Case Analysis Of Marriott

advantage. However, soon after, other major competitors such as Hilton and even Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) such as Priceline.com (Xotels, 2018), began developing their own systems that were similar in nature. Additionally, competitors such Starwood hotels began developing member loyalty programs that resulted in far higher guest engagement, (5% of guests amassed to roughly 20% of the company’s revenue). Nonetheless, Marriott is very intuitive when it comes to business intelligence, but its competitive advantage with analytics is quickly eroding and it needs to start focusing on other aspects of the business to remain the industry leader.
2. Describe your company’s position within the pillars of analytics competition.
The book “Competing on Analytics” by Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris, describes the four pillars of analytical competition: distinctive capability, enterprise-wide analytics, senior management commitment and large-scale ambition (Davenport & Harris, 2007, pp. 23-36).
a. Distinctive Capability: As previously discussed, Marriott used to be analytically competitive when it comes to revenue management. However, Marriott remains competitive when it comes to the Marriott Rewards program, and recently, the proprietary Starwood Preferred Guest™ program acquired
As previously mentioned, the properties often have independent financial systems that have either been not been updated from previous acquisition, or at one point in time, Marriott had offered an array of different options for systems that franchisees could choose from. Over time, this has made it extremely difficult to consolidate the entire hotel portfolio’s financial performance. Since a sizable portion of Marriott’s revenue is from franchise fees based on a percentage of revenue, forecasting internal operating costs at the corporate level is often mismatched with realized