Marriott’s Revenue Management Advisory Services Streamline Operations Across Its Portfolio with Smartsheet

Marriott’s Revenue Management Advisory Services (RMAS) organization plays a key role in the success of Marriott International, one of the world’s leading hotel chains. RMAS provides revenue management advisory services that help drive topline revenue allowing leadership at Marriott-branded properties to focus on delivering extraordinary customer service. RMAS assists over 2,267 hotels in the U.S. and Canada. The RMAS Bench Team supports Revenue Managers by taking care of their hotels while streamlining RMAS deliverables and keeping stakeholders happy during inevitable transition periods. “Our team is responsible for creating a seamless transition whenever revenue managers are absent to ensure we continue to drive revenue and support our stakeholders,” says Kristina Koval, RMAS Bench Director at Marriott International. “To make that happen, we use Smartsheet to provide RMAS Revenue Managers with updates regarding upcoming changes and collaborate and communicate with General Managers, Directors of Sales, Directors of Operations, Front Office Managers, and other stakeholders.”

Prior to adopting Smartsheet, RMAS used a variety of channels and tools to communicate project updates, audits, and task force assignments, including but not limited to emails, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations. “There was no centralized platform, and tracking was inconsistent and rather chaotic,” Kristina says. “Everyone worked on different projects, but there was a lack of visibility into the real-time status of these projects or potential overlapping efforts. It felt like we were operating in the dark and spending time on unnecessary emails therefore, we wanted to find a way to streamline our processes to drive operational efficiency.”

Streamlining Revenue Management for Thousands of Hotels

RMAS had used Smartsheet internally for several years, and the company’s leadership team – Tracy Gerlach and Angela Davis – spearheaded the Smartsheet adoption initiative by empowering Stephanie Neville-Cannon and Kristina Koval to build a Smartsheet infrastructure to support RMAS's needs. “We quickly saw how Smartsheet could streamline our processes,” Kristina says.

RMAS now leverages Smartsheet to support its operations and consolidate information across a diverse range of projects, impacting over 2,000 hotels and 350+ RMAS team members. 

“We are tracking hundreds of thousands of rows of information of hotel data in Smartsheet, ensuring alignment across our team and driving performance to new heights,” says Kristina. 

RMAS relies on Smartsheet dashboards and the Smartsheet Calendar App to give leadership teams visibility into resource distribution for specific projects. For example, Kristina utilizes the Calendar app to visualize her team’s weekly availability based on current project needs.

RMAS also uses Smartsheet to streamline the organization’s onboarding process, which includes creating a checklist for each director to follow specific onboarding steps for new revenue manager hires. RMAS utilizes automated workflows in Smartsheet to automatically process Bench requests. “An automation in Smartsheet notifies me of a request requiring evaluation. I then review the request and assign an appropriate status,” says Kristina. “Upon my approval, another automation assigns a Senior Revenue Manager, which triggers an automatic email containing all the details of the upcoming Bench assignment.” The organization uses Smartsheet to automate project and audit updates. “Leveraging DataMesh functionality, I can quickly see who the Revenue Manager or Area Director is for a specific hotel, so I no longer need to reach out to other parties to validate this information,” Kristina says.

In addition, Marriott RMAS uses Smartsheet AI capabilities to automatically generate formulas within Smartsheet. “Previously, I had to manually create formulas, and some of them would be full paragraphs, and it would take me up to 10 minutes to build each formula,” says Kristina. “With Smartsheet AI tools, I can save valuable time by using the “Generate Formula” AI tool. This tool does not require expertise in formulas or coding, making it easy to interact with the tool, as well as you can better understand the complex syntax of more advanced formulas.”

Visibility and Transparency through Consolidated Data

With Smartsheet, Marriott RMAS has a centralized source of data that consolidates all project milestones and details in one place. “For project managers like me, it is no longer necessary to spend time trying to find out who to contact or who is managing a specific project. I just open Smartsheet, and all that information is there,” Kristina says. “Now, it is very easy to visualize a project and its interdependencies, as well as who is out of the office, so we know what we need to do before a project can proceed to the next step.”

The Senior Leadership Team can also quickly access project data through Smartsheet dashboards to get full transparency into the entire project management lifecycle. “Our leadership team can quickly identify project bottlenecks by looking at the dashboards, so they can easily determine the root cause of a delay and figure out if they need to help out with additional resources,” Kristina says.

Spending Time on Strategy Instead of Administrative Tasks 

Smartsheet has helped Kristina and her team automate manual administrative tasks related to project management. 

“For instance, instead of spending 10 minutes trying to write a formula in a spreadsheet, it probably only takes a minute or two using Smartsheet AI tools,” she says.

Marriott RMAS also reduces the time it takes to contact colleagues for questions or updates on a project’s status. “All project and contact information is structured and centralized, so it is easy to quickly find what I need and how to communicate with people in real time if I have questions,” Kristina says. 

“Before Smartsheet, I routinely had to send multiple emails to team members to follow up on projects. Now, I just open a dashboard and select an item from a drop-down menu to find the information I am looking for. Smartsheet easily saves me more than 30 hours per month, and that time I can put back into focusing on our overall vision and strategy.”

Marriott RMAS plans to continue expanding its use of Smartsheet to gain additional efficiencies in the months ahead. “We are always looking to see how we can take advantage of new capabilities in Smartsheet,” says Kristina. “This solution is very user-friendly, and we know we can easily adopt new Smartsheet features for our business.”

For more information about this story, please see our case study.