Marriott Aurora
Marriott Aurora – an intuitive hotel PMS designed with modularity, responsiveness, and find-ability.
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The Challenge
1.) How might we make hospitality management effective, seamless, and intuitive for Marriott staff?
2.) How might we enable Marriott guests to feel an 11 star experience?
3.) How might we create cohesion across the Marriott hospitality staff?
The Beginning
We started on the project by interviewing Marriott staff. This process allowed us to understand various pain-points across the process of checking guests in, and ensuring that their hotel visit was top of the line no matter the situation.
Gathering this information was critical in ensuring we identified the needs of Marriott as a business and knew which problems could be solved.
The Process
The main problem identified when conducting the UX research was the non-linear workflow the Marriott staff engaged in during the reception interactions. When creating Aurora, this meant it was beneficial to incorporate a system of modular interactions, rather than depending on traditional linear interactions and journey maps. By leveraging systems based thinking and service design, we defined 3 principles that encompassed Aurora's workflow. They are defined as follows:
1. Modularity
Aurora needed to be made from building blocks of systems to achieve true productivity
2. Responsiveness
Aurora needed to perform at the speed of a Marriott staff member. Efficient and thorough, with an emphasis on the hotel guests having their needs met.
3. Find-ability
Aurora needed to be able to assist staff in finding everything from complex hotel reporting to guest birthdays in seconds.
Iteratively Validating User Needs Via Stakeholder Management
We iterated upon these themes leveraging Adobe XD prototypes and by continuously meeting with Marriott senior stakeholders. This proved to be challenging. Every stakeholder had their own set of needs when it came to representing their core users across various areas of the business including management, reception, housekeeping, and maintenance.
We made Aurora the 11 star experience that everyone needed by recognizing and listening to the differences of each individual, validating those needs, and then using them. We were able to formulate a unique and intuitive experience that proved to be useful to our core users.
The Experience
Search should be relevant, scalable and fluid.
To create the smart search tool, we drew on insights from Marriott receptionists to help display essential data at a glance right in the dashboard. Our smart search provides instant access to guest details including status, room, and reservation information. The tool highlights fluid interaction design, modular placement, and customizable hotkeys, allowing users to enjoy seamless and persistent access to vital information.
Great service should be celebrated.
We created a gamified system for Marriott staff career growth that recognizes and rewards great service. The career profile drawer offers a concise view of each staff member’s career path and successful case streak. By showcasing success metrics and allowing staff to save career points for rewards, this feature incentivizes performance and provides a valuable metric system for property management.
Digital Sticky Notes
This is a feature to replace non-digital sticky notes used by Marriott staff to embed important information directly into the system. Staff can move digital notes anywhere on the dashboard, providing a fluid, modular, and personalized experience. This ensures clean workspaces, enhances scalability and security, and keeps notes individualized to each staff member’s user profile, preventing confusion in shared workspaces.
Gifting
A gifting interface was added to include a heartwarming way for hotel staff to surprise their guests. The quick gift panel seamlessly pops out from the side of the guest profile, enabling staff to easily award rewards points, drinks, and other vouchers. This feature provides a simple yet powerful way to enhance guest satisfaction and create memorable stays.
Quick Cases & Messaging
A quick case and messaging interface to streamline collaboration among Marriott staff. By visiting a guest’s profile, staff can see key actions like room inspections before arrival. The quick case interface allows staff to request actions from team members, such as housekeeping, and provide brief context in a pop-out panel beside the guest profile. These cases are then sent to the designated case owner and integrated into a chat system, fostering asynchronous collaboration and seamless workflows. This new system offers a significant improvement over the previous case structure by enhancing detail, notifications, and overall efficiency.
Room Changes
A system that makes changing rooms for guests a breeze. With just a few taps in the side panel, Marriott staff can easily select a new room based on availability within the property. This system allows for quick reassignment when a room isn’t ready or offers an effortless way to upgrade a guest’s room. Once a room is assigned, staff can print the room keys immediately, transforming what was once a painstaking process into a seamless experience, greatly improving the guest’s experience and efficiency for the hotel staff.
The Impact
All Marriott stakeholders were thrilled with the final design. After our contract with them was over they began development on the Aurora platform based on the strategy we had delivered.
The Learnings
Users create their own systems when the one they use is not meeting their needs.
When the existing hospitality management system prior to Aurora failed the staff, they would find ways to "make it work" with their own methods. This creates significant risk to the business involved, as their self-made systems may not be secure or efficient. To combat these rogue systems, we learned that a flexible system with many pathways can allow the user to create their system within a secure space. Examples of this learning in Aurora were the custom sticky notes with modular placement, pinned recently checked in guests, and hotkey displays throughout the experience.
Hospitality is a connected business, each staff member is a part of a bigger system.
The connections between the front desk, housekeeping, and back-end support are critical to ensuring a smooth guest experience in a hotel. By taking a systematic and service design approach to a UX project, we can maintain and improve these connections on the digital experience. Examples of this learning in Aurora were the chat features and the fluid integration of cases.