Marriott International has long led the hotel industry with its asset-light business model, global brand consistency, and impeccable service. Making it one of the biggest hotel chains in the world. However, with increasing competition from platforms such as Airbnb and the shift into an intensified experience economy, guests’ demands are shifting. Therefore, to keep up with the competition and remain a market leader, Marriott has to innovate.
Our project presents Marriott with this solution, namely, implementing Gen-AI in the pre-stay booking phase with the Gen-AI pre-stay travel planner and during the stay with the in-stay travel assistant.
Here is how it works:
The pre-stay travel planner allows guests to get a tailored overview of activities and plans at their intended stay, which is specific to their customer profile and trip details. Think of it as a curated co-pilot that kicks in the moment you book. It builds a tailored itinerary based on your profile, destination, dates, budget, and preferences. It then pulls context like weather and local events, and you can chat with it to refine plans. Resulting in a seamless trip booking experience and significantly reducing the hassle of planning it yourself.
Then, during the stay, the Gen-AI in-stay assistant integrated with the larger Marriott service system allows guests to get immediate customized answers and recommendations tailored to the stay. When questions get too complex, it recognizes this and escalates to a Marriott employee, so you get speed without losing Marriott’s trademark human touch.
While these improvements increase the value customers receive from booking with Marriott, these implementations simultaneously provide Marriott with several key benefits.
- It enables Marriott to profit from new monetization and revenue streams. It does this by automatically up-selling add-ons, cross-selling, and finally engaging in Gen-AI partnership deals based on commission. Making it a truly lucrative implementation.
- It increases operational efficiency: Offloading routine queries to AI, which frees staff to focus on high-impact service moments.
- And finally, it increases customer loyalty and raises switching costs. As guests keep booking, MarriottAI learns preferences and habits, making future stays feel increasingly personalized. In return, leading to more engagement with its loyalty program, Bonvoy.
To successfully roll out this GenAI integration in such a large brand, the implementation should be phased in 3 key stages:
Months 0–12: Will focus on a Pilot in ~10 diverse hotels, where key adoption metrics are tracked, and recommendations are refined.
Months 13–24: Expand the pilot to 100–150 properties, deepen system integrations, start marketing to Bonvoy members, and keep training on real usage data.
Months 25+: Roll out globally with multilingual, location-specific tuning
In summary, by using AI strategically and augmenting the stay with a smart layer that plans with you and adapts to you, Marriott is enhancing its ability to do what it does best. Guests get trips that feel curated, teams get time back for the moments that matter, and Marriott turns every booking into a relationship that gets better with each stay, allowing it to lead in an experience-first market.
Team 10
