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Interview with Brian King, Courtyard by Marriott
I'll admit I wasn't looking forward to staying at the Courtyard Marriott recently. It's located at the Phoenix airport, and "airport hotel" brings to mind images of dusty rooms, stale food, and furnishings dating from the 1970s.
But when I walked into the hotel to check in, I was surprised to find a clean, spacious, elegant lobby. An agent stood at a podium just inside, ready to check me in, not far from a circular bar serving coffee and drinks. Attractive seating areas, with lamps and power plugs, were being used by fellow travelers working on various digital devices. These people actually appeared to enjoy sitting in the lobby of an airport hotel. What in the world was going on?
As any customer experience practitioner will tell you, these things don't happen by mistake, and they rarely happen due to a standard corporate "refresh." Something this good requires a dedicated effort, from top leadership, to listen to customers and improve things on their behalf.
So I found the person in charge: Brian King, VP & global brand manager, Courtyard by Marriott. In a wide-ranging phone call, we covered the case study of the Courtyard turnaround.
Q: How did this redesign project get started?
A: We started by determining our target customer segment, which is FBT - frequent business travelers. They make up less than 5% of the US population, so it's a small consumer set, yet they're the most profitable of all travelers, since they travel the most, travel midweek, and pay the highest rates. We chased that consumer very aggressively.
On top of that, we believed that if we designed to meet the physical and emotional needs of the FBT, the majority of those needs would also be fulfilled if someone came on a weekend - they'd still have an amazing experience.
We started with a segmentation report that looked at our consumer from demographic and psychographic perspectives, then we ran direct research, talking to customers about what they like and dislike about Courtyard, and then ran ethnographic research.
Q: So now you understand who you're designing for and generally what they like and don't like. What came next?
A: Something we call the "brand blueprint," a set of insights based on what we learned from our segmentation, interviews, and ethnography. For example, we found that the laptop is the center of the business traveler's life. That helped determined how the lobby design would support that need of the traveler.
In our case, that means furniture that has power outlets everywhere. In the old days you'd walk into a hotel lobby and see granite coffee tables. The business traveler would try to pull the coffee table over to where they were sitting, then find a plug somewhere. It didn't work. Now all our couches have task lamps that move, with plugs built in. There are communal tables with plugs built in. We used the laptop as a filter for both form and function in the overall design.
Q: Any other insights in the brand blueprint?
A: We found that choice and control are huge with this customer. If they don't have control, they'll seek other brands. So, for one thing, our breakfast offering changed. Courtyard for 25 years had the standard buffet along the lobby wall, and didn't give customers choice and control. Even if I just wanted coffee and a bagel so I could "hit the road," I'd have to sit there, wait for a server and eat what was on the buffet. These insights drove how the space should support a new experience for our customers. Even our new service strategy was derived
out of our brand blueprint.
Q: I like how the brand blueprint brings out high-level learnings drawn from the research. It sounds essentially the same as the "customer experience strategy" that I write about and my team consults on. What came next?
A: Well, everything unrolled from there. We took our knowledge and created, in a warehouse in San Francisco, an entire lobby made out of white foam core. We built it to scale. Then we brought in consumers to get feedback on the overall experience of the space. We didn't want feedback on color choices, like blue versus red. Instead we wanted feedback on using welcome pedestals, rather than a clunky front desk. Our associates circle around the space rather than standing in one place, and we wanted customer feedback on that. And the foam core allowed for rapid prototyping. After we got user feedback, we could rip it apart and build it again to get the concept right.
Q: And what came after the prototyping phase?
A: We went into architectural renderings and drawings, and then we built out the new lobby in an actual hotel. This was in Fair Oaks, Virginia, our first live lobby executing the concepts in a working environment. We then completed more consumer research using intercepts and focus groups. More refinements were made for the final rollout.
Q: And then you started rolling out the design?
A: Yes. We've opened our 58th lobby, and we'll have over a hundred by the end of 2009, and we hope to be done by the end of 2011.
Q: Now the all-important question. What results have you measured from the new design?
A: It's been spectacular. We've seen a dramatic change in our market share, almost 10%, a 28% increase in guest satisfaction from the new lobby, and average food profit has increased 113%. Another nice result, our brand positioning is "refreshing business," in our ongoing guest satisfaction survey - rarely you see consumers use words from your positioning statement - but, we get surveys stating "this lobby is so refreshing," which to me means we've hit it out of the ballpark.
Mark, a good interview and article, and it is refreshing to hear of an organization that listens, listens, and listens some more. It's just as Kevin Costner said, "If you build it, they will come". And then of course, after they come, the organization has the opportunity to turn a profit. I will certainly endeavor stay in a Courtyard Marriot on my next trip.
Thanks for the encouraging perspective, Mark!
I'll keep Courtyard Marriott in mind for my next trip, but as an FBT the thing I value most is free Internet access in my room. Sometimes there are good reasons to sit in the lobby, but I don't want to *have* to sit in the lobby to get free Internet access. Nor do I want to have to have to do the extra paperwork I must do when an additional charge is levied to use the Internet in my room.
Courtyard is for sure ahead of their competitors! The new Lobbies are great and newly built guest rooms too. Keep going
I know the hotel you are talking about. It's pretty cool the difference between the actual airport, and the hotel itself... looks like a different world in there. Cool that you caught up with the guy responsible, thanks for sharing.
What a great opportunity for an interview! I do like the newer Courtyard hotels and adapting for technology is definitely a wonderful thing to do. My only small simple suggestion would be softer blankets, lol. That to me is more important than accessing the wifi :)
I’ve stayed at several of these too and now I ALWAYS look for these refreshed courtyards when I travel. Even when I stay at other brands I find myself looking outside the hotel to find decent coffee and to eat but the innovative food choices, technology and lobby experience at Courtyard are elements that just seem to coalesce - I get exactly what I want regardless of my purpose for travelling. This was a totally synergistic experience and I really don’t see the competition having figured out how to pull it all off yet.