Marriott Works to Avoid Similar Incidents After Listing Tibet, Taiwan as Countries
Xu Wei
DATE:  Jan 18 2018
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
Marriott Works to Avoid Similar Incidents After Listing Tibet, Taiwan as Countries Marriott Works to Avoid Similar Incidents After Listing Tibet, Taiwan as Countries

(Yicai Global) Jan. 18 -- Marriott International Inc., which recently came under fire for listing Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan as countries, has put measures in place to avoid similar incidents in the future, Chinese newspaper Jiefang Daily quoted Craig Smith, president and managing director of Asia-Pacific, as saying.

The hotel conglomerate came into the spotlight after categorizing the four regions as countries in a survey it sent to loyalty members and in the Chinese version of its app's signup page.

Shortly after the incident, the Twitter account of Marriott Rewards, a member benefits program the hotel chain operates, liked a tweet posted by overseas Tibetan separatists supporting Tibetan independence, further infuriating Chinese consumers. 

Through internal investigations, the hotel found that an external supplier made the mistakes in the survey, and an individual employee liked the Twitter post, Smith said.

The two incidents are not connected despite the proximity of their occurrence. "As a multinational company that operates in more than 80 countries worldwide, we respect and will firmly defend China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," he said. "We've made a mistake. That's it. We'll not shirk our responsibilities and will correct it immediately."

Marriott will improve its information approval process, revamp its organizational structure, give the Chinese team more supervisory responsibilities especially concerning China related publicity materials, more closely manage third-party organizations to ensure compliance, introduce more user-friendly feedback and complaint channels for Chinese consumers, and step up training in Chinese laws and country-specific information in the next 90 days.

A global questionnaire supplier that Marriott has collaborated with in the past provided the surveys, Smith said, adding that it was not the joint venture that Marriott set up with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s Alitrip last year.

"I believe, if we found a more localized team and supplier earlier, the problems wouldn't have occurred. This means that going forward we must ramp up localization inputs and operations and assign more supervisory responsibilities to the Chinese team. Not only should we avoid making mistakes in local operations, we also need to do the right thing with everything we do with the help of the local team and supplier."

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Keywords:   Marriott,HOTEL