What Marriott Knows About the Needs of Next-Gen Business Travelers

Today, Marriott International has 19 brands under its umbrella. Once it finishes its long-awaited acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, many more are likely to join the company's portfolio. Until then, the hotel giant is working to build a stronger technology platform with which it can push interesting content to potential guests and improve their travel experience once they're on-property. Marriott International's global brand officer Brian King thinks that travelers are looking for more personalized experiences in hotels, whether it involves streaming their own content, exercising in the hotel gym exactly how they like, or exploring local neighborhoods with guidance from their hoteliers. Skift spoke to King at this year's Global Business Travel Association Convention about the challenges of improving technology over a wide portfolio of brands, what the most savvy business travelers want out of their hotel experience, and why content has become crucial to Marriott's efforts to reach consumers. Skift: Marriott has a lot of brands, and stands to gain more when its acquisition of Starwood goes through. How do consumer trends inform how you make decisions about the guest experience at particular brands? King: Customers expect their travel life to be reflective of their residential life.  I think for a long time it’s like, this is how I live at home and this is how I live on the road. These two things shall never be the same. Well, that’s not what customers want. They want as seamless a travel experience as possible. In the past, a hotelier would just look at the minute they check in to the minute they depart. That is all we worried about. Well, now we’