TCS Talks Tech – Season 2   

Episode 6 with Amit Manurkar  

John O’Leary: Welcome back to TCS Talks Tech Season two, the Era of AI Experiences, I’m John O’Leary.   

Andrew Corcione: And I’m Andrew Corcione.   

John O’Leary: And today we’re honored to have I Amit Manurkar, vice president of digital content and MarTech for Marriott International joining us. Thank you.  

Amit Manurkar: Thank you for having me.   

Andrew Corcione: Yeah, we had to have you because John and I are actually staying at a Marriott property close by.  

John O’Leary: How could we not?  

Andrew Corcione: So, there you go.   

Amit Manurkar: We do appreciate your loyalty. Thanks for staying with us and I hope we are doing everything in our power to make your stay enjoyable.   

Andrew Corcione: Yeah, it’s been great.   

John O’Leary: How can you not have a great experience at a Marriott at the conference for experiences? Hopefully we give you a good podcast experience in returned.  

Andrew Corcione: Right.   

John O’Leary: But Amit, before we kind of get started into the discussion around AI, I would love to just hear a little bit about your career journey and what you do for Marriott and maybe a bit about, you know, how you partner with TCS.   

Amit Manurkar: Absolutely. So, I’m from India. That’s where I sort of started my career, kind of have a bit of an entrepreneurial roots, kind of right out of high school, and kind of took a—let’s call it a gap year. I wanted to explore things before, you know, before making up my mind in terms of what exactly I wanted to do. Technology has always been an area of interest, and I think that gap year helped me quite a bit to actually realize that technology is the calling. And that’s how the journey started. Just like any technologists, it was all about coding, getting good at it. But even then, I think, I don’t know, for some reason I always had a keen sense of who I’m building it for, right? And so that is that is I would say it’s still true today. So as I sort of progressed through the career, kind of moved a little bit more into the data analytics side of the house and sort of that became, I would say, foundation of pretty much everything I do. And I feel like that’s a good way to do things, you know, be informed by data that oftentimes takes a lot of the emotion out of the picture and help you stay rational. Not to be confused with lack of passion, yeah?   

Andrew Corcione: It’s a good point.   

Amit Manurkar: But I think it makes sense to sort of doubt yourself at times and then sort of look at the data and look at it again and to make sure that what you are doing is the right thing. So that I would say is how my career has evolved and I would say in the past decade or so, my focus has been a lot more on the, you know, enabling sort of digital experiences across the arch, both in the B2B as well as the B2C space, especially with Marriott. So, it has been, it has been an interesting journey.  

John O’Leary: Sounds like it. Do you—I guess if we were to put you on the spot right now—do you consider yourself more of a technologist or more of a marketer or a real hybrid—a hybrid model?   

Amit Manurkar: Yeah. I mean, it is tough to take technology out of, let’s call it digital business, right? I mean, digital, by its nature is the business of technology where you are using technology in a very pronounced way to understand the customer and then to create an experience that works for that specific customer. So yeah, I wouldn’t like to choose. I would say it’s a hybrid thing and you need to bring both the technology as well as sort of the functional aspect of that altogether to be truly successful.   

John O’Leary: It seems like as we’re having these conversations, you know, on the podcast here at Adobe Summit, that that is sort of the trend. It’s not necessarily agnostic about technology, but believing that art and science I think is how we are talking about it in a previous episode.   

Amit Manurkar: Yeah. I guess that’s another good way to put it.   

John O’Leary: Great. So, you know, as we’re talking, before we kicked off the podcast, we said we’re staying at the Marriott here in Vegas. And so, you know, when you think about the ways that Marriott sort of powers that experience, whether it’s keyless entry or, you know, all these other sort of features that make a frictionless experience. How, I guess, how important is it for you to make sure that that web experience is a true journey from the web to the hotel to be on to the destination?  

Amit Manurkar: Sure. So, you know, again, I kind of go back to what I said earlier. Like, everything starts with understanding your customer. Right? That’s the step one. So, you know, assuming you are coming on one of our digital assets, be Marriott dot com or app kind of providing you what we believe would be the most relevant recommendation for you, be it a destination or a hotel or a room within that hotel. Right? For example, if we believe you are a family looking for like a long stay vacation, maybe it’s best to show you an ocean front room instead of the lowest available rate. So it all starts with understanding who your guest is and anticipating what they might be looking for, and sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. But once that is done, it is also important to sort of carry that experience through sort of what we define as kind of the pre-arrival stage. Right. I mean, there is a lot of anticipation that gets built, especially when it’s a leisure trip or it’s an important business trip, for that matter. So how do we sort of take you through that pre-arrival journey until you actually arrive at the property? And then within that journey, how am I sharing the most relevant information, be it the amenities that are available at that specific property—and our properties do an amazing job of having these amenities that are truly world class, so it’s important to make sure that guests are completely aware of what is available to them. But then also, outside of our hotels or what else is available to do, you know, especially with our partnership programs with some of the best restaurants in the world, for example, what can you do to, for example, maybe, you know, rent a car to explore the destination that you are heading out to? So all of that is kind of, again, part of the overall pre-arrival and then in-stay experience journey. And we, you know, we want to make sure we are delivering you what you would feel like a highly curated experience for that specific stay.   

Andrew Corcione: Now people will be traveling for business and then for personal, right? And they could almost be two completely different personas, right? You’re traveling with the family, with kids, and it’s totally different than you’re going on a business trip where you need a specific location. Like what do you do in marketing to kind of help bridge that gap between a dual persona, right, kind of experience, I guess?   

Amit Manurkar: Absolutely. I think, you know, and I do this personally all the time, right? I mean, when I’m traveling for business, I have very specific requirements, right? I mean, give me a hotel close to where I’m, you know, whatever the place of business is, make sure it has a decent enough gym and like, that’s pretty much it   

Andrew Corcione: The same.  

John O’Leary: You’re talking Andrew’s language right there.   

Andrew Corcione: Oh, yeah, I was I was on the treadmill this morning!  

Amit Manurkar: I haven’t done this here in Vegas at all. Yeah, but anyway, I digress. So I think it again goes back to anticipating what kind of trip you are taking, who you are? Now, if you are a signed-in member and we have your consent, then I think we have a very good idea in that case who you are, and based on your past behavior, it is much easier to predict what this trip might look like. You know, depending on like, are you booking like a Tuesday to Thursday type of trip or is it more like a Friday to Monday type of a trip? Right? And I think, you know, we use all these signals and try our best to anticipate what kind of trip it is. It also depends on what kind of hotel you are searching and all of that. So we take all these signals into account before we make a determination about the type of trip. And so, I think, if you talk in terms of personas, we are essentially creating those personas on the fly, depending on your most recent behavior.   

Andrew Corcione: Gotcha.   

Amit Manurkar: Does that makes sense?   

Andrew Corcione: Yeah.   

John O’Leary: So as we start to talk about AI in these experiences, looking ahead, do you sort of view AI as scaling sort of the personalization that you’re already doing, or is it more of a transformative experience?  

Amit Manurkar: I think it is a bit of everything, right? So just like I think almost every other company, I mean, we will use AI as an efficiency play, right? As like there is today, if it takes us multiple modules and a lot of manual work to determine the persona, maybe AI just simplifies that process, makes it a lot more efficient, and I believe that would be sort of the step one. But then, that is a step one. I think what we really want to do is use AI to then truly transform the type of experience that we offer to our customers. Now, what exactly it is going to look like? I don’t think anyone has defined it yet. We are doing a combination of sort of the pilots and experiments to sort of determine what that best experience looks like. For example, just to make things real, like at any given point, we would have 10,000 plus active offers.  

John O’Leary: Wow.  

Amit Manurkar: I mean, that’s a lot to choose from. So like, can I use, you know, AI or machine learning to provide you that one offer or two offers that I believe would be the most relevant for you. So those are the kind of things where, like instead of making it your problem to sift through those thousands and thousands of offers to, like, really get to, what do you want? Can I be more proactive in sort of giving you the content, giving you the offer, that that would make the most sense to you? So those are the kind of initiative we’re going to focus on. But I think we are still far from redefining the experience using AI.   

John O’Leary: Will be interesting to ask you the same question again next year, right? With how fast everything’s moving.   

Amit Manurkar: Absolutely. I mean, and we discussed this during our panel yesterday, and the speed at which, you know, the generative AI is evolving is just amazing. I mean, I grew up with Internet and, you know, it was many decades-long journey for Internet to truly transform our lives.   

Andrew Corcione: But just logging on felt like that. The noise, right? Like the dial up noise—that was an eternity.   

Amit Manurkar: Yes, I still remember that. But like, going from that to now, having the entire world in our palm, right on our phones. I mean, it has taken multiple decades. I mean in AI, we are seeing progress on a on an hourly basis if I compare it to the Internet. So I’m sure like one year, it feels like a very long time, so hopefully the next time we talk, I will have a lot more to share in terms of how we have truly transformed the customer experience through generative AI and legacy AI capabilities.  

Andrew Corcione: Yeah. So that actually brings up an interesting question about like the length of campaign, that if technology is changing that quickly, like by the hour, right? If you’re running a campaign, how long does that last? Is it a month? Is it two months? Is it like… how do you because next week we could be able to do something really cool?  

Amit Manurkar: Yeah. I’ll take it even a step further. I think we’ll probably just evolve the concept of campaigns completely. I mean, today campaigns by design are targeting segments of customers and not necessarily an individual customer. I mean, with the with the power that AI brings, I’m thinking we should like, we need to invent a brand-new concept, like where campaigns are not what we have traditionally considered to be campaigns. Like it’s a truly 1 to 1 personalization on every single visit, every single time, based on what we believe is the right offering for you.   

Andrew Corcione: All right. So you heard it here first. Amit says that we should kill the campaign. That is his idea for the future of marketing. Transform it.  

Amit Manurkar: No! I love the campaign!  

Andrew Corcione: Transform it. Yeah, but it doesn’t have the nice alliteration, right? And as communicators, as marketers, right, I think we could all agree alliteration is typically the best, right, isn’t it?   

Amit Manurkar: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. We need to iterate our way to get to a place where the guest truly feels that they are getting a highly personalized, highly curated experience on every single visit independent of how they are interacting with Marriott, be it on our digital assets, be it at the property, be it on a call, be it, you know just looking at a fun Marriott ad on social media.  

Andrew Corcione: Yeah. That’s great that it’s more sort of the journey right, I know that that’s used a lot, but it really is that it’s no longer a campaign which has a defined start and end. It’s just this evolution—it’s this evolving relationship that people will have with brands like Marriott.   

Amit Manurkar: Yep.   

John O’Leary: It’s very interesting, and this idea of the 1-to-1 sort of always on engagement. I guess does a challenge start to become how do you provide the consistent brand experience if so much personalization is happening at the end of the day? Or is it simply that, that personalization shows that Marriott cares about me and wants me to have this superior experience?  

Amit Manurkar: So I don’t think it’s a compromise, right? It’s not either or, I think. I mean, personalization is not in isolation. I mean, we want to make sure that the brand voice is still getting carried through, right? I mean, the way, say, one of our brands, Ritz-Carlton, that the voice of that brand is very different from an equally iconic brand of St Regis. Right? I mean, both are top-most luxury brand in that space, but two very different voices. And I believe even today, we do a pretty good job of pulling that brand voice through every single personalization. So I really don’t see that as, again as I said, like, it’s not either or. It’s like as we are personalizing, we are also maintaining the brand voice, you know, because there is just something so unique to every single brand. It’s not just a hotel, it’s not just the hotel room, it’s what that brand is bringing to you. That’s what the customers kind of truly care about.   

John O’Leary: So just because you started mentioning the different properties, what’s your favorite Marriott property to stay at?  

Amit Manurkar: That’s a tough one. I mean, we have just so many amazing properties. But if I absolutely have to choose one, I would say, like our family especially loved the Ritz-Carlton, Maui. Yeah, it is an amazing property, amazing views, I mean, Maui is just such a special place anyway. And when you add, like, the Ritz-Carlton hospitality to it, it’s just a truly different experience.  

John O’Leary: I have to put that at the top of my list.   

Andrew Corcione: So what would be an experience that you’ve had either recently or in Maui that has sort of surprised you that it was so good and personalized? Right? Because it’s interesting, since you’re in the business. So like how do you impress people that see behind the curtain?   

Amit Manurkar: Yeah. I would say it’s like, it’s tough to point out to one, right? I think the thing about experiences are they are becoming just part of the DNA, right, of how we do things, how we deliver those guest services. But you know, small things like, you know, if you have say your birthday coming up during one of your stays and just getting that handwritten note from the team of the hotel like, you know, wishing you happy birthday, I mean, that just feels so great.  

John O’Leary: That feels magical.   

Andrew Corcione: No, that’s cool. That’s very cool.   

Amit Manurkar: Right? Or, just knowing that you are celebrating one of your key anniversaries at our property and like, having a gift basket in the room, you know, as you open the door, that just changes it completely. That kind of loyalty it inspires, it’s just unmatched.  

John O’Leary: So we’re just about at time ,Amit, so we love to sort of wrap these up by asking, you know, for someone who’s listening right now and maybe wants to get into hospitality and digital content and MarTech, any advice for someone who might want to follow your footsteps?   

Amit Manurkar: Sure. I think, yeah, again, I don’t think I’ve done anything unique. It’s, you know, it’s about just being passionate about whatever you want to do, you know, sort of putting 100% of your efforts in that. And that’s at least what I have done. Every job I’ve had, every job I have wanted to have, I made sure that I do everything in my power to learn about it. And once I get it, to continue to learn about it, because learning never, ever, ever stops, and just keep giving it my 100%. So I would say that sounds simple, but I feel like it’s very effective, and so that would be, that would be my advice.   

John O’Leary: I think it’s rare to see people live it, right? But when we’re talking about a summit about experiences, right, you actually have to care about the experience you deliver, so I think that comes through very well in what you’re saying. So, Amit, thank you so much for joining us.   

Amit Manurkar: Thank you.  

John O’Leary: Hope you have a great rest of your Adobe summit.  

Amit Manurkar: Thank you very much.