Industry Spotlight: Marriott’s Pinnacle Spirit Rewards

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Industry Spotlight: Marriott’s Pinnacle Spirit Rewards

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

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The hospitality industry is a highly competitive business where customer satisfaction is key to building customer loyalty and a strong reputation. To gain the competitive advantage, employers need to motivate their staff to exceed guest expectations and provide outstanding guest experiences.

The Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel’s rewards program, which is called Pinnacle Spirit Rewards, is an interesting case study because it’s based on Marriott’s Spirit to Serve culture and uses rewards and recognition to motivate employees to seek out opportunites where they can provide superior service. This Spirit to Serve culture not only applies to serving guests, but also applies to serving colleagues and the community. Here’s a look at their program:

Who: Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel, a Marriott International Inc. hotel located in downtown Vancouver that offers premiere lodging accommodations and meeting and conference facilities. Marriott International, Inc. is a leader in the hospitality industry with more than 3,200 lodging properties located in 67 countries and territories.

Program: Pinnacle Spirit Rewards
Pinnacle Spirit Rewards encourages employees to uphold company values, celebrate outstanding performance, and help drive alignment to corporate objectives.

The reward: Employees receive points for exhibiting behaviours that demonstrate their “Sprit to Serve”, which they use to redeem for brand name products, gift certificates and experiences of their choice.

Program launch: March 2008

An Interview with Mike Truscott, Director of Human Resources, Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel

1. How does Pinnacle Spirit Rewards support Marriott’s mission as company?
Marriott’s three vision pillars are Spirit to Serve our Guests; Spirit to Serve our Associates; and Spirit to Serve our Community. The program helps reinforce these pillars by encouraging associates to live our values and Service Genuine Care Basics. These Basics are part of the associate uniforms and are referenced during daily standup meetings. By associates recognizing each other for living the Basics, the Basics take on much more meaning and are constantly reinforced.

2. What communication vehicles do you use to keep Pinnacle Spirit Rewards top of mind?
We use quarterly townhalls, a dedicated Associate web portal, internal marketing, as well as the peer to peer recognition cards available in all departments.

[Example of the Marriott point cards]

3. How does Pinnacle Spirit Rewards help you gain competitive advantage in the industry?
From a recruitment and retention stand point, the online version is cutting edge, which appeals to a younger generation of associates who are eager to align themselves to our mission and values.

4. What is one challenge you have faced getting associates engaged in the program and how did you overcome it?
The main challenge was moving from a manual based system to an automated one. While the program serves as a competitive advantage in attracting young, tech-savvy talent, we recognize that we have a range of associates – some who are very computer literate, and others who are not. By installing computers in our Spirit Lounge (associate lunchroom), we have addressed the issue of access and as a result, we are seeing more associates becoming familiar and comfortable with using a computer.