Marketers constantly strive to build meaningful moments and connect with their most loyal consumers, often through traditional surveys and expensive focus groups. It’s a tired method of gathering insights that are not always relevant, nor at the heart of what consumers really feel. With more marketers than ever before vying for consumers’ attention and dollars, especially within travel, the competition amongst companies is fierce. Marriott decided on a different approach.

For the first time ever, Marriott tapped into the physical, global footprint of its properties to extrapolate macro and micro trends by surfacing what hotel guests post publicly on social media during their stay. Marriott’s social media command center “M Live” utilized proprietary geo-fencing technology to extract authentic social insights and real-time metrics from guests’ social shares

With a direct line of sight into guests’ real-time social behavior, Marriott was in an opportune position to quickly leverage those insights to better engage with guests and effectively deliver on-property experiences that they really craved.

Using its proprietary geo-fencing technology, M Live, in partnership with trend and analytics experts Culture CO-OP, honed in on specific social conversations happening at Marriott properties. Spanning four months, the social media command center waded through a staggering 18 million publicly available geo-tagged Instagram and Twitter posts, made by 7 million different guests, emanating from all 6,700 hotels globally.

Averaging 104 posts every minute, the M Live team and its network, extrapolated multiple insights. One theme, in particular, emerged based on the following phrases:

- “Blind taste” increased 67% YOY

- “Tasting Menu” increased 48% YOY

- “Chef’s Choice” increased 33% YOY

Food culture has never been bigger and often inspires destination selection. The trending phrases indicated that guests wanted to be surprised when ordering a meal and by sharing that preference on social media, Marriott was armed with the insight to provide a unique culinary experience.

Marriott Hotels and Marriott’s Food + Beverage teams, harnessed the power of M Live’s real-time social media insights to escape the petri dish of market research and deliver a custom culinary program that its customers wanted while creating awareness and changing perception.

Based on the real-time insight that guests wanted to be surprised when ordering a meal and favor entrusting the chef over choosing menu items themselves, M Live, Marriott Hotels, and F+B created “Chef’s Cut,” a series of mystery menu items curated by Marriott Hotels’ top executive chefs. Guests dining at six Marriott Hotels in Bangkok, Istanbul, Cape Town, Grand Cayman, Charlotte, and Irvine were offered the choice to place their trust in the chefs, who tapped their passion for food and served up dishes that wowed the table.

Additionally, Marriott’s travel experiences site, Marriott Bonvoy Moments, launched 15 dining packages that offered a chance to redeem points for a Chef’s Cut dinner package. Those packages were curated by Partner Chefs, with locations in San Francisco, Beijing, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

At the onset, Marriott set out to create a guest experience that could be replicated across the globe to test if social media data was truly indicative of a hotel guest’s interests and if that could translate into an actual purchase.

By those goals, Chef’s Cut was a breakthrough success. On average, 22% of the meals sold during the proof of concept were Chef’s Cut meals. Additionally, Marriott sold all 15 Chef’s Cut packages and redeemed 967,500 loyalty points across 102 dinner bids.

More importantly, Marriott proved the incredible value of moving away from traditional marketing tactics like focus groups and trend reports in favor of cultural insights driven from real-time social data. Not only did Marriott create an unforgettable on-property dining experience that guests continue to rave about, but also a strategy that has the power to shape how Marriott approaches programming going forward.