Insights gleaned from the data show that guests share a desire for recognition and a wish for special, personalized treatment. Other analysis reinforced knowledge that guests increasingly turn to the social web to seek immediate problem resolution while others only hope to alleviate safety concerns.

Through their geo-fencing tech, we communicate with guests, instead of at them. Having undergone the Herculean effort of geo-fencing all 6,030 hotels, we could capture the information and then engage in real-time with guests posting about a myriad of things like weddings, birthdays, meetings, vacation or first-time stays. The team identifies and then elevates guest experiences at hotels with “surprise-and-delight” moments. A surprise and delight can be a quick “like” or “comment” on social posts or, more complex, responding with relevant surprises such as sending complimentary bottles of champagne or delivering personally monogrammed towels.

At the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, a couple posted of their engagement on Instagram. We quickly flagged the post, engaged the Gaylord brand and property teams, and collaborated to celebrate the couple while the Marriott Rewards team engaged on Instagram. The guests posted pictures of the bottle of champagne (their delightful surprise) profusely thanking the property for their hospitality.

Data collection begins in the geo-fencing platform and includes native channel metrics from social networks, and guests’ social content feeds. Data is combined with user info and integrated with location, sentiment, and creative elements and then displayed for analysis and interpretation in a simple, visual way through the M Live platform’s proprietary UI which is presented across series of monitors. Geo-fencing data spans almost 20sq.ft. of monitor space.

By implementing their geo-fencing technology, along with various other data gathering tools, the M Live team is able to pinpoint key results for all stakeholders involved. For example, they can track results like reach and impressions, but what’s more interesting is tracking the surprise and delight moments! They calculate how many guests they’ve engaged with have commented or liked back or even followed the brand or property’s social handles after the initial interaction. For example, when the woman staying at the JW Marriott in Mumbai took notice how quick the hotel was able to teach her how to fold towels into lovable animals, she started following not only the property, but also the brand Instagram channel.

100% of the reactions from Marriott’s guests to real-time activations have been positive. 82% of engaged guests make an effort to follow Marriott on social media, to post at them again, or comment mentioning them.

This was exemplified again when M Live identified an influential NFL sportswriter who was enjoying his honeymoon at an Autograph Collection property in Greece. The influencer tweeted his positive feelings for Marriott Rewards and the beauty of the property. M Live immediately contacted the property to provide a surprising and delightful moment for the guest to entice additional social sharing, garnering an additional 60,000 potential earned impressions.

The M Live platform has created over 43,000 total engagements with our guests on Instagram, Twitter and Weibo. This number includes where M Live and the guests exchanged more than 11,800 comments plus the 1,355 guests who followed Brands after commenting, and also includes where M Live content producers and guests engaged with posts over 27,000 times. In addition, guests approved more than 200 UGC requests.

With constant, consistent interaction, data-backed knowledge, and real-time participation in conversations with consumers, Marriott has inspired the loyalty and engagement of next generation travelers.

Consumer attention comes at a premium. Brands compete for it with impersonal, uninspired campaigns. Cutting through the clutter, Marriott created the M Live platform, a real-time marketing command center. Partnering with Silicon Valley tech start-up, “HYP3R,” we developed a location-based social technology across all 30 of Marriott’s brands, worldwide - undergoing the monumental task of geo-fencing all 6,030 hotels, in 120 countries, on 6 continents. It enabled us to take publicly available, geo-tagged posts on Instagram, Twitter, and Weibo then filter the collected content into a proprietary UI. Marriott was the first fortune 500 company to accomplish such an endeavor.

Collected through our geo-fencing technology, the M Live platform data is displayed in a highly-visual, accessible way through a series of touch screens within the real-time marketing command center. M Live digital content producers are able to constantly check for real-time trending moments that the Marriott portfolio or its particular brands could leverage to create meaningful, shareable content for consumers. Through the platform, M Live has made more than 3,000 UGC requests with more than 11,000 comments on guests posts with a total of more than 43,000 engagements

We pinpoint actionable guest posts at individual properties, delivering surprising and delightful moments. When a guest was staying at the JW Marriott Mumbai and posted to her Instagram channel praising the charmingly-folded towel animals the cleaning staff left behind, expressing the interest in learning how to create them herself. M Live took notice. The team reached out the the JW Brand team and let the property know of the guest who then quickly responded on the social post commenting how they’ll set up a special training just for her. This resulted in the guest commenting several more times and posting a new picture with her own towel animals.

There was an untapped aspect of hospitality created by social media: leveraging data collected via location-based social media posts, versus hashtags and copy, to surprise-and-delight guests through personalized communication, service, and creative acts of generosity.

To truly access the opportunity hidden in publicly-available social data, Marriott International developed the M Live platform to create a method to collect, filter, and engage with guests at scale through surprise and delight moments. The team partnered with Silicon Valley tech start-up, “HYP3R,” to create and implement a location-based social technology across all 30 of Marriott’s brands, worldwide.

Marriott would embark on an objective to create surprising, delightful moments which would last forever in their guests’ memories. To do it, we developed a proprietary technology to engage guests directly on the platforms they use with pin-pointed accuracy.