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Choice created the software in 2003 as an inexpensive solution for franchisees of its economy brands.

The PMS had a lot of growing pains at first, but eventually it became more and more cloud enabled and was adopted across the company.

“A lot of companies had outsourced their IT and now they’re bringing it back in house because they can do almost everything they need on the cloud or through software as a service.

Marriott International today announced the formation of an internal content studio through which it will develop, produce and distribute a slate of entertainment projects that will include web series, short films, TV shows, music events and movies. The goal for the Bethesda, Maryland-based company is to appeal to the “next-generation traveler” — made up mostly of millennials — with story driven content marketing.

With 18 brands, Marriott is the world’s largest hotel company with over 4,000 hotels in 78 countries. Through its individual properties, in-room TVs, websites, mobile platforms and reward program, Marriott certainly has the network through which it can distribute entertainment.

To promote the projects, Marriott will use its website; its mobile app; various social media channels; in-room TV network; and Marriott Rewards, a loyalty membership program that has over 45 million subscribers.

What makes such velvet-glove treatment possible is Marriott International Inc.'s (MAR) use of customer management software from Siebel Systems Inc. (SEBL) The hotel chain, based in Bethesda, Md., is counting on such technology to gain an edge with guests, event planners, and hotel owners.

The software lets Marriott pull together information about its customers from different departments, so that its reps can anticipate and respond more quickly to their needs.

The biggest boost from the Siebel software is in the hotel chain's sales operations. Marriott is transforming its sales teams from order-takers for specific hotels to aggressive marketers of all Marriott properties.

From handling reservations to managing accounting and billing, OPERA offers a feature set that can be configured to any hotel's requirements.

Marriott International has expanded its partnership with MICROS by selecting the hosted MICROS OPERA Property Management System (PMS) as the property management system (PMS) to be used in all Marriott brands worldwide.

The Keys to Marriott's Success Long before the economy went south, Marriott had a reputation for finding creative ways to wrest the most value from every IT dollar.

The devil is in the details—success is in the system.-The Spirit to Serve Metrics drive Marriott. Talk to an IT associate on any given day, and he can tell you exactly how much business the company processed via its systems that week per second ($3,568 when this reporter visited).When implementing the PeopleSoft enterprise service automation module for project tracking and time reporting within IT, for example, programmers developed a tool so that project and productivity metrics are automatically computed after time is entered. Another rule for metrics is to make sure that the right people get the right data in a form that’s meaningful to them. "You need to measure a lot of things, but the trick is to publish the right information to the relevant audience," says Melnick. "Having Marriott.com up and running is not as important as the dollars running through it," explains Keppler. Melnick adds, "For each system we try to focus on the core metrics. And that changes. What might have been important the day you go live becomes a nonevent a few weeks in." For example, five years ago the critical metric for Marriott.com was uptime. Today, it’s how much business the website books. Last year, metrics fueled the IT department’s decision to invest in an upgrade to the site that would make it easier to reserve rooms. Today, more than 75 percent of rooms booked online come through Marriott.com, saving the company $12 million annually.Keeping its eye on the numbers lets Marriott revisit business cases for IT projects each quarter. "The project itself may not change that much, but something external may happen—something like SARS, something from the competition," Melnick explains. "Just because you start a project and it’s on track doesn’t mean you want to keep the same pace. There may be something that comes up that’s even better." Success is never final.-The Spirit to Serve Though the IT department’s resourcefulness is helping keep Marriott afloat during hard times, Wilson and his peers aren’t taking anything for granted. They say they can’t let their culture of resourcefulness wither away when the economy turns around. They’re reminded of how easy it could be to let their guard down each time they flip through Mr. Marriott’s book in which he quotes Somerset Maugham: "The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones."But Wilson believes the principles and procedures put in place for prudent and resourceful IT decision making should keep the company on the straight and narrow and ahead of the competition."I have a firm belief that the only real sustainable competitive advantage we can get with IT is making sure our people understand conceptually what IT can and can’t do and apply it better than competitors," Wilson says. "Anything we do in IT, a competitor can install. What they can’t capture that quickly is having a team of people throughout the company that really gets this and follows it all the way through. That’s sustainable."Marriott has valued resourcefulness—on paper if not always in practice—for decades. But resourcefulness is not an end in itself. It’s a tool one uses in the ongoing construction of value, a project that’s never finished. Or, as Mr. Marriott says succinctly in his book, "Success is never final."

The data breach hitting Marriott Hotels Group was huge. The joint-second largest to have ever taken place, in fact, after Yahoo’s disastrous 2013 breach (and on par with Yahoo’s 2014 breach). While the amount of data that was taken from Starwood Hotels’ reservation systems (a company acquired by Marriott in 2016) was vast, what’s most staggering is the fact the breach went undetected for four years, and an acquisition also took place but the alarm still wasn’t raised. Since news originally broke of the release, it’s also been revealed that the hotel group’s own security team was hit by an attack in June 2017. Clearly something has gone amiss.

The issue is compounded by the fact that security is still not high enough up the list of priorities for business leaders. Despite well-known organizations frequently hitting the headlines for data breaches (in 2018 alone we’ve had Ticketmaster, Quora, British Airways, Under Armour and plenty more) and a ‘when not if’ warning  being peddled by the security industry for years, many businesses still haven't got to grips with just how critical proper security is. The fact that reviewing security may not have been part of the acquisition process of Starwood by Marriott – and if it was, not well enough – is further evidence of this apparent blindness to the impact of poor security. So, what’s going wrong? A research report from security company Bromium earlier this year suggested that the average large enterprise spends $16.7 million per annum on security, with the vast majority found to be on ‘the human cost of maintaining cyber security systems’. While most firms clearly aren’t 2,000 people sized enterprises, the research provides a good indication that spending on security isn’t the issue. Instead, it’s people.

We need to look at different approaches to skills development and, in many ways, imitate cyber criminals themselves who are continually iterating ideas to solve problems, rewarding perseverance and curiosity as well as encouraging further development. The ‘white hats’ need to approach their roles the same way – not rely on what they heard in a classroom six months previously.

Marriott International Inc. found that to be true after it combined two revenue management systems into one.

Marriott International

Marriott International Inc. found that to be true after it combined two revenue management systems into one.

The FCC announced the results of its yearlong investigation on Friday, concluding that Marriott “intentionally interfered with and disabled Wi-Fi” networks at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. As a result of the investigation, Marriott will pay a $600,000 penalty to settle the complaint.

The investigation found that Marriott’s Wi-Fi monitoring system sent de-authentication packets to Wi-Fi hotspots. This use of radio frequencies to disrupt personal hotspots violated FCC spectrum use regulations.

攻击是利用特许经营物业中两名雇员的登录凭证来访问万豪酒店品牌经营和特许经营的酒店所使用的财产系统

According to the company, the attack was made using the login credentials of two employees at a franchise property to access a property system used by hotels operated and franchised under Marriott’s brands.

The stolen data covers approximately 5.2 million guests and includes contact details such as mailing address, email and phone number; loyalty account information; personal details such as gender and birthday; linked loyalty programs and numbers; and stay preferences.

The Marriott Rewards, The Ritz-Carlton Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest were replaced in February with the launch of the Marriott Bonvoy app. The app was designed to make it even easier for people to search and book hotels across Marriott’s portfolio of 6,700 participating hotels across 30 brands in 130 countries, engage in mobile check-in (with an alert sent when the room is ready), use mobile key (in select hotels) to enter the room, submit mobile requests for service and amenities, and chat with representatives before, during, and after their stay.

The app also uses chatbots, enabling guests to ask questions, make simple requests, and receive instant responses.

The company also seems to understand, as discussed here, that technological advancements will never replace face-to-face human interaction. Rather, technology can help free up hotel staff to better serve its guests through more relevant and personalized experiences.

11i for supply chain, financ

implementation of Oracle E-Business Suite 11i for supply chain, finance, HR, and payroll. Marriott's North American operations had a long history of

11i for supply chain, finance,

As this was the last regulatory approval required to complete the merger, Marriott and Starwood are now able to proceed with closing the transaction and expect the transaction to be completed before the market opens on September 23, pending satisfaction of customary closing requirements. Upon closing, Marriott will solidify its status as the world's largest hotel company.

Starwood expects its shares will cease trading on the New York Stock Exchange before market open on September 23, 2016. As previously announced, Starwood shareholders will receive $21.00 in cash and 0.80 shares of Marriott International, Inc. Class A common stock for each share of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. common stock.

Assuming that the transaction closes as expected, former Starwood shareholders will be entitled to receive Marriott's quarterly cash dividend of 30 cents ($0.30) per share of Marriott common stock that Marriott's Board of Directors declared on September 13, 2016 and which is payable to all Marriott shareholders of record at the close of business on September 23, 2016.

By partnering with e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, Marriott International hopes to expand its footprint in China and attract a growing and more affluent group of travelers.

Marriott will be able to market directly to Alibaba’s customers from the time they start planning their trip, throughout the duration of the trip, and upon their arrival back home when they want to share their experiences.

The platform will also provide a link between Marriott’s loyalty programs and Alibaba’s loyalty program.

When a guest feels the hotel understands them, they are 13% more likely to stay there again. The majority of hotel visitors want to experience new technology

Marriott is testing the technology at its hotels in China, which shortens check-in time from three minutes or more to less than one minute.

InterContinental Hotels Group is creating AI smart rooms in its hotels in China. The rooms allow guests to use voice control technology and speak naturally to get personalized assistance for both business and personal travel.

The company formed an Executive Green Council in 2007 to catalyze sustainability beyond water and energy conservation and collaborated with Conservation International, a global environmental NGO based in Northern Virginia, to set the following goals:

Marriott’s Spirit to Preserve® Goals:  • Further reduce energy and water consumption by 25 percent per available room by 2017;• Expand our green hotel development ten-fold in five years;• Green our multi-billion dollar supply chain;• Educate and inspire associates and guests to support the environment;• Address environmental challenges through innovative conservation initiatives including rainforest protection and water conservation.

In China, Marriott is helping to safeguard fresh water. The company is investing $500,000 over two years to support a vital water conservation program that helps protect the largest source of fresh water on the planet.

Marriott breach that compromised the records of up to 500 million customers. The data breach occurred through the IT company, a third party, that managed the Starwood reservation database.

Marriott took too long to disclose this breach.  Even though the breach was found in September, disclosure did not occur until nearly three months later — and ultimately, the company failed to protect valuable customer information. The company is already the subject of class action lawsuits that could have a severe impact on the organization.

Over the last 3+ years, the Tourism & Hospitality sector has been very average (if even just a bit below) when it comes to cybersecurity performance as compared to other industries.

Alibaba has more than 500 million active consumers on its platform, and the new relationship gives Marriott opportunities to re

ach the growing number of Chinese travelers

enhance our service for Chinese guests when they arrive