Matthew Boettcher, Marriott International - Marriott's Hospitality Evolution

Welcome to Season 3 of Bed and Butter, the podcast where passion meets profession in the world of hospitality. In partnership with Southern Maine Community College, we're back with fresh energy and even bigger conversations. This season, we're talking with culinary innovators, a brewery entrepreneur, hotel and industry leaders, a TED Talk speaker and influencer with a purpose-driven message, as well as one of the top tourism execs in the country, all sharing insights that will inspire and elevate your journey.

So whether you're just starting out or aiming for the top, Bed and Butter is your go-to guide. Let's dive in. From humble beginnings as a sommelier to a senior VP of Marriott International, Matthew Batcher has lived a kind of journey that defines hospitality. He's serving as vice president and global brand leader for distinctive brands like Moxie, Western, and the newly acquired Citizen M.

Matthew brings decades of experience, heart, and hustle to shaping some of Marriott's most vibrant brands. Today, we sit down with a leader whose story is just as inspiring as the spaces he's helped create. So sit back, relax, and get inspired. Matthew, I am so excited to have you here today.

And you've been someone I've watched go through your career, and it's just exciting to have you. And thank you for being here. Sean, it's awesome to be here. I've been really looking forward to it very grateful and humbled to be here so thank you well yeah i thought it would be really neat because you know you i mean when i say i'm you're young you're young relative to me but i think our listeners i think our listeners have will have a lot in common with you and i do think that we are both alike and that we both have jeeps so that's a cool thing to have and uh have you enjoyed your jeep this summer so i don't have one anymore um yeah i'll get you i'll come get you go top down.

Yeah. Well, thanks again for being here. So what I thought we'd do is we take you through a little bit of your career. And it's interesting that we have a lot of listeners who might be on the food and beverage side, might be on the hotel side, might be on design side.

There's lots of different areas. And you've kind of touched on all different things in your roles throughout your career. And I'd suggest people go look at your LinkedIn and see all the different roles you have. But let's touch on some of those.

We don't have to spend too much time unless something that's really fun or exciting you want to share, but we'll just dig into your side. But let's start with food and beverage. I think that's kind of how you started. Yeah, I was 18.

I was working in Philadelphia. I needed a job. I was interested in food and beverage, but it was more about the paycheck. So I walked into probably one of the top five restaurants in the country at the time and a suit and tie, never worked in a restaurant.

I said, I'll do whatever you want me to do, I'll do it. And they hired me on the spot. And it was an eye-opening experience. I fell in love with food.

I fell in love with wine. I fell in love with service. Think of some of these great restaurants like Alive in Madison Park. That's the type of restaurant this.

And I noticed that you were a sommelier. Yeah. Yeah. It took a while to get there.

You know, there's two types of people in this industry. Those that have a plan to get into the industry and those that fall into it by accident and don't want to leave. And I was the latter. So I, you know, I did college.

I was going pre-law and I actually dropped out of college to move to Brazil for a couple of years to play soccer. Chasing a dream and that I dreamed it and it materialized in a meaningful way. And I came back. The only thing I had was great food and beverage experience and bum knees.

So from there, I parlayed that into an independent fine dining restaurant, got into wine at 21 and, you know, passed my Guild of Master Sommelier's exam. And I was going to go down that route. I thought I was going to be a master sommelier and I wasn't going to pursue a college degree. So I was a sommelier and a general manager of a fine dining restaurant and was looking for something new.

And that's how I found Marriott. So I actually started with Marriott as an hourly associate, as a sommelier, doing wine sales. Wow. And so that's an interesting thing that there's a lot of people who jump into roles.

And in your role, you jumped into Marriott. So you had, you had a growth plan that maybe you didn't see coming, but it turned into a great growth plan for you. And this might get me in trouble with the company, but I needed to join Marriott because I needed another reconstruction on the knee and I needed a really good health insurance. And then I, it like opened this door.

I'm like just amazed by the hotels and the opportunity and the different types of brands. And really, I fell in love with the people too. the associates on property. I mean, you worked in a hotel and you know how amazing the people are on property.

It was just, it felt like home to me. And I was like, I'm going to make a career out of this. And we ended up going back to school to finish my degree in hospitality and then getting my MBA. But I've been in with Mary almost 21, 22 years now.

Wow. And I think, you know, what's neat is that we never know when we jump into something, what's going to happen. I was a teacher. I mean, I had a four-year degree in education and I ended up running a 19-room motel, which my listeners have probably heard that story a few times.

But I think that the same thing. You never know. And you're going to have your eyes open when you go into something and be able to raise your hand and say, I want to do more. Even if it feels uncomfortable, take risk and do something different.

Yeah. So, okay. So you're a sommelier. How did you progress?

What did you, how did you go next? Met my wife, had kids early and I, and I was going to just grow with the company. So, you know, I bounced around restaurants, did the restaurant manager, director of restaurants, director of food and beverage, director of vet management. And then I was challenged by a mentor to do something outside my wheelhouse and get into rooms.

And I didn't want to do rooms, but I took over as a director of operations at a hotel. It was a dual brand hotel. We had a renaissance and a residence inn, about 605 keys total. We finished number one in the company for GSS.

For us, GSS is our guest satisfaction scores. And it's one of the three pillars of a balanced scorecard. And somebody at corporate noticed and said, hey, don't know what you're doing at this hotel, but it's working. I had a great GM at the time who gave me the flexibility.

Ray Bennett and Tina Edmondson, all these great leaders in the company said, hey, come work with us. And so I made the transition after 10 years on property to headquarters. Well, and that's where we met is when you were in headquarters. And let's talk a little bit about the, you jump into, so you're in ops.

Then you get into brand leadership, and then you get into lifestyle, distinctive, classic, premium. And, you know, that's going to be, to a lot of people who aren't in the business, that's going to blow them away. You know, they're going to blow them away. What is he talking about?

To a guy who's been doing this for 40 years, I still wonder what these new words are. So just touch on each one of those. Maybe the difference in distinctive versus premium versus standard. it in, it'll select.

You know, maybe not blown away, but they'll definitely confuse them if they're not into it. We're close to 40 brands now in the company. And what we've done is we've created different brand structures, different brand houses to attract different consumers, but also to allow consumers to go from one experience to another based on that need. So we call our classic brands like Marriott on the full service or Sheraton or Delta on the full service.

And then Courtyard and Bring Hill and some of these other brands are more classic, right? They're more consistent than delivery. It's just phenomenal service. It's a great consistent product from a build-out standpoint so that the guests know what they're going to get.

The owners know what they're going to get. And then you have the distinctive brands, which are on the lifestyle side of things. Lifestyle doesn't resonate across the world, so we've rebranded lifestyle to distinctive. But these are brands that are super unique to really dive into the bar experience.

You walk in, the music's pumping, the light's a little bit dim. There's a design narrative that is different based on location. And you take that concept of classic, distinctive, and you can move it up into luxury, and you can move it down into select. So a good example of that is in the luxury space, you got Edition and W, very distinctive brands, right?

In the premium space, you have the collection brands with Autograph and Tribute. You have Renaissance and La Meridian and even Westin with its strong position around well-being. And then in the select space, I think you and I worked a little bit on this, is Moxie and AC. And now the new acquisition was Citizen M, which we're so excited to bring in the portfolio.

You can see how we tier up and down the chain scale with these two different distinctive and classic nomenclatures. Wow. So 40 brands. And how many brands are under your...

I mean, I looked at your title and I didn't read it because I don't want to mess it up. there was a lot to it. How many brands would you say you're affiliated as a new person? For US, Canada, and French Polynesia, it's closer to about 14.

I haven't checked my email today. It could be 15. I don't know. So I have all the premium brands, which on the classic side, Sheraton, Marriott, and Delta.

On the lifestyle side, Renaissance, La Meridian, and Weston. On the collection side, Autograph, Tribute, and Design. And then we're starting to get into these indoors categories. You saw what we did with Sonder last year, what we did with MGM.

We launched apartments by Marriott Bonvoy. So these are like, and one of my favorite ones is we announced a partnership with, we acquired postcard cabins in the outdoor space, which I know you're passionate about the outdoor. And so we're really getting into this nontraditional lodging. And, you know, Trailborn's a great partner of us with a couple of hotels and more in the pipeline.

So it's really unique with the premium and endorse segment that we're making sure we have a place for every customer and every purpose and every passion for that customer. You know, it's ironic, but it's really interesting that all of these things, they have something common. Now, they obviously had the word Marriott, but they don't say that. But there's another thing that's kind of bonding all of us together.

And I think Arnie Sorensen, when he's back in his day, he said that was a new thing for us, the Bonvoy. Can you just touch on that? That wasn't one of the questions I prepped you for, but I'm sure you know what Bonvoy is. You can tell us all about those.

I hope so. It pays my mortgage. You know, when we had Marriott, we had Marriott Rewards. We had Ritz Carlton Rewards Program.

And then when we acquired Starwood in 2016, 2017, they had SPG, Starwood Preferred Guests, which was a dynamic program, beloved program. We could no longer operate with three different programs. So we brought them together. We reset the rewards.

We took the best of Starwood, the best of Marriott, and created Marriott Bonvoy. And so it's a loyalty program. We're north of close to 250 members, 250 million members globally now. And we continue to see that grow.

But it gives us this platform that's unparalleled so that consumers can come into our system and they can experience everything. So if you're on a anniversary trip and it's a milestone, go on a Ritz-Carlton cruise. Go to the addition and have a great experience. If you're traveling for soccer, stay at a courtyard.

If you're staying at a for a long time, stay at a residence inn. And so you have all these different purposes that need to be achieved by different brands. And the Merit Bonvoy ecosystem allows you to do that. and also redeem points and earn points so that you can go do it for free at one point.

You know, you're not an old man like me, but you are maturing, so you're not a kid anymore either. How do you stay relevant? How do you stay relevant? I mean, you're dealing with brands that you need to be relevant.

How do you do that, and how can people that are a bit older than us even stay relevant? You know, I think there's a couple of ways to do that. Number one is making sure you're staying on top of trends. And sometimes we use agencies to do that.

Be careful not to chase fads. Fads are like a blimp in time, but trends last multiple years. Number two is hire good people that are more connected to the experience than you are. And so if you look across the team that I have today, it's very diverse in ages.

It's very diverse in experiences. And it's important that we're bringing in that point of view on each of the team members. And then also just listen to the customers. Sometimes you just go stand in the lobby and observe and you can do it secretly, right?

I love to go into a hotel when I'm going in a meeting. I'll go the night before. I'll sit at the bar with my laptop, pretend like I'm doing work, have a cocktail, talk to the bartender. But I'm really listening to what else is going on and how people are talking about us and how they're talking about others.

If people just pause and listen, you can find out so much information out there. And it's hard, right? The world's changing so fast nowadays with social media. Fads and trends are starting to bleed together but you got to make sure that you're focused on the trends because the fads will be gone by the time you launch the latte that's important it's too late so you want to be on the front end of that and i think that's a great message that i think you know back in the day brands would you know go out and pink's the color this year next year it's going to be green and next year it's going to be purple there's a there's a discussion about making things a little bit that they extend on in in life you know like the ac that would be one of those things, that look, that feel.

So that allows you to keep that, but then you can put the splash of color or keep the trendy cocktails or those things without having major renovations every seven years. Right. I mean, we talked about the balanced scorecard. Owner satisfaction is one of those.

We own a very, very small percentage of our hotels. So we rely on owners to deliver on the guest experience and changing colors just because a brand leader doesn't like the colors and the best thing to do. So I think you'll find with my team and all the other brand teams across the organization, we're really grounding those type of decisions and data. And we work very, very closely with our owners on, you know, do we need to make a change?

If we make a change, what's that change going to be like? I don't know if this audience is aware, but we have a franchise advisory council for pretty much every brand. You sit on a few, but these advisory councils are franchise management companies, they're owners, they're developers, and we meet and we talk about the issues for that brand and some of the changes that we need to make. So we have listening councils that really help guide us to make those decisions.

I think one of the things that I valued the most was during COVID. That it was coming together of Marriott and us and our owners. And it was really sitting down, what do we need to do? How are we going to get through it?

But what happened, we all learned that that conversation, that discussion, that listening to each side has benefited us for years since. And that's, you know, we were hitting the head with that COVID, but we all found that, geez, you know, if we talk and we really get serious, and a lot of changes that have happened since then have been because of that collaboration. You know, when you're in survival mode and there's only two of you on the island, you got to come together, right?

That's right. One will eat the other and then you won't survive. I think that was a great example. I think we worked on a project called Hot Tamale.

Yeah. It was a project code name looking across food and beverage everywhere from luxury down to select service and using COVID as an excuse or as a springboard to do things differently, to still take care of the consumer, but make it more economic in a way. Focus on what really matters. And we hired an agency to do a whole bunch of consumer research, like what's the future of food and beverage.

Now, some of it we got right. Some of it we got wrong. At that time, we're like, oh, nobody will ever touch a buffet again, right? Because of the utensils and the cross-contamination.

And we were scared to death of COVID. And it was the right thing to do at the moment. But now you see how important breakfast buffets are to certain consumers, especially in the select space. And so now we're building those back up.

And consumers are willing to pay for it. research, I don't know if you remember this, but our research said that the consumer values that free breakfast at $20 to $25 per person. So if you take that breakfast away, that consumer is no longer going to pay that rate, right? So yeah, a lot of learnings through that.

But I do think we came much closer together as two different entities between the brand teams and the ownership councils. And it is, it's really neat. It starts at the top. We sat at a meeting and listened to, Tony Capuano.

And he was talking to us like side by side. We're all in this together. And it was a neat feeling. Yeah.

Tony's been a great CEO. He's really put the owners at the forefront with the consumer and with the associate. To balance all three is not easy and he's done a masterful job of that. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, he's got a lot of people like you and the rest of the senior executives with Marriott that have helped us through that. So tell me, you mentioned something about a mentor kind of guided you to jump ship on the food side, move over to the hotel side. I mean, not jump ship, but evolve yourself.

Are there any mentors that you wanted, it doesn't have to be specific names, but what someone did for you that kind of got you over to the hump, got you to another thing? Yeah. I feel like if I started to name names, I would definitely lose somebody because I've had so many good mentors. I still have mentors today.

How do you use a mentor? How do you develop a mentorship and build one? That's a way to not have to skip a name. I think as a mentee, sometimes you go in there and say, I need your help.

But as a mentee, you should be really saying, how can I help you? And then the mentor will help, right? So make the mentor's life easier and they'll pull you under the wing. They'll give you the freedom to run.

The other thing is with a mentor is do good work and they will find you. I have this thing with my team and it drives them nuts, but I talk about being able to land a plane. A lot of people have good ideas and a lot of people can get those ideas in the air, but very few people can take great ideas and get them on the ground and actually land a plane. So it makes a difference in the associate life, in the owner's life, in the guest life.

And if you start landing planes, people will notice and the mentors will start coming to you. So one of the mentors I had, I had an option. I was at a luxury hotel, 700 rooms, going through some changes. And I was told you can be the director of food and beverage, or you could be director of it management.

Nobody knows, and this was my first exec job, and nobody knows what a director of event management is outside of Marriott. Now, it's changed quite a bit, but back then it was a very specific exec role. Were you responsible for event planning, event operations, and AV? I didn't want to do it because I didn't think anybody knew what a director of event management was, and I love food and beverage.

I'd been in that hotel, and I'd been doing food and beverage. I was like, maybe this will parlay into something bigger. The mentor at the time pulled me aside and said, we think you should do the director of event management role, and here's why. You will learn catering sales, you'll learn room forecasting, you'll learn group sales, you'll learn all these things around group housing and reservations, and you still get to do food and beverage, by the way.

I'd never worked in events in the Marriott before. I did it in independent fine dining restaurants, and I was moving in with a very dynamic team that was doing very well to become their leader. And thankfully, they accepted me over time. Actually, it wasn't that.

They were great. But I learned so much more of the business side of things outside of food and beverage by having that mentor push me into a place that was quite uncomfortable for me at first. I like the comment you just made, the business side of things. I think a lot of us get out there and we love the stuff.

Yeah. Do the stuff, check the boxes and all that. But some of it, it's like you need to not, it's not a restaurant business, it's a business of restaurants. Yep.

And if you understand the business of restaurants, you can succeed beyond the chef, beyond the cook, beyond the server or whatever, restaurant manager. You have to understand the basics behind it. And that sounds like that's what that mentor was pushing you to do. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, particularly on the group side of things, right? And the impact that filling these holes on a difficult time would do for the rest of the business. And then, you know, the rates, the games that you play with rates and MS2s and MS3s. I learned so much about revenue management in that event role because I was accountable for it.

Yeah, that's great. So now you've got this role you have. You've grown to this level. And part of it, I think, is because of your creativity, your imagination, what you can do.

That's why you're into these brands that aren't like cookie cutter type brands. There's a little bit more finesse to them. Talk to us now about what's coming next. You know, what's the next trend?

What's the next thing in five to 10 years? What are you going to start seeing in the hotel, restaurant, food and beverage areas? We have to operate hotels differently. The consumer's demanding it.

They want quicker. They want faster. They want fresher. They want it now.

They want the quality. We're being stretched in margins, right, with interest rates, with insurance costs rising, with utility costs. It's tough out there right now for our owners and operators. And our guests are saying we want more and more.

And they're having more and more options. So I think using technology to assist the associates so the associates can deliver on what true hospitality is. What do you call true hospitality? Hospitality.

You know, service is giving somebody a fork or giving somebody a coffee cup and a saucer and pour on the coffee table side. Hospitality is recognizing that that individual is left-handed and you put the coffee cup on the left hand and you move the handle of the coffee cup from six o'clock to eight o'clock. So that guest doesn't have to remove their coffee cup on their own. Like it's recognizing those little small touches.

It is smiling at a guest way before they smile at you. It's finding reasons to talk to a consumer or talk to a guest. It's leaving behind the desk and going and get that apple core out of their hands so they don't have to go find a trash can. Right?

Service is putting a trash can where they can find it so they can throw their apple away. But service and hospitality goes so much further when you go and anticipate their needs. So we could spend a whole podcast talking on the difference between service and hospitality. But I would tell your listeners, if you haven't read or listened to Will Godera's book, Unreasonable Hospitality, it is phenomenal.

Go read it. You will learn what hospitality really is. And he's a master at telling the story, but also a master at what hospitality really is. Yeah.

I've recently seen that as well. Wow. That's great. So you're basically saying in the next few years, we've got to focus more on service and more on hospitality.

Oh, not on service, but hospitality. And through technology, we can allow people to use that technology to help us give better hospitality. Absolutely. Yeah, I know Marriott's going to roll out soon the single pane of glass.

There's a new name for it now. But basically, to try to make things easier for the front desk associates to provide hospitality. If you've got to click 20 times and go to three computers, that's not good for hospitality. But if you go one click, one click here, one click there, and they're checked in, or they do it digitally, the digital key, the pre-blocking your room, all of those things.

And that goes back to the relevancy. But also, it all leads back to hospitality. I mean, there's so many steps that we have to go through today to check somebody in. We have, I don't know, I'm going to get this wrong, but 19 different systems.

One of them is 40 years old. You guys should Google what DOS is. You don't even know what that is. But you can't even use a mouse.

And that's our reservation system with Marcia. She's been great for 40 years, but we need to replace it. And if we can make it so much more seamless, now the associates can act beyond just transactional. And if you look at hotels that are at the top of GSS, they figure out a way to do that.

But now the transaction becomes boom, boom, boom, and the experience and the emotional connection with that guest becomes much more powerful. I think there's a lot of misinformation out there about, oh, the technology can take away jobs. No, it's going to allow us to do the jobs that really matter. Yeah.

Like hospitality and taking care of the guests and taking care of the associates. And if they can have more fun when they go to work, if it's one, two, three clicks and you can talk about, hi, Mr. Riley, your guests, welcome here. how's how's your kids doing oh i saw pictures of your grandson you know that kind of thing that allows that kind of hospitality to happen yeah i mean you know it's 40 hours to train on a front desk associate to check somebody in to manage all the bills to check somebody out in this new world you know within 10 minutes you can learn how to check somebody in yeah so yeah we're excited that's great well matt we're getting we're kind of winding down but let me say what would you here's your chance to say something to listeners you've got people out there that are Merritt execs.

You've got people that are Hilton execs. You can tell them to jump ship and come over to Merritt. Yes. But you could also, you know, but you've got people who are working in industry, the front lines, and then students.

What would you say to them relative to hospitality, your career, life, whatever you want to say? It's up to you. It's an open book. Oof.

Oof. That's a hard question to end on. Well, you've got the, right now you've got the, your chance to say, okay, I can make an impact on the lives of the listeners. So I've been very blessed in this industry.

And interestingly, I told you I fell into. It's been great for me. It's been great for my family. I absolutely love it.

And I tell you, I've probably been moderately successful because I've been willing to take risks. I've followed passions. I've followed great leaders where they've allowed me to follow them. And then this growth mindset.

Our world is changing so much. Reading books. You know, you talked about creativity. 80% of us, creativity is a learned skill.

And so doing classes around design thinking and human-centric design, you can really start to stretch different muscles. And so for me, I would just tell the audience, take risk, follow your own line. Don't try to follow somebody else's career path. Follow great leaders and have fun.

It's a hell of an industry. It's a ton of fun if you do it right. And for 28 years now in the industry and 21 with the company, it's always been fun. There's bad days and there's good days, but the quality of the good days far away any of the bad days that I have, I'm hopefully doing this a long time.

Maybe one day you'll hire me, Sean. Well, you know, let's just do that. You probably should. I'm going to have to cut this out of the thing so you don't get in trouble.

I don't get my, you know, I want to say thank you. You've really, I want to stay in the business just to watch you. I mean, I'm on the other end of my career, but I just want to watch you grow and watch what you do with distinctive brands and premium brands and all the things you're doing. And I thank you for doing this because it's more than just doing things for Marriott.

You're doing things for a lot of people who might be someday a Marriott exec or a Marriott associate and who might be in the food and beverage side or be in the restaurant group and be all of those things. And if they take some of that advice you just gave at the end, it doesn't matter what field we go into. They can go out and be in business, some other business. But that same thing you just said is very relevant.

Yeah, let's hope so. Hopefully one of these listeners that is in school today, I'll work for them one day. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Matthew.

This has been amazing. And I, and actually I'm going to share this with my team before we even go live on the podcast, but thank you so much. It's always good to see you, Sean. Thank you for all your support and partnership and wish you the best of luck, my friend.

Thank you. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Bed and Butter, the hospitality podcast produced in partnership with Southern Maine Community College. Subscribe to the podcast to ensure that you don't miss any episodes. And while you're at it, share it with someone who might benefit from these insights.