Interview: Marriott's Travel Brilliantly Campaign Looks to the Wisdom of the Crowds

There’s a different energy these days internally at Marriott International, which has always been considered the standard bearer for the corporate hotel brand rooted in conservative tradition. The sweeping attitude change focuses on innovation and the modern traveler, and it's coming right from the top. Executive Chairman Bill Marriott, Jr. and CEO Arne Sorenson have been appearing regularly on television talking about the new direction at Marriott, and especially how they're adapting to Millennial travel trends, like this CNN program with correspondent Richard Quest. Both executives are also active online. Mr. Marriott is probably the only major hotel group chairman who blogs on a regular basis, and Sorenson has over 80,000 followers on LinkedIn. On the consumer-facing side, the first glimpse that changes at the brand were afoot began last March when Marriott announced its cryptic-sounding ”Underground” Innovation Lab at its Bethesda, Maryland HQ. This is standard operating procedure for many large hotel groups who have testing facilities to develop new products and design concepts, where they can then invite owners and franchisors to come by and kick the tires. Adding the “Underground” part helped create a bit of mystique. One Marriott insider told us people were imagining a kind of MI6 lab where serious men in white lab coats were devising crazy experiments to build a better loo. Some of the first Marriott innovations to spring from the lab were mobile check-in functionality and a suite of branded meeting apps for the different, meetings-appropriate flags. They followed that up this year with mobile check-out and the Pinterest-style MeetingsImagined.com platform. Last summer, the flagship Marriott Hotels brand launched TravelBrilliantly.com, which surprised a lot of people for two reasons. One, it was the first time a major promotional campaign for an international hotel brand focused on crowdsourcing and co-creation of this scale, above and beyond just using social media. Two, that international hotel brand was