Marriott Bonvoy Leads the Way in Global Hospitality Loyalty (#703)

Jitendra: The way you truly build an amazing loyalty program is build loyalty beyond reason.

Jitendra: And the only way you can do that is by going to emotion and going to the heart.

Jitendra: You know, when we combine these three programs, it wasn’t really just to build a hotel program.

Jitendra: It was to build a loyalty ecosystem and a platform.

Jitendra: But it’s also so much more than hotels, right?

Jitendra: We’ve got hotels in all the different tier glasses, from the best and largest luxury portfolio to premium and select, to mid-scale.

Jitendra: But we’ve gone beyond that.

Jitendra: So we have homes and villas, we’ve got Ritz-Carlton yachts, we’ve got tours and activities, we’ve got F&B when you’re not staying in the hotels, we’ve got credit cards.

Jitendra: So it’s a whole gamut of different things.

Jitendra: You know, that’s what loyalty is about, right?

Jitendra: It’s about how you balance love and money.

Jitendra: Well, I think the future is human.

Jitendra: It’s not AI.

Jitendra: I think the best technology isn’t the hero of the story.

Jitendra: It sort of blends into the background and enables you to do more.

Paula: Hello, and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals.

Paula: I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world’s leading brands.

Paula: Today’s episode is hosted by Amanda Cromhout, the founder of Truth and International Loyalty Consultancy.

Paula: She’s also the author of the book Blind Loyalty 101 Loyalty Concepts Radically Simplified.

Paula: Enjoy.

Amanda: Hi, I’m Amanda Cromhout.

Amanda: I’m the author of Blind Loyalty and the CEO and founder of Truth Loyalty.

Amanda: Today’s Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV show is with Jitendra Jain.

Amanda: He is the VP of Prisma for Marriott Bonvoy of EMEA region.

Amanda: It’s been an incredible story to listen to around how Marriott Bonvoy has been created out of three very established loyalty companies in hospitality.

Amanda: But it is now the largest loyalty program in hospitality in the world with 248 million members worldwide.

Amanda: And I question whether that’s one of the largest, if not the largest, loyalty programs in the world across all industries.

Amanda: Jitendra talks us through how Bonvoy got to this position, what the value proposition is, the importance of the experiential and the heart in terms of loyalty programs through their moments program.

Amanda: And two out of three stays in a Marriott brand or with Marriott Bonvoy members.

Amanda: And to conclude our interview, in fact, quite a large part of the interview, we talk about AI, which is a personal passion of Jitendra’s, and he leaves us with four very important and very interesting recommendations of how to work with AI.

Amanda: So Marriott Bonvoy actually features in Blind Loyalty, Chapter 100, where we talk about the favorite programs of loyalty professionals.

Amanda: So previous guests on Let’s Talk Loyalty gave us a view of their favorite loyalty program, and Marriott Bonvoy features in the top 20 globally of the favorite program amongst loyalty professionals.

Amanda: So it’s a real honor today to be chatting to Jitendra Jain.

Amanda: He is the VP of Prisma of EMEA and for Marriott Bonvoy.

Amanda: So it’s such a privilege to have you on here, Jitendra.

Amanda: We wanted to chat to you for a while, so thank you for joining us.

Jitendra: Thank you, Amanda.

Amanda: So there’s so much to talk about, but I’m going to hit you straight off with the first question that we talk about on Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, and that’s what’s your favorite book?

Amanda: Maybe you’re currently reading it or maybe it’s a past read.

Jitendra: It’s a great question, actually.

Jitendra: I think my favorite book keeps changing constantly as I read more, but I think a recent one that I read that I would think is really good is, it’s a book called Co-Intelligence by Ethan Molyk.

Jitendra: And it’s already a couple of years old.

Jitendra: So he talks, I think there’s two central ideas.

Jitendra: So one is, he talks about the fact that you can think about AI now, not as a tool necessarily or just a software, but as a co-pilot or somebody that you can collaborate with.

Jitendra: Or if you want to push it to the extreme, like Yuval Noah Harari.

Jitendra: And he also sort of talks about AI as almost like an alien intelligence.

Jitendra: So I think you’ve got to understand and figure out how you can work together.

Jitendra: The output is always better when you combine both the AI and the human intuition and experience and creativity.

Jitendra: So I think that’s one central theme.

Jitendra: And then the other theme that he talks about is this sort of jagged frontier of intelligence, because you might find that AI models do some amazingly complex things, but then fail at the most basic things.

Jitendra: So you’ve got to test that jagged frontier because it constantly moves.

Jitendra: It’s moving on a weekly basis.

Jitendra: So I think that probably recently was a good book that I’d recommend.

Amanda: I absolutely love that, the way you describe AI as a co-pilot.

Amanda: And I know later in our conversation, we’re going to talk about AI because of all the loyalty professionals I’ve spoken to in the last 12 or plus months, I think you’ve got a biggest passion that I’ve ever come across.

Amanda: So that’s the way I want us to talk about whether it’s related to Marriott Bonvoy or not, or whether it’s just related for you.

Amanda: But tell us a bit more.

Amanda: And if I can, I’d like to call you JJ, because I know that’s how you introduced yourself.

Amanda: So JJ, your career history, getting to the role you’re currently playing.

Amanda: And if you don’t mind, also explain the role of Prisma, so your VP Prisma, what that actually stands for.

Jitendra: Yeah, absolutely.

Jitendra: I have been with the hospitality industry for about 25 years now.

Jitendra: About 20 of those years have been with Marriott.

Jitendra: So I spent 12 years with Starwood, and then Marriott took over Starwood, so I’ve been with Marriott since.

Jitendra: So just celebrated 20 years in April.

Jitendra: It’s been an interesting journey.

Jitendra: So I won’t say that getting into hospitality was by design or my intention when I was growing up.

Jitendra: When I was a teenager, I actually wanted to get into forensics because that was what interested me, because I really loved technology and I loved mysteries.

Jitendra: And I loved, I had a deep curiosity about things.

Jitendra: But I think life sort of makes you gravitate towards your passions.

Jitendra: So even though I didn’t get into forensics or technology, that’s always helped me through that journey and through hospitality.

Jitendra: So I guess the evidence of that is the first 10 years that I really loved in the industry were spent in digital marketing.

Jitendra: So that’s when digital marketing was really sort of taking off and e-commerce was growing as a discipline.

Jitendra: This was in I think 2005 when I started with Starwood.

Jitendra: So I was one of the first people in the Middle East doing e-commerce at a property level.

Jitendra: And then from there, it sort of grew with my passion and opportunities as they came along.

Jitendra: So beyond digital, I’ve done sort of overall marketing, partnerships, loyalty, F&B, content.

Jitendra: So a whole gamut of things that have come my way.

Jitendra: And of course, I’ve been incredibly lucky with the company as well, right?

Jitendra: In terms of that growth.

Jitendra: So what I do today is, as you said, we’ve come up with a loving acronym for what we do, which is Prisma.

Jitendra: And there’s a story behind that as well.

Jitendra: So Prisma stands for Partnerships, Revenue Operations, Insights, Strategy, Marriott Bonvoy, and Analytics.

Jitendra: So you can think of us as the compass as well as the enabler for all things commercial across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Jitendra: And the reason we came up with that sort of acronym is because Prisms also focus a variety of wavelengths of light into something that’s a clear beam.

Jitendra: So we love that, right?

Jitendra: Because it sort of stands for clarity and it stands for different specialisms and expertise coming together as one to shine a light on what’s right.

Amanda: Amazing.

Amanda: I love it.

Amanda: Absolutely love it.

Amanda: Listen, I’m from the airline industry, so there’s plenty of acronyms in the airline industry.

Amanda: So it’s good to share.

Amanda: It’s nice to hear.

Amanda: So thank you.

Amanda: Yeah.

Amanda: So I think what’s really exciting for us to hear from you today is obviously your background is incredibly commercial, but coming out of the digital marketing space and your own personal passion of AI is obviously going to play out a little bit in, in how you’re managing such a huge portfolio for such a global and impressive brand.

Amanda: So I don’t really think there’s many listeners to Lets Talk Loyalty or Loyalty TV who don’t know the Marriott brand, but I’m not going to make that assumption.

Amanda: I don’t think I know nearly enough about the size of the Marriott group.

Amanda: So please share with us before we get into Bonvoy, more about the actual hotel group itself.

Jitendra: Yeah, absolutely.

Jitendra: So Marriott is quite an impressive company.

Jitendra: And I say that personally, I mean, I’ve loved being part of the company over the last eight years.

Jitendra: Since we moved over from Starwood.

Jitendra: It’s one of those rare companies that is both a public listed company, but also has deep family roots.

Jitendra: So you may know the history, but Marriott actually started as a simple root beer stand.

Jitendra: And this was almost 100 years ago.

Jitendra: So we will be celebrating our 100th anniversary in 2027.

Jitendra: So the company is evolved from just being that little moment for root beer stand to the global hotel company that is today.

Jitendra: So we’re the largest hotel company.

Jitendra: We have well over 30 brands now.

Jitendra: I think there’s about almost three quarters of a million associates that call Marriott home or wear our name badge.

Jitendra: So it’s an incredibly deep history.

Jitendra: And it’s a good balance.

Jitendra: I think you see this from a day to day basis as well, when you work within the company, there is that strong influence of values from the Marriott family.

Jitendra: But again, we’re also competing head on with the other giants in the world, right, on Wall Street.

Jitendra: So it’s a very interesting balance and mix.

Amanda: Yeah, and I think that the fact you just very casually sort of said, you know, like 750,000 employees and or associates and 30 different hotel brands.

Amanda: I mean, I think anyone in the hospitality industry knows how complex that is and how utterly impressive it is.

Amanda: So thanks for sharing.

Amanda: And I think what then becomes even more impressive is the fact that you’re then able to run a loyalty proposition across that complexity.

Amanda: So let’s jump straight into it.

Amanda: So we are a loyalty communication program and podcast.

Amanda: Tell us about Marriott Bonvoy.

Jitendra: Yeah, it’s been an exciting journey.

Jitendra: So if you remember, we had with Starwood and with Marriott, we had three different programs.

Jitendra: Starwood had SPG, which was world class and loved by world warriors.

Jitendra: We had Marriott Rewards, which came even earlier.

Jitendra: So it had quite a bit of history and innovation there.

Jitendra: And then we had Ritz-Carlton Rewards as well.

Jitendra: So when we brought the companies together in 2018, we did a lot of work to bring these three programs together behind the scenes.

Jitendra: And then it was in early 2019 that we launched Marriott Bonvoy as the new loyalty program for the company, which covered all the brands.

Jitendra: And I actually remember this distinctly.

Jitendra: So we launched in mid February 2019.

Jitendra: And one of the first places where we activated Marriott Bonvoy was at the Oscars.

Jitendra: So that was quite a moment.

Jitendra: And then we had about a year where we launched the global marketing campaign.

Jitendra: And then rents back into the pandemic.

Jitendra: So we’ve had quite a journey since then to work our way through the pandemic, make sure the program was protected, the company was protected.

Jitendra: It was used as a valuable tool to drive performance for the company, but also make sure that members found value and stuck by us right through that period.

Jitendra: And we’re now back to normal after the pandemic.

Jitendra: But it’s been an interesting journey.

Jitendra: So we are still the largest hotel loyalty program in the world.

Jitendra: But the vision was that when we combine these three programs, it wasn’t really just to build a hotel program.

Jitendra: It was to build a loyalty ecosystem and a platform.

Jitendra: So we offer 30 brands, 10,000 destinations, but it’s also so much more than hotels.

Jitendra: We’ve got hotels in all the different tier glasses from the best and largest luxury portfolio to premium and select, to mid-scale, but we’ve gone beyond that.

Jitendra: So we have homes and villas, we’ve got Ritz-Carlton yachts, we’ve got tours and activities, we’ve got F&B when you’re not staying in the hotels.

Jitendra: We’ve got credit cards.

Jitendra: So it’s a whole gamut of different things.

Jitendra: The one thing I will say is, and this is something I’ve always firmly believed in.

Jitendra: So growing up, I was a huge fan of Star Trek and Spock.

Jitendra: I idealized Spock because it’s all about the logic.

Jitendra: There’s a lot of things about the loyalty program that speak to logic and the rational.

Jitendra: But the way you truly build an amazing loyalty program is build loyalty beyond reason.

Jitendra: The only way you can do that is by going to emotion, and going to the heart.

Jitendra: We do that in many ways, by delivering on the promises that we make to members when they show up at our hotels.

Jitendra: But it’s also little things like moments, right?

Jitendra: We have moments opportunities which give you access to money can’t buy experiences.

Jitendra: And that’s where we really see the stickiness and that love for the program grow.

Jitendra: So I think it’s been an interesting journey.

Jitendra: It’s been a great balance.

Jitendra: But that’s what loyalty is about, right?

Jitendra: It’s about how you balance love and money.

Amanda: Love and money.

Amanda: I love it.

Amanda: Absolutely.

Amanda: I think what you say there, loyalty beyond reason, reminds me of the title of my own book, Blind Loyalty.

Amanda: Because you could argue-

Jitendra: It’s a lovely book, by the way.

Amanda: Thank you.

Amanda: Thank you.

Amanda: You could argue that blind loyalty is like, is that really loyalty or is it just blindness and you’re irrational about it?

Amanda: Maybe that’s what happens when it touches the heart.

Amanda: So if you can, JJ, just give us a little bit of a simple explanation of the actual value proposition.

Amanda: Like how do members earn?

Amanda: Is it a tiered-based program?

Amanda: Like just because I know globally the loyalty industry, whether it’s frequent flyer programs or hotel companies, they typically have had some similarity, but we’ve seen that obviously loyalty explode across every single industry.

Amanda: So let’s get a sense of what Bonvoy offers.

Jitendra: Yeah.

Jitendra: So when we created Marriott Bonvoy from the three distinct programs, we want to make sure we took the best bits of what SPG had to offer as well as Marriott Rewards and Ritz-Carlton Rewards.

Jitendra: So it is a tier-based program.

Jitendra: So if you look at the rational benefits that are part of the program, we have six tiers.

Jitendra: You can join as a member for free and instantly start getting benefits, whether that’s Wi-Fi access at hotels or better member rates, which are the best that you would find online, access to a world-class app that you can chat to the hotel with, make requests.

Jitendra: So there’s a whole gamut of things that come with being just a base member.

Jitendra: But then as you climb up the tiers, we have silver, gold, platinum, titanium, ambassador, which is the highest tier that we offer.

Jitendra: Those are the rational benefits that come with it.

Jitendra: As you climb the tiers, the benefits get richer and better.

Jitendra: But beyond that, I spoke to the emotional benefits.

Jitendra: I think that’s where things get interesting.

Jitendra: With the experiences that you get on property, but also with moments.

Jitendra: I think moments is a great experiential platform.

Jitendra: I think if I think back to last year, just in this region, I think we probably had members redeem 80 to 100 million points just on those moments.

Jitendra: Again, incredibly balanced rational and emotional benefits.

Jitendra: The platform keeps growing.

Jitendra: I talked about the fact that you can access hotels, but you can also access yachts and homes and villas and tours and activities.

Jitendra: I think the piece that speaks to is, so here’s the funny thing, right?

Jitendra: So when you talk to people who don’t travel a lot, they think there’s a lot of glamour in travel.

Jitendra: I think you and I both know when you’re on the road constantly, there’s actually a lot of friction in travel.

Jitendra: The interesting thing that programs can do is, it’s not just about being top of wallet and top of mind.

Jitendra: It’s about how do you take that friction away from the travel and really make it a pleasurable experience, right?

Jitendra: So anything that we can do with partnerships, with gods, with all the experiences that we offer to make travel amazing again is what the program is all about.

Amanda: I love it.

Amanda: Honestly, I think the moments piece as well is a beautiful example of it just allowing customers to really truly appreciate the value of what they’re getting from Bonvoy.

Amanda: I remember I interviewed you a while back on the Blind Loyalty Challenge and you talked about the Hero’s Stay, that first redemption when the family actually feels a benefit because the husband or wife are traveling, the friction, the exhaustion of corporate or business travel, and then you can actually bring your family together to celebrate through a redemption stay.

Amanda: I often think about those words you said, like that Hero’s Stay, it’s incredibly powerful.

Jitendra: Absolutely, that’s the payoff, right?

Jitendra: I mean, you’re working the whole year and traveling, you’re on the road.

Jitendra: I mean, you don’t really care about an amazing room when you’re traveling alone for work, right?

Amanda: Yeah.

Jitendra: I think it’s when you’re with your family and when you’re on your holiday that you really want that amazing experience.

Jitendra: So that’s what we’ve got to deliver with the program.

Amanda: Yeah.

Amanda: Super.

Amanda: So I think what I’d love you to share with us is how is it doing?

Amanda: Like there’s a lot of KPIs in the loyalty industry that vary by industry, but some are fairly similar across industries.

Amanda: How does Bonvoy do?

Amanda: Like what are the key KPIs you can share with us?

Amanda: What is, how’s the performance of the program going?

Jitendra: Yeah.

Jitendra: So we look at a whole bunch of KPIs, right?

Jitendra: And both primary and secondary.

Jitendra: I think the KPIs that I can talk about.

Jitendra: So we’ve talked about this in our recent earnings release as well.

Jitendra: One is the size of the program.

Jitendra: So I think at the end of June, we were close to about 248 million members.

Jitendra: So roughly a quarter billion members already now as we speak.

Jitendra: So the program has been growing quite, quite quickly.

Jitendra: If I recall correctly, I think when we launched Marriott Bonvoy, we were close to about 130 million.

Jitendra: So since early 2019 to now, we’ve almost doubled the program base.

Jitendra: So that’s amazing.

Jitendra: But then on the flip side, it’s not just about quantity, right?

Jitendra: It’s about quality and what actually the program brings through to the business.

Jitendra: And one way we look at that, and we talk about publicly as well, is how many of our rooms globally are occupied by our members.

Jitendra: Yeah.

Jitendra: A few years ago, we were close to about half the rooms globally occupied by members.

Jitendra: And now, globally, we’re closer to about two in every three rooms.

Jitendra: So two-third of our rooms globally today are occupied by members.

Amanda: That’s a wonderful start.

Amanda: I often refer to that loyalty contribution in revenue terms.

Amanda: And we find that in retail, pretty much the same start of about two-thirds shows a solid program.

Amanda: And then we’re seeing some great programs at 80 percent.

Amanda: Like I interviewed last month, Rob Pope from MyA1 and they’re in excess of 80 percent of revenue is through the loyalty program.

Amanda: But we always say if you can get about two-thirds, but I think it’s the first time I’ve heard hospitality state that it’s about two-thirds.

Amanda: But your numbers-

Jitendra: And that’s the aspiration, right?

Jitendra: We want to get to 100 percent if we could.

Jitendra: That’s going to be quite the journey, but we’re committed to it.

Amanda: But you talk about Marriott Bonvoy being the biggest loyalty program in the hospitality industry.

Amanda: I wonder if we could ever find out, is it the biggest program, one of the biggest in the world, like 248 million members?

Amanda: I certainly on this program haven’t interviewed any brand that has more than 248 million members.

Jitendra: Let’s hope so, yeah.

Jitendra: Honestly, we’re definitely the biggest in hospitality, but yeah.

Amanda: Because you think about the biggest, the global airlines, they may be boasting 40, 50 million, maybe some of the big US carriers are more than that.

Amanda: But I think that’s a challenge we need to solve to find out.

Jitendra: Well, we’ve got to keep running, right?

Jitendra: We want to stay ahead as well.

Jitendra: So that’s something that we’re quite laser focused on.

Amanda: Yeah.

Amanda: JJ, you talked earlier about an ecosystem.

Amanda: So Bonvoy becoming an ecosystem, whether it’s to take friction out or to add value for customers.

Amanda: And obviously partnerships are key in that.

Amanda: Hospitality Travel is absolutely brilliant industry for making partnerships really work for members.

Amanda: Tell us, talk us through the partnership strategy for Bonvoy.

Jitendra: Sure.

Jitendra: So we look at it in sort of three different areas, right?

Jitendra: We’ve got enterprise partnerships, we’ve got financial partnerships, and we’ve got marketing partnerships.

Jitendra: And they serve different audiences and needs.

Jitendra: And I’ll give you a few examples.

Jitendra: So, you know, when you talk about enterprise partnerships, these are partners that are closely sort of embedded within the program or have some value attached to the program itself.

Jitendra: A really good example of that is airlines, right?

Jitendra: So we work with over 40 airlines globally.

Jitendra: And about 14 of those are in this region.

Jitendra: We also work with about five or six different airlines on a preferred basis.

Jitendra: So we built really strategic ties with them.

Jitendra: So, you know, the likes of United or Emirates in based out of Dubai.

Jitendra: We’ve also got Cathay, Singapore Airlines, et cetera.

Jitendra: So we go deeper on those preferred partnerships where you can also get beyond sort of currency transfers.

Jitendra: You also have the ability to accelerate getting to status.

Jitendra: There might be other sort of hooks to each of those, which are different by preferred partner like Emirates.

Jitendra: You know, a really good example.

Jitendra: And we worked with them for over 10 years now is probably the only preferred partnership that we have globally that does a double dip.

Jitendra: So you can actually earn both currencies when you stay in our hotels, as well as when you fly with Emirates.

Jitendra: So that’s it’s an amazing value proposition for foreign members.

Jitendra: So, you know, enterprise partnerships, you know, airlines clearly car hire.

Jitendra: So we worked with Sixth internationally, Hertz in the US, but Sixth we worked with for over 25 years.

Jitendra: You know, we’re looking at other categories as well.

Jitendra: For example, we launched Nectar in the UK very recently.

Jitendra: So over the summer, that’s our first retail partnership in the region.

Jitendra: And that’s off to a really, really good start.

Jitendra: And again, it’s very localized, right?

Jitendra: Because Nectar is very specific to the UK.

Jitendra: So we’ve got to go off to these markets and find localized experiences that actually matter to members in that market.

Jitendra: So that’s enterprise.

Jitendra: We also have financial.

Jitendra: So if I think back, I think we’ve got about 30 to 32 co-brand credit card products now in over a dozen markets globally.

Jitendra: So as far as I know, I think that’s probably the largest co-brand portfolio of any hotel company globally today.

Jitendra: And in this region, we have quite a few products as well.

Jitendra: So we’ve had the UAE product for over 10 years now.

Jitendra: We’ve launched with Amex in Saudi a couple of years ago, and we launched with Visa and Al Raji just late last year.

Jitendra: We’ve also launched with QIB in Qatar.

Jitendra: We’ve got an Amex product in the UK.

Jitendra: So we’re constantly on the lookout for financial partnerships as well because the great thing about a co-brand product is that you have it in your wallet throughout the year constantly.

Jitendra: It’s something that allows you to link back our currency to all your everyday spends.

Jitendra: So all that shopping that you’re doing, all that retail pampering that you’re giving yourself translates directly to a holiday, which is absolutely amazing.

Jitendra: So financial partnerships we’re very big on.

Jitendra: And then marketing partnerships as well.

Jitendra: So or perhaps if you want to call them marketing sponsorships more appropriately.

Jitendra: So we have a combination of different things that we do.

Jitendra: So we look at global partners that we have as well as regionally relevant partners.

Jitendra: And the key thing with these is that you have to find the right assets that can then serve the loyalty program and also then you make those available through the moments platform, for example.

Jitendra: So a good example of a marketing sponsorship that we have globally is the Mercedes, AMG F1 Petronas team.

Jitendra: And we’ve worked with them for quite a long time.

Jitendra: So you could have an amazing moment, for example, like being able to hang out with the F1 team from Mercedes on the yachts in Monaco.

Jitendra: So that really gets our elite members growing.

Jitendra: And a lot of these auctions can go well into a few million points for those money can’t buy experiences.

Jitendra: But we’ve also tried to find ways beyond that.

Jitendra: So not just with the elite members, because 95% of moments end up getting captured by elite members because they have the point balances.

Jitendra: We also introduced things like one point drops, which are accessible to anybody.

Jitendra: So if you’re there on that day when the package drops, you have the ability to get that for one point.

Amanda: Wow.

Jitendra: So that’s actually done really, really well.

Jitendra: In fact, we also did that for the sponsorship we had last year with Taylor Swift, the Arrows Tour, and this year we did that with the Beyonce Cowboy Carter Tour as well.

Jitendra: So lots of amazing experiences and these are all enabled by different types of partnerships.

Jitendra: Yeah, lovely.

Amanda: That’s super.

Amanda: But you’re right, actually.

Amanda: You think of like the Formula One experiences with Mercedes, AMG, you expect that to be millions of points potentially.

Amanda: But to offer a one point drop, that’s special because there’s a lot of people out there may want to be more loyalty brand, but simply can’t stay more, but still want to be part of the experience.

Amanda: So great.

Amanda: Well, I certainly learned something today about the other opportunities.

Amanda: I need to start doing the one point drop.

Amanda: Let’s shift gear a little bit, JJ., because we’ve had a couple of conversations previously, and I know anyone who follows you on LinkedIn, and I hope lots of people after today will do so as well.

Amanda: But you’ve got a real passion for AI.

Amanda: Now, I know everyone is talking about AI, and it actually is one of those irritating questions actually when you’re doing a keynote or like, tell us about AI and loyalty.

Amanda: It’s one of my worst questions if someone asks me that.

Amanda: But you’ve got a passion for this for a long time, and I watch you on LinkedIn, and you’re creating some amazing insights about it.

Amanda: So I think let’s start with you personally.

Amanda: Like, what’s your own journey?

Amanda: Why have you got this passion?

Amanda: Where does it come from?

Amanda: Where’s it going?

Jitendra: Well, I’ve always loved technology, right?

Jitendra: So and I’ve always been into science fiction and a whole bunch of other things.

Jitendra: So I love tinkering with new tech and finding practical uses of the tech.

Jitendra: So, you know, it sort of reminds me of the late 90s when I first got my hands on the internet, right?

Jitendra: And that was a game changer, right?

Jitendra: Because you’ve suddenly had access to the whole world and you had this amazing trove of information and you could talk to anybody or go anywhere in the world, right?

Jitendra: Virtually.

Jitendra: And that was a hugely exciting time in my life.

Jitendra: And this, you know, the sort of resurgence of AI, I mean, AI has been around for decades, right?

Jitendra: It’s just that with Gen.AI at the end of 22, there was this spark which sort of opened the eyes to the whole world to say, look, there’s something here, right?

Jitendra: We’ve made significant progress with Gen.AI with the launch of Dali and Chad GPT.

Jitendra: And that sort of got me back into that same old 90s frame of mind around experimentation and excitement.

Jitendra: Because if you think about the innovations that have come in the past, whether it’s railroads or electricity or the internet, AI is on that same scale or even greater.

Jitendra: It’s going to transform everything.

Jitendra: Now, clearly, whenever you have a lot of hype around these things, there’s always a bit of a bubble.

Jitendra: There’s always plenty of scams and hype and things.

Jitendra: There’s going to be plenty of that.

Jitendra: The bubble will pop at some stage, but that doesn’t change the transformative nature of this technology.

Jitendra: It’s a massive unlock, I think, for humanity.

Jitendra: There’s going to be a lot of disruption.

Jitendra: There’s going to be a lot of change.

Jitendra: But I think if you can embrace it and understand it, I think the things that you can do with this tech in any industry, in any profession, in everything that you do personally, on a daily basis are immense.

Amanda: Talk us through that if you can, JJ, because I know, I think all of us at this are probably playing on the edges of it, maybe some more deeply than others.

Amanda: What if you were to sit with some colleagues or friends and say, do these three or five things, and you can really help transform your productivity or insights, where would you lead them?

Amanda: What practical advice would you give us?

Jitendra: Well, if you’d indulge me, so I can talk about AI for ours, right?

Jitendra: I do want to talk about a little bit about where this is potentially headed, and then get into the practical bits.

Jitendra: I think what’s interesting is we think about intelligence in a very one-dimensional fashion because that’s why we have IQ tests, etc.

Jitendra: But that’s only one type of intelligence.

Jitendra: I mean, there’s at least eight or nine different types of intelligence.

Jitendra: If you really look at it closely, there’s linguistic intelligence, there’s the logical aspect of it, there’s musical, there’s kinesthetic, there’s spatial intelligence.

Jitendra: Now, the interesting thing is we always thought that certain aspects of human intelligence were inaccessible to computers, and clearly everything that we’ve seen with AI over the last couple of years has proven that wrong.

Jitendra: Large language models have cracked linguistic intelligence.

Jitendra: They do that really well.

Jitendra: You’ve got music models now, you’ve got reasoning models as well.

Jitendra: We’ve gone beyond this standard large language models to reasoning models that can actually think a bit longer and deeper and have a chain of thought, so they can solve more complex problems.

Jitendra: And with robotics and AI combined, you’re also starting to crack kinesthetic intelligence, spatial intelligence, etc.

Jitendra: So I think there’s quite a few frontiers we’ve gotten through.

Jitendra: So the fact that we’ve been stuck in this ANI phase, which is artificial narrow intelligence, where AI can do specific things really well, but doesn’t have the capability of a human to do general intelligence, that’s sort of the utopia, right?

Jitendra: So that’s where we’re trying to head to, which is getting to AGI, so artificial general intelligence.

Jitendra: Now, there’s a lot of intelligent smart people that will tell you that we can probably get there by 2029 or 2030.

Jitendra: Now, that sounds fairly unrealistic.

Jitendra: Now, I don’t know when that’s going to happen.

Jitendra: Whether it’s five years from now or 25 years from now, I think the key thing is that we are heading to a place where there’s a lot of disruption because you suddenly have, just like you can go into any room and switch on a switch and have electricity and light, you now have that with intelligence.

Jitendra: You have intelligence on tap.

Jitendra: What you can do with that as humanity and as a society is tremendous.

Jitendra: Three really simple examples.

Jitendra: Look at the disruption that we’re going to see or already seeing in medicine.

Jitendra: That’s a space that’s going to be completely disrupted by AI.

Jitendra: Alpha Fold was a really good example of that, where they were able to figure out all the different protein folding possibilities in a matter of years.

Jitendra: That saved, I think Demis Asabas has said this, that saved almost 500 million years of PhD work.

Jitendra: And we did that in a few years.

Jitendra: Medicine is one, education is going to be completely transformed.

Jitendra: But we’ve got to find the right balance there in terms of, how do you not just take this and have it give you answers, but use it as a co-pilot or a companion to help you think deeper and better.

Jitendra: Retail and loyalty and e-commerce is going to be transformed as well.

Jitendra: And it’s not just all these old-fashioned stuff that we’ve done years for now.

Jitendra: We’ve always used this for yield management, we’ve used it for fraud detection, all that machine learning stuff has been around for a while.

Jitendra: But this is now where you can start going deeper on personalization, for example.

Jitendra: So there’s a lot of potential, there’s a lot of new innovative things that will come.

Jitendra: Productivity is probably the best gateway that people should focus on.

Jitendra: So the practical advice I would give people is maybe four things.

Jitendra: One, I would say, get your feet wet, start playing with this tech because unless you play with it, you don’t know what it can do.

Jitendra: This is not something that will work top-down, it is a grassroots technological revolution where people have to understand the capabilities and then apply it to their own daily workflows and daily life.

Jitendra: So I think that means you have to keep adapting and learning.

Jitendra: The second thing I would probably say is, you’ve got to get really wary of what’s possible with the tech, both good and bad, especially the bad, because you’re going to see scams and spam and deepfakes at scale, because they’re very easy to produce now.

Jitendra: So you have to have the safety conversation, both with your teams, as well as your family and your kids, especially to say, how do you get really advanced on media literacy?

Jitendra: And how can you tell what’s real from what’s fake?

Jitendra: I think that’s key.

Jitendra: The third thing I would say is, you’ve got to get really good at asking the right questions.

Jitendra: So gone are the days where memorization and being able to basically spit out whatever you’ve learned in school would suffice, right?

Jitendra: I think where you have intelligence on tap in your pocket for $20 a month, the best PhDs, the best sort of consultants, all of that knowledge is on your phone.

Jitendra: I think you’ve got to get really good at asking the right questions, because the better your questions are, the better the output that you will get from the AI.

Jitendra: And then the final thing I’ll say is, you’ve got to think deeply about what’s ethical and what’s right.

Jitendra: Just because you can do something with AI doesn’t mean you should.

Jitendra: So I think those conversations as a society, as humans, as sort of family, as team members, we need to really get into.

Jitendra: So we can actually deploy this tech for greater human good and help humans connect with other humans, right?

Jitendra: And make our jobs and lives better rather than worse.

Amanda: Incredible.

Amanda: Thank you.

Amanda: I love how you’ve shared those four points.

Amanda: And I think asking the right questions, I mean, just going back to the work that we do as loyalty consultants, we know we’re potentially losing some revenue from clients who wanted us to maybe desktop research the best fuel or banking partnership opportunities.

Amanda: And then we’ve ended up working with the clients and realized we didn’t win the original piece of work, and then they show us the piece of work that you can see as being pushed out of an AI conversation.

Amanda: And the accuracy sometimes is great and other times is shocking based on, I guess, the input data, the input questions.

Amanda: So we’re starting to see it impact our workplace, good and bad as well.

Amanda: So it’s really one of those journeys we’ve all got to find our way in.

Amanda: So if you pull this back to our conversation of Marriott Bonvoy, how is Marriott Bonvoy, how are you with your passion of AI, but broadly speaking is the Bonvoy brand using AI and benefiting for members and the business?

Jitendra: Yeah, Marriott’s a very innovative company, right?

Jitendra: We’re not always the first mover on things because we like to think deeply about things and do them thoughtfully.

Jitendra: So one of the first things that Marriott actually did was we set up something called an AI incubator or a GenAI incubator.

Jitendra: This was in early 23 and we looked across the organization to say, okay, what are all the different use cases that we could go after potentially?

Jitendra: That has since evolved into the AI studio.

Jitendra: We have a team centrally that looks at these opportunities, but it’s also a collaboration across all the regions.

Jitendra: For example, I’m part of that broader team as well that feeds in into the ideas and the use cases and how we bring those to life.

Jitendra: There are things that we’ve done that we can talk about publicly.

Jitendra: Obviously, the space is still evolving, so there’s a lot going on and there are certain things that you’ve got to experiment with that will work, that won’t work.

Jitendra: You’ve got to keep tinkering, as I like to do as well.

Jitendra: One of the things that we’ve talked about is, for example, our Homes and Villas website.

Jitendra: We started testing natural language search on that site quite a while ago, and it’s quite interesting because today, traditional search, you go on to a website and you put in your location and your dates.

Jitendra: There’s not a lot of room for error there and a lot of room for inspiration.

Jitendra: With this, you can now actually just go in and say, look, I want a two-bedroom apartment in Dubai overlooking the sea.

Jitendra: That’s how you would search.

Jitendra: It would then pull up all the inventory that has those attributes or matches your search.

Jitendra: I think that’s been interesting.

Jitendra: We’ve also done quite a lot of work internally around, how do you create using Gen.AI?

Jitendra: Marketing, content, landing pages, emails, etc.

Jitendra: How do you do that responsibly with a human in the loop?

Jitendra: Because you don’t want to just let lose tech that isn’t weighted or you haven’t since checked the output.

Jitendra: It’s always a human in the loop situation.

Jitendra: How do you use this to find knowledge?

Jitendra: Because I think that’s one of the biggest wasters of time in an organization, because you’ve got knowledge spread out all over the place on intranets and documents on people’s computers.

Jitendra: How do you make that available quicker and easier for people?

Jitendra: Finding the right content.

Jitendra: Analyzing as well, I think is another area.

Jitendra: We’ve done that for quite a while.

Jitendra: If you look at revenue management, we have one yield, which is Marriott’s yield management system.

Jitendra: That’s used machine learning for years and years and years.

Jitendra: It has those machine learning models baked in.

Jitendra: But again, we’re trying to go beyond that too.

Jitendra: Then act as well.

Jitendra: This is the year of the AI agent.

Jitendra: There’s a lot of hype around AI agents.

Jitendra: We’re looking at that space as well to say, what can we do that can safely automate certain tasks so that you can actually lean into the human side of our business?

Jitendra: Because that’s always the aim.

Jitendra: It’s human serving humans.

Jitendra: So whatever we can do to use this technology to enable associates to make their jobs better, shift work away from admin and routine, and shift more focus on to the guest, on to each other, on to our partners.

Jitendra: That’s really, I think, the utopia from this, because it’s about the human.

Jitendra: It’s not about the tech.

Jitendra: It’s not about the AI.

Jitendra: It’s about how we do our jobs better and love our jobs.

Jitendra: I think that’s key.

Amanda: And not be threatened by this.

Amanda: Continue to deliver amazing experiences and services, whether it’s under the Marriott brand or other less exciting brands across the world.

Amanda: So, Jojo, as you said, you could talk for days about AI, and I could talk to you for a lot longer because there’s so much to unwrap here, but it’s been incredible.

Amanda: We are coming to the end of our interview time.

Amanda: Is there anything else you want to share with the audience of Loyalty TV and Let’s Talk Loyalty?

Jitendra: I think maybe a good way to wrap up our conversation, because we’ve talked about the human side of the business.

Jitendra: We’ve talked about loyalty.

Jitendra: We’ve talked about technology and AI.

Jitendra: There’s this quote that’s always stuck with me over the years.

Jitendra: It says, the trouble with humanity today is that we’ve got paleolithic emotions, we’ve got medieval institutions, and we’ve got godlike technology.

Jitendra: The rift between those things keep growing.

Jitendra: I think it’s really up to each of us to find ways to bring those things together and reduce those gaps.

Jitendra: So we’ve got to be really thoughtful.

Jitendra: I think the future is human.

Jitendra: It’s not AI.

Jitendra: I think the best technology isn’t the hero of the story.

Jitendra: It sort of blends into the background and enables you to do more.

Jitendra: I think that’s where we want to get to.

Jitendra: But it’s going to take a lot of effort and thought and experimentation to get there.

Jitendra: So it’s not going to be an easy journey, but I think with the talent that we have around the world, with a bit of collaboration, I think we can get there.

Jitendra: So I’m excited about it.

Jitendra: I think it’s a great time to be alive, and both on the loyalty side and the technology side.

Jitendra: And I sometimes feel like I’ve stepped into one of those science fiction novels that I love so much.

Amanda: It’s great.

Amanda: Good.

Amanda: Well, as we grow older, we all want to go straight back to childhood fun.

Amanda: So thank you so much for sharing so much of Bonvoy, but also your personal journey in AI.

Amanda: I think the whole story has interested me, but I’ve been particularly hooked in the last 10 minutes.

Amanda: So JJ, thank you so much for being on Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.

Paula: Thank you, Amanda.

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