“After using BuzzyBooth, our restaurant The View has over 45K photos taken, 12K shared, and over 4.5M impressions. The Marriott Marquis lobby has over 11K photos taken, 3K shared, and 1.1M impressions thanks to BuzzyBooth”

Thomas Ponesse – Marriott Marquis NYC.

The Challenge

Maintaining A Personal Guest Experience During Revenue Decline

The year was 2012 when Thomas Ponesse joined the Marriott Hotels chain as a Food & Beverage supervisor.

Ever since he graduated from university, although majoring in Science, he always had a passion for numbers.

In September 2014, Thomas transitioned into his first accounting role as a General Accountant and moved into becoming the Director of Finance for Marriott Marquis in New York City.

Constructed in the late 70s, Marriott Marquis is a landmark in Times Square, NY. Standing high at 48 stories and well known for their atrium lobby and “The View,” a fine dining restaurant with 360° revolving experience, it is one of the highest in NY.

Thomas started to notice some of the challenges that Marriott was facing.

Like most hotels in the travel and leisure industry, occupancy and filling rooms is among the most troublesome issues.

Although US hotels are increasing their revenue per available room at a steady rate of 0.9% for the past decade, the overall growth rate is still low, and in cities like NY, it’s dropping.

According to Skift, hotel revenues in NYC fell 3.8% in 2019, which was the worst outcome since 2015.

Based on data analyzed by STR, the revenue per available room RevPAR is on a declining increase rate for the last ten years.

There was also a slight increase in the average daily rate (ADR) across the industry, but unfortunately, that was not keeping up with the rise in the country’s inflation rate.

Surging costs in hotels and the increase in wages were among the issues that took the matter out from a frying pan and into the fire.

Another significant problem that Marriott Marquis was facing is the lack of personalization when it comes to customer experience.

For major chains like Marriott, it can be challenging to bypass specific standards and offer guests a more personal stay.

Thomas was faced with a real challenge and needed to find a solution to maintain the hotel’s growth in revenues and offer a more engaging feel for their guests.

The Solution

A Fully Engaging Photo Kiosk with An Intelligent Marketing System

After a few months of struggle to find a resolution, Thomas came across BuzzyBooth.

A fully automated marketing system that makes it possible to capture leads, get referrals, and increase positive reviews for the hotel all in one easy to manage platform. It all starts with the Photo Booth Kiosk.

They would have the option to choose from any of the interactive filters that come with the kiosk.

Once someone takes a photo or a video, the system asks them to enter their phone number and email address and sends them the media straight to their phone.  

Meanwhile, the hotel would collect those leads and later re-engage with the guest with any promotion or special offers.

The real value, though, is the branded photos and videos.

Once people start to share those images on their social media accounts, the hotel’s branded name acts as a free promotion, which will generate more leads and referrals for the business.

Another major plus is the automatic review request.

A few minutes after the guest receives their image or video, they get a short message asking them to leave a review.

Once the guest submits their feedback, the system automatically notifies the hotel. If the review is positive, it can be released to go on platforms like Google or Yelp.

In case of a negative one, the hotel would be notified and would have the option to reach out to the guest and resolve the issue. 

That resulted in a boost for positive ratings.

Thomas wanted to test out how good the system works in the View Restaurant, so they installed the first unit there.

The big success led to deploying another booth in the hotel lobby.

“After a few months of using BuzzyBooth in The View restaurant, and seeing how much our customers loved it, we decided to get another one and put in our lobby area so that while guests are waiting for their check-in or their ride, they can engage with the booth,” Thomas said.

The outcome?

The Result

1.17M Impressions and 8,160 Contacts Collected

In only four months, The View has managed to get over 3,000 photos taken by the BuzzyBooth Photo Kiosk, and they’ve collected over 2,500 leads with over 4.53M impressions.

That also had a considerable boost in their positive feedback from visitors which exceeded 190 positive reviews.

The one installed in the Hotel Lobby was nothing short of massive success.

Over the next few months, the solution helped the hotel capture over 8,000 contacts. The photos and videos shared 3,280 times, and in total, Marriott Marquis managed to gain 1.17M impressions all over social media accounts of their guests and contacts.

The review feature helped boost the number of 5-star ratings to over 155 on Google, Yelp, and Facebook.

Over the next few months, the solution helped the hotel with brand exposure, which increased their ADR and RevPAR.

If you are looking to get similar results, click the button below to sign up for a free consultation.

“We used BuzzyBooth at The View for four months, and we were able to get over 3K+ photos taken and collect over 2500 customer contacts. After adding it to the hotel lobby, we’ve collected over 32K+ customer contacts for email and SMS marketing.”

Mark Custodio, Pacific Palm Resort.