The future of hotel technology

Marriott’s Joanne Liu on serving guests and employees at the world’s largest hotel chain

Welcome to the next edition of The Future of Hospitality, a six-part series sponsored by OpenTable that uncovers some of the best ideas, best applications, and best practices for building the F&B businesses of tomorrow.

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Marriott has over 10,000 restaurants and bars across 8,700 properties around the world, but that scale doesn't stop Joanne Liu, the company’s vice president of restaurants and bars, from finding tech-driven ways to serve both guests and employees.

While there’s a ton of value in thinking about the end user, the hotel guest — there’s an entirely different group of stakeholders also top of mind for Joanne: Marriott’s employees. Forty percent of the company’s associates work in food and beverage roles, a group Liu says she’s constantly advocating for, “from opening breakfast server to closing bartender.” 

A company like Marriott is multiple orders of magnitude above my usual coverage. Liu, who ran her own independent restaurants before she ran thousands of them for Marriott, laughs after I mention its scale for the third time in ten minutes.

Corporate doesn’t necessarily mean out of touch, but it does mean that decisions have to be planned, thoughtful, and fully considered. Especially when it comes to implementing new tech that changes how things are done. 

Liu’s overall tech strategy is a familiar concept. “It’s figuring out how to use technology to augment human potential and not replace it,” she says. 

We’ve heard that before, of course. But rolling out thoughtful technology that affects tens of thousands of staff members and the people that stay in over a million of Marriott’s rooms hits on a different scale. 

To do it, Liu has to focus on practical considerations, like meeting employees where they are. This takes on new meaning in today’s environment: employment at hotels is still below pre-pandemic levels, about 10 percent below, as of a month ago. New hires may come in with less experience and, Liu says, tech can help. 

“Having two rows of tickets in front of our grill cook is no longer feasible for their own mental health, their ability to do their jobs. Maybe a screen makes more sense for them. It’s less about new technology and more about how we’re using it,” she says. 

Or in the dining room. “Years ago a host wouldn’t want a computer to tell them where to seat someone. Now we have people that want the iPad to tell them exactly where to put them,” she adds. Letting tech decide where and how to seat guests depending on time of day, day of the week, or any number of other inputs lightens the lift. 

The breadth of restaurants at Marriott’s hotels is as impressive as its size. The company works with many big-name chefs, including José Andrés and Michael Mina. Chefs at Marriott restaurants carry over 50 Michelin stars. It also runs a lot of breakfast buffets and coffee shops. The experiences are different, but the hospitality is equally important. 

“We need to recognize when something is utilitarian and an amenity, versus something that is a destination or experience,” Liu says. In some cases, the best hospitality a guest can experience is ordering their coffee and breakfast from a touchscreen while an employee focuses on making really great coffee. 

Here’s more about how Liu considers balancing employee needs and guest satisfaction on a huge scale, and what comes next.

Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Expedite: I think I’m still a little bit wide-eyed on the scale you’re dealing with. When you’re making these types of decisions… how can you even consider thousands of restaurants? 

Joanne Liu, Marriott:  “On a high level, we segment it to ‘select service,’ ‘premium,’ and ‘luxury.’ This helps us manage our labor appropriately and apply technology better. If you’re an airport hotel and your average stay is 16 hours, how quickly can you get someone a burger and a beer and make sure it’s of the right quality, but you probably don’t need too much beyond that. At a luxury hotel, people are probably expecting more of a story and more of an experience. There, you use technology for business intelligence and predictive scheduling and knowledge about your guests. And maybe in some really cool table theater or experiential elements, or going to the next level with something like dynamic pricing.”

Oh, are you using dynamic pricing? 

“We don't in any strategic, ‘this brand all uses it’ kind of way. But it's certainly something we're talking about and exploring.”

How long does it take to implement something across so many locations? 

“I’ve been here less than a year. So ask me in a few years.” 

Fair. It’s like turning a cruise ship, I can appreciate that. But then how do you look at the most up-to-date things — like dynamic pricing, for example — and think, maybe we can add this in two or three years?

“We have to build the business case, and then we have to prove the concept, just like any large corporation. Luckily, we’re Marriott, so companies want to work with us, to try things out with us, to be innovative. As we continue to change and add brands, our use cases evolve, so we need to choose solutions that are flexible and customizable. That’s why we’ve used so many proprietary systems.

“Right now Marriott is completely changing its entire tech stack for the hotels; it’s a five- to seven-year journey. What we’re trying to do now is use our proprietary system as a foundation for using technology that’s already out there and customizing portions of it to our needs.”

I write about restaurants, which are traditionally slow adopters of technology. Is it the same in hotels? Have you had to do a lot of education around what it is and why it’s important?

“Every day we’re trying to advocate for our people and be able to show people that working with Marriott is about being something larger than one restaurant, one property, one market, one brand. But when it comes to someone who's showing up at work, eight hours a day, five days a week, that one restaurant, one property, one market, one brand might be all they see. In the end, our business is about shaking someone's hand, smiling at someone, saying, ‘good morning,’ saying, ‘good evening.’ If it doesn't feel like the technology that we're going to put in is giving employees more time and space to look guests in the eye and say, ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening,’ then we may not get the buy-in to actually make it happen. Technology needs to make employees' lives easier so they can deliver on hospitality.

“The advantage is that consumer behavior is changing. For example, using a QR code instead of picking up the phone and calling for room service is probably the method of choice for our guests. We were hesitant to implement that until we were sure that’s what they wanted.”

Data can probably help you understand that too, right? I’m sure you’re sitting on a ton of it. 

“Yes. By looking at our data over the last couple of years, we saw we didn't need to require bars at every single one of our hotels to be open until 1am. That used to be part of our brand standard, to have lobby bars open late, because we wanted to catch people coming back from dinner. Now people are coming back from dinner at 10 o’clock. It’s a perfect example of being able to see our sales data to see trends emerging on how people eat and drink and then apply that to what makes our employees’ lives easier.” 

What’s exciting to you? What’s coming next? 

“Right now I’m thinking about how we can use technology to help our employees — predictively scheduling shifts to make their lives easier. I’m thinking about how robots might fit in. There are functions within food and beverage that are repetitive, even grueling. How can robots help? Think about what populations we might be able to recruit within for breakfast, for example. Who wants to get up really early in the morning and work a four-and-a-half hour shift from 5am to 9:30? An older population that might not be able to manage the physical aspect of the job. 

“Maybe it makes sense to have a server assistant that follows them around. Or robots that can help with repetitive kitchen tasks. But we never want to replace the humans doing the work, we want to make their daily lives easier.”

Thanks to OpenTable for sponsoring this six-part series, which aims to highlight the trends, challenges and opportunities shaping the restaurant industry. Expedite is about embracing and inviting the next big thing and these interviewees have the answers.

Previous editions include: The future of restaurant work with High Street Hospitality founder and co-owner Ellen Yin, The future of attracting diners with Lettuce Entertain You CMO Jennifer Bell, and The future of sustainability, with Alpareno Group’s Mo Alkassar and chef Niven Patel