Marriott Works to Accommodate Employees Traveling for 'Water Cooler' Meetups

25.08.2023 - 14:34 / skift.com / Marriott International / Matthew Parsons

Marriott is looking to meet new demands from company travel managers, following a ramp up in requests for more culture and trust-boosting team meetings.

These new kinds of gatherings are designed for employees who work efficiently remotely, but need opportunities to network and build up trust with peers. Technically you can call it “collaboration travel,” but one travel buyer at the Global Business Travel Association’s European conference, held in Brussels this week, describes it as the new “water cooler” discussion.

It’s a conundrum for one senior Marriott exec, as these meetings are often booked last-minute, and travel buyers want to move away from traditional hotel meeting spaces.

In a poll of delegates during a panel called “Collaboration Travel, a Passing Trend or Here to Stay?” which included a large number of travel buyers, the need for more flexible solutions from hotels was highlighted, as the nature of meetings meant lead times were short.

“I assume it’s something to do with cancellation policies and attrition, which is something that needs to be discussed,” responded panelist Christopher Grieves, account director, corporate at Marriott International, who added the hotel group needed to protect itself as well.

“We understand flexibility is needed, but we need to run our business as well in a way that we can plan what is going to happen,” he said.

“I’m not that much involved in the daily groups booking process, but we have teams that do so, and we’re. For me the key is the open dialogue to decide what can be done, and expectations for a specific request. It’s something on our agenda as well,” he added.

Travel buyers also said they wanted “fun and exciting” spaces that motivated staff, when asked by moderator Aurélie Krau, head of customer success at Hubli, what “collaboration travel” meant to them.

That could be a challenge in some hotels, but Grieves said Marriott was adapting and highlighted its millennial-friendly Moxy brand. “In terms of properties and services, I agree. There is, and I’m going back in history a little bit, Marriott with a red carpet and big flower bunches, but that’s all long gone in history,” he said.

“In our portfolio, knowing other brands and competitors do something similar, we’re upscaling our  Sheraton brand, which is going through a global transformation, to exactly deliver what you’re describing. We’re going in the same direction …. that will take some time, it’s not happening overnight, but it’s definitely happening,” he added.

Meanwhile, the U.S.’s preference for annual mega-events was highlighted during the debate. In Europe we may even be about to see a decline in them, in favor of quarterly meetings for team members to get together and build up trust.

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