Newsmaker: Marriott Hires US Air Veteran As Mktg. VP

Marriott International has named airline industry veteran Rita Cuddihy senior vice president of marketing. Previously, Cuddihy was president and CEO of US Airways Shuttle, as well as the airline's vice president for alliances and customer advocacy. In addition to strategy and promotions, she now will be responsible for Marriott's customer relationship management, an area that includes, but is not limited to, overseeing Marriott Rewards, the multi-brand company's loyalty program.

In moving from the airlines to the lodging side of the travel business, Cuddihy said she was aware that the stakes for CRM were greater. "While the customer base, to a large degree, is the same, you get to spend a lot more time with your customers when you're in the hotel business," she said. "In fact, when you talk to customers face to face, you realize they look for different things from each industry and define satisfaction in different ways." Earlier in her airline career, Cuddihy held senior management positions at Continental Airlines and Braniff. Without criticizing the airlines directly, Cuddihy said she was happy to be joining a company that had high satisfaction levels as well as high customer recognition. "The challenge is finding ways to enhance these ratings even further," she said.

Faced with a serious downturn in the market, spurred by significant declines in business travel, large hotel companies this year began promoting their frequency programs to travel managers much more proactively than in the past—seeing the loyalty program as a means of ensuring compliance with preferred suppliers and, thereby, increasing room revenues. By pre-enrolling travelers, for example, often at the elite level they might hold in competing hotel companies' programs, travelers are less likely to go outside of policy to stay at another hotel. At the heart of this aspect of CRM, Cuddihy cited the appeal to frequent business travelers, who collect points for stays at downtown full service or suburban midprice hotels, and then redeem them for stays at upper upscale or deluxe hotels.

Cuddihy joins Marriott at a time when other aspects of CRM industrywide are raising considerable controversy on the part of buyers. Questions have been raised about data privacy and ownership, specifically data on travelers' tastes and preferences. Such data are captured in frequent guest histories in addition to the loyalty program. Cuddihy declined to comment, except to say that "There's a lot of focus inside Marriott on guest recognition, particularly finding ways to recognize guests that are most meaningful to them."