YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephanie Linnartz

lines on the record: 25
first: 2021-06-24
most recent: 2021-06-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, it's all about leaning into the future. First of all, we need to continue to focus on the basics. We need to provide great service in our hotels. That's the backbone of our company. Without great brands, no one wants to be part of Marriott Bomvoy. No one wants to go on a Ritz-Carlton yacht that's sailing later this year or rent one of our homes or get our credit card. So we need to make sure we get back there as quickly as possible because we're now going from zero to 60 in terms of the business coming back. And then again, it's about continuing to look around the corner and to recognize things never stay the same. And even a 90-year-old plus company or especially a 90-year-old plus company needs to continue to innovate, come up with new offerings. I always say a healthy dose of paranoia is a good thing, healthy dose, right? Because things are always popping up, new competitors, et cetera. So when I think of the future and what's at stake and what we need to focus on, those are some of the things I.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Person who walked in. And I really like that quote and how I'm thinking about living through this pandemic and, of course, the terrible loss of Arnie.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I find running one of my biggest stress relievers. I like to meditate. So I find meditation and prayer a way to kind of calm myself and make sure I'm focused on what's most important. When I think about 2020 and I think about COVID, it's this complex and devastating amalgamation of social, economic, health issues all coming together. And it just makes you realize what's important in life. And then, of course, being so close to Arnie as he battled and ultimately died from pancreatic cancer. I mean, that just puts everything in life into perspective, right? And helps me manage what may be a stressful day at work or week at work in a different way than I did before. I get this daily quote from an organization. This is the one that came in this morning. It said, once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something about this. You know, I think governments can and must recognize the importance of travel and tourism is one example as a sector that allows certain parts of the population to get into the workforce and to grow their careers. And that's why I'm so passionate about my industry, my sector, because it gives people a chance to get into the workforce many times it's somebody's first job and then they'll work their way up the ladder. So I do think about the fact and I try to mentor other young women and men, but I do think it's important that women help other women along the way and share our experiences. I remember what it was like to be traveling nonstop and have babies and toddlers. You know, I don't have all the answers, that's for sure, and I'm not sure what work-life balance actually even is, but I try to share my experiences. I think that's my obligation. And not only, by the way, in my own company, I try to do that with women.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think of myself first and foremost as just a leader of Marriott International that, you know, I have a very diverse team. But I am a woman and I am a mother. And so I'm very well aware of that too. And I am very worried about the impact this pandemic has had on women. McKinsey puts out this annual Women in the Workplace Study. And it said this pandemic is really the first female recession, if you will, women lost jobs at such a higher rate. As you noted, the impact's been incredible because women still make less than men. And with all the kids having to stay home from school is just one example, a lot of women drop out of the workplace. And the study talks about this pandemic setting women back five, ten years. I find that heartbreaking. And in my industry in particular, it skews very female, very minority, and very youth actually. We have two times the youth in the travel and tourism sector than in other industries. So we have to do.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's complicated. We are having internal dialogues about when we speak out on things and when we don't. But again, we're in the hotel business. We're in the hospitality business. We need to always be welcoming everyone to our hotels. My parents own and operate a small independent hotel on Capitol Hill in DC and had a bunch of restaurants. So I'm what's known as a Beltway baby and grew up with a business. So it's in my DNA that you have to respect both sides of the aisle, if you will. You have to allow for an open, honest dialogue about tough issues. If you don't engage in dialogue, how can we ever move forward as a society?”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tony, our new CEO, put out a statement basically saying, we, of course, want to make sure that people can vote and we encourage making sure that people have the flexibility in their schedule when it's time to vote for an election.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that Marriott International has always believed in equality, in justice, in putting people first, no matter, you know, what they look like, where they come from, what their abilities, who they love. And as such, Marriott's not a political doesn't take political stances. You know this from talking to Arnie, but does speak out on issues that are important to our company and to our associate base. So, you know, Arnie spoke out when the terrible killing of George Floyd, he spoke out about how Marriott stands against racism. And he was very vocal about that or on LGBTQ rights. This is important to our associate base and to our customers.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People should wear the masks similar to other companies. But you point out something really important that I'm not sure all of your listeners know is that we don't own these properties. They are owned by third-party real estate partners, and we either manage or we franchise and they use our reservation system, our website, our app, our Bonvoy program. And typically the people who own the hotels, I mean, in the case of the United States, it's usually US investors, in the case of China, it's usually Chinese individuals who firms who own the hotel. So we're always partnering on all of these type of decisions with our owners and our franchisees. I mean, they are very, very important partners, but particularly during these tough times.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, we are not mandating vaccines for our associates, but we are strongly encouraging them to get vaccinated. And we recently rolled out a program that allows for flexibility, education, and the financial incentive to get vaccinated. So in the US and Canada at our managed properties, we will give our associates four hours of pay to go get the vaccine. And so I think we are very confident that the vaccination is the key to minimizing the spread of COVID-19. So how can we encourage our associates to get the vaccine to be safe for themselves, for their families, for our guest? No, we are not mandating that people get the vaccine. Of course, we're encouraging people to get the vaccine and saying, you know, if you're fully vaccinated, you don't need to wear the mask coming into our hotels. If you're not...”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's no doubt that these tools that we've all gotten so used to, Team, Zoom, et cetera, they have given us a level of efficiency for a certain type of meeting and to get certain types of work done. So I'm sure I will continue to use them more just like everybody in the world probably will. That being said, I personally believe I will be back on the road as much as ever. We're in the hospitality business. It's about people serving people. And I can never connect with my team around the world or our team of associates at the properties on a Zoom call or a teams call. We need to be there in person.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have continued to travel a decent amount of course nothing compared to before the pandemic hit where I was traveling at least 50% of the time. So I've spent more nights in my bed and had more meals with my husband and kids than I ever did in the past 20 years. So that part's been good. But I got out there as much as I could to visit our hotels. And increasingly I've been traveling across the US the past couple months just as things have gotten a little bit easier. I'm doing a combination work and family trip to Greece this summer. I mentioned Greece earlier. The second we saw those restrictions open up my husband and I said that's been on our list and I can again do a combination some work and again. And I think as an executive in the travel business, I need to set a good example to get out there and travel.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think some of the things that we'll stick with us forever are the use and adoption of technology. I'd say the hotel industry in general was a little bit behind the airline industry in terms of using mobile capabilities. And during the pandemic, again, our investment in data, technology, we really geared up the rollout of, we had mobile key and mobile check-in and mobile guest services already in thousands of our hotels, but we accelerated the rollout because we knew that during the pandemic more people may choose to check in on their phone or on the website or want to go right to their room versus having to interact with people, not just check in and check out, but order room service or extra towels or pillows, whatever you needed to do. So I think that kind of thing is going to stick with us for, I think, forever because people love it.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can earn and you can burn your bonvoy point. So we always say this is meant to be complementary to our core hotel business. Give us all your hotel business. Stay at Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis and W and Fairfield and Courtyard. I could go on, all our 30 brands. Give us all your hotel business and then take those valuable points that you've earned and use them to redeem for a castle in Scotland or a villain in Italy. I should point out that 90% of our bookings in homes and villas are marriap envoy members. So it's been a great success. Last thing I'd say, Bob, is 40% of our homes are in locations where we don't even have hotels anyways. It's a complementary offering.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, the strategic purpose behind homes and villas was really as an offering to our Marriott envoy members. Home Rand Hills had been around for a long time, but Airbnb and others have used the internet, right, to scale it into a different level. But as we were talking to our members, we knew that they were not only talking about home rentals, they were increasingly doing it. And we thought, why not have an offering to keep them in our ecosystem and sticky to us? Our offering is different than Airbnb's. First of all, it's significantly smaller. I'm not sure of the exact Arab Bnbb statistics now, but I think they're at north of 7 million listings. And same thing with booking.com's offerings in that ballpark. Again, we're at 30,000. We are only playing in the premium and luxury space. We do not let anyone just put a home on our site. You have to be managed by a professional company. We have very strict brand standards that you need to meet. And the most important part.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we launched new promotions with our co branded credit cards. People may not have been traveling, but people who had the Mary Up Envoy credit card were buying groceries and gas. So we did points promotions to keep them engaged with us when they were doing something besides traveling. So there's many, many examples.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we knew during the pandemic that our most loyal customers who are our Marriott Bonvoy members, 150 million customers in our Marriott Bomvoy program, we knew they couldn't travel as much. So we said, what can we do to stay engaged with our best customers? So we did things like an innovative partnership with Uber, and particularly Uber Eats. And some people said, why are you doing that in the middle of 2020? Why are you investing in this? Because we knew things were going to get better in 2021. We invested in scaling up our home rental business. We launched it in 2019 quite modestly, but we doubled down on that business in 2020. People wanted more space. They wanted to be in sometimes more remote locations. So we scaled the business and invested in the technology to do that. So we went from 2,000 homes to over 30,000 homes. And that business has done again relatively well.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out increase every single day, every single week, every single month. So I am very, very bullish that we're going to see the demand for travel come back across all business segments.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bob, I think that ultimately companies are differentiated by how they make progress when there's major headwinds. Like that's what we're having right now, major headwinds. And I think companies have a choice. Are you simply going to focus on survival? Or are you going to innovate and are you going to transform to meet a new reality? And that's what Marriott International has done during this pandemic. We really said we're going to lean into this time and invest because we know travel's coming back. And the reason we did that, I think, is number one, it's the culture of our company. A 94-year-old company that's been constantly changing over the decades. Number two, out of pure necessity, right? We had to customer preferences and needs and once we're changing dramatically. And third, back to Arnie. Arnie had one strategy, move forward. And so I think his leadership lives with us through this time. And again, we're seeing booking 60 days.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Zoom out for a second, things are getting better from a global perspective. And it might be good to set a little context of how bad things were last year in the depths of the crisis in 2020. Our business was down 90%. Our hotels were at single digit occupancy. We had 25% of our hotels closed. Hundreds of thousands of our associates globally were either laid off or on reduced work weeks. We had never seen anything like that. After 9-11, 2001, our worst quarter for Redpar, which is our equivalent of same-store sales, was down 15%. Then the 2008-2009”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am running all the consumer parts of the company, which I was previously running, so sales and marketing and brand, I'm also running technology. And then we've launched a lot of new businesses over the past few years, all tied to our loyalty program, Marriott Bonvoy. And I'm also running in this new role as president, our real estate development group. So working with third parties to open new hotels around the world, I'm running our global design organization. So the interior designers that work with our brand leaders on that front, and then our global operations group. So I am running those different departments and partnering with Tony on strategy issues. Things are getting much better, but it's still tough going, as I know you know.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A little bit, you know, Marriott had, of course, the board and Arnie had a plan for succession planning like any big public company does. What we really talked about was more in the context of just how we were going to come together as a leadership team to navigate through this. While it may not have been said explicitly, I knew he was saying to Tony and myself and to the rest of the leadership team, you need to keep pushing forward through this no matter what was kind of unsaid, no matter what thing, even if I'm not here is, again, just a tremendous leader.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of mine as well, and he would tell us to wipe our tears and get back to the business of running Marriott for the hundreds of thousands of people who are depending on us”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did on one hand in the fall and into the winter of 2020, Arnie was doing much better. Pancreatic cancer is a very, very difficult cancer. So we were all well aware of the statistics and that it's a tough one to battle. But he was doing quite well at the end of the year and then the beginning part of the year he took a turn for the worse and then died suddenly in February. And it's been on top of the pandemic and the devastating impact of COVID to our business. Losing, Arnie has been heartbreaking. It's really been heartbreaking. I've known him for well over 20 years. I know you knew Arnie well. He was not only a remarkable CEO, he was a remarkable human being. I miss him terribly personally and our company misses him. But one thing about Arnie, I can tell you for sure is he would tell us to wipe our tears and our new CEO, Tony Capuanu, who's a longtime colleague.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ultimately, companies are differentiated by how they make progress when there's major headwinds. Like that's what we're having right now, major headwinds. And I think companies have a choice. Are you simply going to focus on survival or are you going to innovate and are you going to transform to meet a new reality? We know travel's coming back. Travel cannot be stopped. When I think about 2020 and I think about COVID, it's this complex and devastating amalgamation of social, economic, health issues all coming together. And it just makes you realize what's important in life. And then, of course, being so close to Arnie as he battled and ultimately died from pancreatic cancer. I mean, that just puts everything in life into perspective.”
2021-06-24 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Fighting through headwinds at Marriott, w/President Stephanie Linnartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT