How Marriott Increased B2B Sales with a Centralized Platform

Marriott: it’s a household name representing one of the most expansive portfolios in the hospitality industry. Over the past several years, Marriott has undergone massive transformation impacting nearly every facet of its business — aligning with strict COVID-19 protocols, engaging with digital-native travelers, and merging with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

The company’s changes launched new opportunities for Marriott to integrate messaging, content, and new technologies across the growing enterprise. Its internal and third-party B2B partners needed an efficient and centralized sales platform to help Marriott meet and exceed the industry’s ever-evolving standards.

Marriott called on WillowTree to build its new B2B system: Sales Companion. Our unique solution empowers Marriott sellers to be more efficient, knowledgeable, and impactful as they deliver exceptional client services.

Introducing: Marriott’s “Sales Companion.”

Boosting transactions and employee efficiency through centralized content.

It’s hard to keep content “king” when that content is spread across 8,500 global properties, 31 different brands, and nearly a dozen B2B platforms. Marriott needed a single system to integrate sales content into one application and present its entire portfolio of properties in a branded and user-friendly experience.

WillowTree’s answer? Sales Companion.

We created the first portfolio-wide search system combining Marriott and Starwood offerings. The new platform delivers property information in an intuitive map interface and offers filtering based on critical selling criteria to help advisors efficiently provide research-backed recommendations to clients.

One functionality of Marriott’s Sales Companion is to help sellers complete custom, filtered searches to quickly identify properties aligned with guests’ needs.

Upgrading sales experiences without sacrificing the brand.

With centralized property and sales information, WillowTree enhanced Marriott’s branded content creation and design capabilities. We sought to incentivize and empower today’s travel advisors to close more deals, and delight more clients. Because in the hospitality industry, every second counts.

Leveraging Sales Companion, we equipped advisors with tools to create and deliver dynamic, personalized pitch presentations to clients — in minutes.

Sales Companion helps users build branded presentations with multiple hotel properties tailored to client needs.

Presentations can both be self-guided and autoplayed.

Users can easily share presentations with customers by sending a link.

Powerful client-facing content requires more than perfectly delivered pitches.

Through the Stars and Luminous feature, sellers can tap into Sales Companion capabilities to create custom websites promoting and selling Marriott services to high net-worth clients.

Targeted to Marriott Events Associates, our customized eMenus solution helps event planners create and share beautiful, branded digital menus showcasing their hotels’ culinary offerings.

Event coordinators can engage with stories from Marriott’s content team to find ideas and inspiration for future events.

Content should convert, so we integrated Marriott’s new creative with Sales Companion’s personalized hotel search functionality.

Sales Companion is a game changer. It’s a testament to the technical expertise of WillowTree, whose teams delivered this product in just six months. WillowTree’s solution transforms how our salespeople research and sell hotels to customers, and positively impacts our hotel presentations and proposals. They’re now on-brand, compelling, trackable, and include the latest real-time hotel information.”

Marriott International

Director, Global Marketing Solutions and Support

Praise from Sales Companions users.

Sales Companion immediately immerses my customers in the experience, and it’s visually compelling on mobile. PDFs are old and drab – these presentations are where it’s at!”

— Destination Sales Executive, CALA

I can now research and create presentations in one sitting. I am a smarter seller delivering better options to my customers. I just landed a new customer with a $35K booking in Spain!”

— Sales Executive, Americas

I don’t always get to present to decision-makers. The ability to quickly share presentations makes an impact — even when I can’t be in the room.”

— GSO, Europe

Bringing Marriott miles ahead of the competition.

Transformation timeline and cost savings.

50%

cost savings (compared with the industry average)

6 months

from concept to launch (compared with the industry average of 12 – 18 months)

8 new systems

integrated in four months

Year-over-year outcomes.

159%

increase in monthly active users

85%

increase in the number of countries using Sales Companion

149%

increase in the number of presentations created

Imagining what’s next for hotels and hospitality — then building it.

WillowTree’s Sales Companion now powers a unified experience for Marriott’s B2B travel advisors, offers insightful data about business outcomes, and enables real-time client engagement.