US Airways' Khan Tackles Hotel Distribution At Marriott

<B> US Airways' Khan Tackles Hotel Distribution At Marriott</B>

By Cheryl Rosen

Surely it's significant that Marriott has hired not only someone from the airline sector, but a distribution expert as well, as its new vice president of interactive sales and marketing.

Shafiq Khan has seen sweeping changes over the past six years at US Airways, where he has served as senior director of e-commerce and distribution. On his watch, US Airways rolled out an early self-booking product with British Airways; began the push to electronic ticketing that now reaches half of all customers; and put in place the first direct connection between an airline and a corporate customer, with Via World Network. With that background, one could infer that his role will go far beyond pushing travelers to Marriott's Web site, and touch on the broader process changes the Internet might bring to the hotel industry.

Khan would never say the hotel industry lags behind the airlines in adapting technology to simplify the distribution process and hold down costs, but others do. Still, Marriott was the first hotel to plunge into the Internet space, ringing in 1997 with the industry's first full vice president in charge of nothing else but figuring it all out. When Mike Pusateri took the job that Khan this week inherits, he said his job was to determine whether the Internet would be a viable distribution channel (<I>BTN</I>, Dec. 16, 1996).

Three years later, there is no doubt that it will, and Marriott's e-commerce infrastructure is complete. Now, Khan's mission is "to develop a mechanism that allows customers to deal with Marriott in any way they want, for information, for booking and for business to business," he said. "Then at some point, we'll want to get out the message that we're committed to e-commerce and would like the marketplace--especially the corporate marketplace--to deal with us more in this way. My charter is to expand our offering and to expand the marketplace."

What did he learn from his stint at US Airways? "You have to take the long-term view. I worked on self-booking for four years before the product launched, and on e-ticketing for two years," he said. "You have to look at the process. The corporate buyer is the most expensive part of the distribution channel, and the most complex--and that's where the most potential lies."

Can he envision direct links between Marriott and its corporate customers? "If direct is the most efficient mechanism, we'll do it," he said. "That's what the Internet brings to the table, especially in a business-to-business relationship. I absolutely believe it will happen, and we have to be ready for it.