MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL’S PREFERRED TRAVEL AGENCY PROGRAM CONTINUES TO PRODUCE EXCITING RESULTS

Marriott International, Inc.’s Preferred Travel Agency (PTA) program continues to produce exciting results. In 1999, travel agents booked over 18 million room nights in Marriott International’s hotels and earned over $175 million in commissions. This volume represents a more than 12 percent increase compared to 1998. Fourth quarter the non-PTA (standard) agencies grew at a rate greater than our hotel growth, while the PTA agencies achieved an even more impressive increase of three times the commission growth of the standard agencies.

“We are very pleased with our growth in room sales, but we are particularly excited about the performance of our Preferred Travel Agencies. These increased sales demonstrate the success of the PTA program and the benefit that Hotel Excellence! graduates are bringing to their agencies,” said Bruce Wolff, senior vice president of distribution sales and marketing.

Mr. Wolff continued, “Our focus has been to improve profitability for travel agents and to make it easy for them to do business with us. Research indicates a number of travel agents are foregoing a lot of revenue because they don’t actively sell hotel rooms. The research cites the two primary reasons for this are: the inability of travel agents to collect hotel commissions and the lack of hotel sales training. Marriott International took a leadership role in addressing the commission issue 10 years ago with the implementation with our Centralized Travel Agency Commission Program, backed by our Double Commission guarantee.”

Travel agents who book any Marriott International hotel worldwide are paid by Marriott’s Centralized Travel Agency Commission system (CTAC) or through the Pegasus commission payment system. Marriott International continues to be the only company to offer a double commission guarantee. The guarantee states that travel agents will receive double commission owed on individual commissionable transient reservations if the commission check is not issued within 15 business days of the guest’s departure. Travel agencies participating with Pegasus are paid double commission owed if Marriott International does not provide Pegasus with the appropriate commission information within 15 days of the guest’s departure.

On a daily basis, Marriott International commission payments amounted to more than US$500,000 per day, while double commission guarantee payments were approximately US$600. This means that 99.88% of the time Marriott paid the right commission to the right agency within the allotted amount of time!

Marriott International is the only hotel company that pays commissions weekly. In addition, Marriott International does not charge a fee for commission checks in U.S. dollars, except for international currency checks, which have a small service fee.

Another issue the research highlighted was the lack of hotel sales training for travel agents. “We addressed this through the development of the Hotel Excellence! training program. Hotel Excellence! is designed to provide travel agents with additional knowledge about selling hotels and assisting agents to be more confident when selling the product,” said Mr. Wolff.

Since Marriott International launched the PTA program last October, over 170,000 travel agents have enrolled in the highly acclaimed Hotel Excellence! training program, and to date, over 28,000 have graduated. To earn the Preferred Travel Agency status, an agency must have at least one Hotel Excellence! graduate per customer contact location and agree to give Marriott International equal selling preference with other hotel chains. The Preferred Travel Agency program provides those agencies with a 10 percent commission on all commissionable rates offered at any of Marriott International’s more than 1,900 hotels encompassing 14 lodging brands. Additionally, Preferred Travel Agencies receive a 12 percent commission for selling Marriott incentive award certificates.

“Our goal is that all travel agencies become Preferred Travel Agency-certified and benefit from the program. Travel agencies are important long-term business partners. Marriott International understands this and has a long history of implementing programs and services that address business issues and concerns. We will continue to build on these tools to help travel agencies drive profitability,” said Mr. Wolff.

Mr. Wolff also stressed the importance of Marriott International’s single image inventory, which provides travel agents with the same access to its rooms and rates inventory regardless of which distribution system is used, including the Internet.

“We believe those travel suppliers that encourage “travel agency bypass” by offering lower rates on the Internet undercut the travel agents’ credibility. Travel agents can confidently go to any of Marriott International’s distribution channels and find the same room and rate inventory,” said Wolff.