russell Cohen, Group Managing Director – Operations at Grab. “The breadth of our collaboration reflects our value as a platform of choice in supporting global brands on their digitalisation journey in the new normal, and in particular represents a milestone for our fast-growing GrabAds business.”

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Marriott International

Research shows that some of the biggest drivers of people booking a holiday is the idea of ‘escaping something’. M1M used this insight to tap into key ‘escape’ moments including commuting and bad weather to drive the campaign. These escape moments are the centre of the plan, which is running across OOH, radio, print, social media and digital.

As part of the OOH element, from 27 January, Marriott is taking over Oxford Circus tube station, using all five tunnels in the underground and using scents to match the key destinations being profiled. For example, the advertising that shows Greece will have a scent of coconut, Dubai will smell of oud, while the image of Spain will give off the scent of sweet oranges.

The exotic smelling ads will also appear in print magazines. Audio, display and social ads will focus on connecting with consumers during the key escape moments using geo-targeting software in proximity to the OOH sites. This will be paired with dynamic creative to deliver relevant messages based on time of day and weather conditions. So when it’s cold and raining outside, the creative message will reflect this and suggest somewhere warm for the consumer to fly to.

“This campaign is the perfect opportunity for Marriott to reach potential travel bookers while they’re on their daily commute,” said Christina Purnell, senior director, performance marketing – Europe at Marriott International. “Research shows that ‘needing to escape from something in your life’ is one of the biggest triggers for people booking travel and holidays. January and February are the times when the post-Christmas and January blues are the strongest and we believe that the sensory experiences will trigger that desire for a holiday.”

The campaign will run in the UK, France and Germany across all media channels for the next six weeks. M1M is responsible for developing the overall strategy, with PSI handling the planning and buying for OOH, along with creative agency Radical Path who designed the assets for print, social, digital and OOH. Publicis Media agency, Digitas UK, produced the audio creative, in partnership with A Million Ads, to deliver a dynamic element to personalise to weather, time of day and various different traveller profiles.

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To power this new deployment, Amazon has developed Alexa for Hospitality, a new variant on its digital assistant software designed specifically to be installed in hotels, vacation rentals and other hospitality locations.

“Marriott has a long track record of innovating for our guests, and were thrilled to be among the first to offer Alexa for Hospitality,” said Jennifer Hsieh, vice president for customer experience innovation at Marriott International. “So many of our guests use voice technology in their home, and we want to extend that convenience to their travel experience.”

Alexa for Hospitality enables users to ask for hotel information, contact the hotel to request guest services, play music in their room and more. It can be configured to control and adjust in-room devices like lights, thermostats, blinds and TVs, as well as accessing the usual selection of Alexa skills.

Guests will also have the ability to temporarily log in to their own Amazon account, providing them with access to their own personal music streaming services including Amazon Music, Spotify and Pandora. Alexa for Hospitality then automatically logs them out when they check out from the room.

“Customers tell us they love how easy it is to get information, enjoy entertainment, and control connected devices by simply asking Alexa, and we want to offer those experiences everywhere customers want them,” said Daniel Rausch, vice president at Amazon. “Alexa for Hospitality makes your hotel stay a little more like being at home and gives hospitality providers new ways to create memorable stays for their guests.”

For hospitality operators, the software is built to work with existing hotel technologies, with firms like DigiValet, Intelity, Nuvola and Volara having built skills that connect with their own software. When guests make requests, they are routed to the appropriate hotel property management systems, reducing or eliminating the need to retrofit or upgrade existing software.

Marriott has reportedly been in the process of trialling various digital assistant technologies in its rooms, including Apples Siri, but the deal with Amazon suggests that the global brand has made a firm decision. Alexa for Hospitality will be deployed in a small number of locations initially, including Charlotte Mariott City Centre and Marriott Irvine Spectrum, and Marriott will be evaluating guest feedback and adoption to inform how it expands both the deployment and the features offered through Alexa.

The post Amazon’s Alexa becomes a digital butler at Marriott hotels appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

The service, to be trialled for a six-month pilot period, integrates the latest technology with human touch to provide previews of function spaces that enhance the booking process for meeting planners. Event managers will be enable to use real-time mobile technology to conduct interactive virtual tours using a one-way live video stream and two-way audio channel.

Pauline Bronkhorst, Head of the ECN, said: “We’re really pleased with the progress we have made with the European Convention Network since its launch earlier this year, and are thrilled to be working exclusively with GoInStore to continue to strengthen our offering.

“Many of our customers plan large annual or bi-annual events in different cities, and are unable to carry-out site visits in person – our virtual tours offer the perfect solution and planners can continue to enjoy personalised interaction combined with the benefits of state-of-the-art technology to make well-informed decisions on their venue choices.”

Marriott International launched the ECN in February to allow regular meeting planners to engage with one dedicated contact person to organise meeting and events at 14 hand-selected European properties across brands.

GoInStore, founded in 2014, creates a first-person live video ‘through the eyes’ of a sales person, using wearable headware, and provides the customer with a new way to shop online.

“Having previously focused on the retail space, we’re excited to partner with Marriott International in Europe to apply our pioneering technology to a new sector,” said André Hordagoda, GoInStore’s co-founder.

The post Marriott Teams up with GoInStore for Virtual Tours appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

However, mobile advertising has increasingly become a delicate balancing act. Much of programmatic relies on older ad formats that audiences have trained themselves to ignore, but using more intrusive methods like pop-ups and interstitials can feel disruptive or overbearing, driving yet more consumers to ad blocking.

To that end, mobile video ad tech firm Celtra recently partnered with the IAB, engagement platform PadSquad and ad agency Millward Brown Digital to apply its inter-scroller format in a programmatic landscape, taking advantage of mobile native features while also offering the scale that brands need.

A native, in-stream video format, the inter-scroller was designed with the IABs LEAN ad principles in mind. The file size is smaller than a comparable expandable banner format, it can be served encrypted, and is ad-choices supported. In addition, as an in-feed unit, the ad never blocks content for users, who have full control over it through the scrolling mechanic.

“We were looking for a good compromise between a full canvas format, that gives you the ability to have really great storytelling, but at the same time, a format thats not too intrusive, thats still user-friendly,” said Matevz Klanjsek, chief product officer and co-founder of Celtra. “We like to call it friendly interstitial – it does have the visibility and impact, and the storytelling capabilities, of interstitial, but at the same time its not as annoying, not as intrusive, and its native.”

While the inter-scroller format has been in use by Celtra for around a year, a recent campaign with SpringHill Suites by Marriott was the first to leverage the ad format using programmatic, marking a shift that will enable it to be deployed at much greater scale than before.

“When you think about programmatic media buying, its designed to buy standard formats – interstitials, banners, perhaps expandable banners – the standard IAB formats,” said Klanjsek. “Whenever you launch a new format that has a slightly different experience, programmatic platforms have problems buying that kind of format. There are both technological problems, because these things are done slightly differently, as well as business or semantic problems, because they dont know how to qualify these formats.

“This has been the case with inter-scroller as well. When it was first launched, it was a premium buy format, sold using standard buying through premium publishers. Then when you want to scale it, you have to make it viable programmatically, which means making it available through the exchanges, DSPs have to know what they are buying, publishers and SSPs have to know what theyre selling – its a challenge for every single format thats not a standard format.”

The Marriott campaign offered consumers an engaging video tour of SpringHill Suites hotel facilities and rooms, with a multi-video element enabling the audience to engage with additional content directly within the ad format.

According to Klanjsek, even Celtra were surprised at how successful the ad format was at persuading consumers to engage with multiple videos, averaging over two videos watched per engagement.

“When we analysed the results, we realised that users liked it,” said Klanjsek. “In terms of how they behaved, how they consumed that ad, it proves that the user experience is friendly. You can have fantastic performance with forced engagement, the best example is pre-roll you cant skip, where performance will be great, but you know that users probably havent enjoyed having that experience forced on them.

“In this case, nothing was forced and users actually initiated all the consumption of the content. That was great to see, and showed that great user experience really does work, and encourages people to engage with and enjoy the ad.”

Overall, the campaign garnered ad engagement rates nearly three times higher than Celtras benchmark for hospitality and travel marketers, and five times higher than Celtras industry-wide benchmarks for Q1 2016. According to Celtra, thats positive news, and a sign that the industry is ready to start embracing premium formats traded in a programmatic way.

“This is a milestone, because what you want is to build advertising experiences that do offer fantastic user experiences for end users, that offer opportunities for brands to have great storytelling, but if youre not able to scale that, then you have a problem and the industry has a problem. We managed to solve that problem and scale this format.

“We are seeing a lot of publishers saying that they are abandoning standard formats altogether, because theyre just not working anymore; theyre being blocked, and they just cant monetise through them anymore. They want something that is more mobile native. On the advertiser side, as well, brands are also aware that standard display is not working and their need to move on.

As programmatic video on mobile begins to mature, marketers, brands and publishers need to remember the lessons learned from the past and embrace formats that offer audiences a choice in how they consume advertising, placing the controls in their hands. As Celtras work with Marriot shows, the results can be favourable for everyone involved.

Want to learn more about programmatic buying, and discuss with experts how it can benefit you? Book a place at our Mobile Marketing Programmatic Summit, taking place this September. Click here for more details.

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Offered as part of the Marriott Rewards app, Mobile Requests enables guests to message hotel staff throughout their stay.T he most common requests are available through a drop-down menu, with an open chat option for more specific questions, supporting five languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, French and German).

Having originally launched at 46 Marriott hotels in May 2015, the service will now be extended to JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Autograph Collection, Renaissance Hotels and Marriott Executive Apartments.

“We know nearly a quarter of our guests ask a question or make a request to hotel staff during their stay,” said George Corbin, SVP of digital at Marriott International. “With Mobile Requests, guests can communicate immediately with their hotel right from their smartphones wherever they are before, during and after their stay.”

Marriott is also piloting a mobile keyless entry service at select hotels, seemingly in connection with its $12.2bn (£8bn) acquisition of Starwood Hotels earlier this week, which started offering mobile room keys in its hotels late last year.

The post Marriott Extends Mobile Requests Chat to Five Brands appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Marriott has partnered with Samsung to launch a VR (Virtual Reality) customer trial in its hotels.

Dubbed VRoom Service, the program make Samsung Gear VR headsets available on 24-hour loan for visitors to the two participating hotels, in New York and London. They can be ordered by calling a dedicated room service extension from the room, or using Marriotts Mobile Request app.

As well as the usual VR content, visitors will have access to Marriotts newly-launched VR Postcards. Developed with Framestore’s Virtual Reality Studio, these are 360° videos following a traveler in one of three locations: the streets of Beijing, the Andes Mountains in Chile, and an ice cream shop in Rwanda.

The Postcards will also be available to the general public via Samsung Milks VR premium video service.

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The film, Two Bellmen, will launch on 10 March with a gala screening at the JW Marriott Los Angeles, where portions of the short were filmed, with a simultaneous release across other channels.

The film is a collaboration between Marriotts Content Studio and artistic collective Substance Over Hype, which specialises in combining dance, parkour, martial arts and music in its performances. The film aims to use narrative storytelling and entertainment to elevate Marriotts portfolio of brands, beginning with the companys flagship JW Marriott brand, with a focus on young travellers who are engaged with social media and digital culture.

“Two Bellmen is ideally suited to build an emotion relationship between our consumers and the JW Marriott brand,” said David Beebe, vice president of creative and content marketing at Marriott International. “With its brilliant cast and story, and the hotel playing a character, the film entertains consumers, draws them in visually, promises terrific, nonstop action and fun, and delivers content to develop community to drive commerce.”

“Marriott helped fulfill our desire to build on a comedic hotel bellman routine wed developed a while back,” said Daniel Cabrera, director of the film. “The JW Marriott Los Angeles LA Live provided us both a context and setting for that story. We create a role for the hotel that showcased all it beauty and amenities and combined it with all the stuff we do with dance, stunts and comedy. From there, it just flowed.”

The post Marriott Short Film set for Release Across Mobile and Digital Platforms appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched an investigation into the chains practices in March 2013 following a complaint alleging that staff at the Gaylord Opryland hotel in Nashville, Tennessee were using signal jammers within the hotels convention centre to prevent visitors establishing mobile wi-fi hotspots.

Marriott denies any wrongdoing on its part, claiming that its in its best interest to ensure that guests use the wi-fi services it provides, and that “rogue wireless hotspots” can be used to undermine its own service and launch cyberattacks.

“Like many other institutions and companies in a wide variety of industries, including hospitals and universities, the Gaylord Opryland protected its wi-fi network by using FCC-authorised equipment provided by well-known, reputable manufacturers,” said a Marriott International representative in a statement. “We believe that the Gaylord Oprylands actions were lawful. We will continue to encourage the FCC to pursue a rulemaking in order to eliminate the ongoing confusion resulting from todays action and to assess the merits of its underlying policy.”

According to the FCC investigation, once the Gaylord Opryland staff ensured there were no other wi-fi hotspots to compete with its own, it proceeded to charge guests between $250 and $1,000 per device to connect to the hotels wi-fi network.

“Consumers who purchase cellular data plans should be able to use them without fear that their personal internet connection will be blocked by their hotel or conference centre,” said Travis LeBlanc, enforcement bureau chief for the FCC. “It is unacceptable for any hotel to intentionally disable personal hotspots while also charging consumers and small businesses high fees to use the hotels own wi-fi network. This practice puts consumers in the untenable position of either paying twice for the same service or forgoing Internet access altogether.”

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