Marriott’s other loyalty currency: trust

Best Customer Service — Hotels, Americas · Marriott Bonvoy

Marriott Bonvoy wins Best Customer Service in the Americas for 2023.

For a company operating thousands of hotels under dozens of brands, that’s an interesting achievement.

Hotel customer service is fundamentally messy.

The loyalty program promises something.

The hotel delivers it.

Except sometimes the hotel is owned by somebody else, managed by somebody else and staffed by somebody who has never met the person who wrote the elite-benefit terms.

Yet the member doesn’t care about the org chart.

Nor should they.

They see Marriott on the building and Bonvoy on the reservation.

This award suggests enough members felt the machine worked.

Not perfectly.

No hotel system does.

But well enough to earn the Freddie.

For all the industry’s fascination with points valuations, customer service may remain the loyalty currency members remember longest.