Vice President - Merchandising - Booking - Marriott International - Washington

Job description

The Vice President, Marriott.com Merchandising and Booking will lead all strategic functions related to driving forward Marriott International’s largest booking channel. Reporting to the Vice President, Digital Direct and Marriott.com, this role will have P&L accountability for the website and be tasked with ensuring all growth goals are met for the $9.5B channel. To ensure success, this role will partner seamlessly with the Vice President, Digital Acquisition and Vice President, Digital Personalization to ensure tightly coordinated strategies are developed and flawlessly executed to deliver on key performance indicators (KPI’s). The role will also partner closely with the Vice President, Mobile & Digital Guest Services and key leaders in Digital Program Management, User Experience Design team, Research, Content Management, and Technology to ensure cohesive multi-channel experiences are delivered across the website and apps.

This critical leader in the Marriott Digital organization will oversee product strategy, development, and optimization for the core shopping and booking areas of the website – including homepage, search results, hotel websites, and the checkout path – across all devices. Through these product areas, he/she will deliver a high ROI product roadmap full of features and functionality that grow site performance for target customer segments. This role will also lead the growing Merchandising team – further developing merchandising team skillsets, growing the Marriott.com personalization efforts, deepening adoption of merchandising best practices across all product areas, expanding demand-led and distressed inventory promotional strategies, and further establishing the consumer value proposition marketing and merchandising efforts for Marriott.com. Additionally, the role will oversee the Marriott Media Network, developing new and innovative ways to aggressively grow this unique monetization program. This individual will be a catalyst for innovation and new thinking, lead direct report and cross functional teams, manage agency resources, plus communicate and optimize performance across the site.

The ideal candidate is a proven innovative leader with large global brands that can motivate large teams, has deep eCommerce expertise, experience managing large transactional websites, understands the value of and can apply good merchandising techniques, demonstrates analytical and financial management acumen, and ultimately has a passion for the travel business and delivering great products that consumers love.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

Education and Experience

College degree in Marketing, eCommerce, or related field.
MBA or advanced degree in eCommerce/Technology management desirable.
Demonstrated success managing large-scale transactional digital platforms and/or websites required.

Required

12+ total years work experience (with 5+ years eCommerce experience) strongly desired
7+ years of managerial experience
Ideally P&L management experience
Experience with Agile development methodologies
Demonstrated knowledge of merchandising best practices and retail design
Experience with A/B and MVT research methodologies
Demonstrated experience and comfort with digital measurement, tracking methods, and analysis
Proven ability to lead and work with cross-functional teams in support of specific business priorities
Demonstrates self-confidence, energy and enthusiasm
Effective written and oral communications skills. Sensitivity to global communication needs
Demonstrated strong presentation, negotiation, and persuasion skills
Experience leading direct reports and cross functional teams
Ability to solve problems quickly, think creatively, and satisfy Internet speed-to-market requirements
Thrives in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment
Ability to simultaneously manage multiple projects
Dynamic interpersonal skills including team player that works well with counterparts from various functions/departments and has the ability to influence the work of counterparts without direct reporting accountability.
Working knowledge of Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, and PowerPoint)

CORE WORK ACTIVITIES

Drive Product Strategy, successful product delivery and ongoing optimization

Strategy and product development

Direct and socialize Marriott.com vision, product strategies, prioritized roadmap and associated business cases, develop new capabilities and lead delivery through Product, Platform, IR, and User Experience leads.
Build a culture of frequent and open KPI reviews and active optimization across Marriott.com product areas.
Direct the development of an industry leading transactional experience that merchandises Marriott’s portfolio of brands while effectively converting Marriott Rewards members and prospects through a clear and enticing value proposition.
Refine and improve data/insights to deepen understanding of customer behavior, product adoption, and optimization opportunities.
Develop approach to continually test, learn and leverage findings to grow conversion, average order value, and site revenue overall.
Partner closely with the Digital Personalization and Digital Acquisition teams to maximize the value from all traffic sources and digital segmentation and personalization strategies.
Expand organizational knowledge of current and future state capabilities within the organization and macro trends in the external marketplace that could translate to driving value for Marriott International.

Globalization

Partner closely with Sr. Director, Globalization and Regional Vice Presidents around the world on the development of localized platform strategies that enable effective personalized experiences on a local level while delivering economies of scale globally.
Provide strategic insights, consultation and tactical recommendations for Globalization efforts to fully leverage platform and effective merchandising and booking capabilities.
Align Marriott.com product strategies with Globalization needs – ensuring we solve for global and local nuances where appropriate.

Further develop and evangelize Merchandising practice

Mind the Store

Direct a team of Product Managers and Merchandisers to analyze daily site performance, adjust promotional placements based on personalization strategies, business needs, and performance, while constantly seek areas for improvement.
Direct efforts to develop comprehensive dashboards with KPI’s aligned to team, department, and digital-wide goals.
Ensure team members communicate results to all key team members and stakeholders through regular meetings and communications
Oversee pathway analysis and drive revenue optimization activities, partnering with Product, Digital Research, and Measurement & Analytics teams to implement a programmatic approach, actively participating in the analysis of results, and evangelizing its impact.
Monitor, steer, and communicate demand trends and source / destination market performance while illustrating the impact to the overall performance of Marriott.com

Lead Merchandising Initiatives

Champion enterprise merchandising techniques establishing best practices and a culture that embraces effective retail design while highly leveraging real-time personalization capabilities.
Lead the business case and guide the implementation of advanced merchandising capabilities to more effectively match supply and demand while improving the customer shopping experience and revenue per visitor.
Create site content based on demand trends and partner with Digital Acquisition and Personalization teams to more effectively drive high converting traffic through improved end to end user experiences.
Direct a team of subject matter experts to create & maintain promotional campaigns and channel marketing programs that blend customer needs and demand trends with Marriott hotels brands, Marriott Rewards, and Marriott.com value propositions.
Oversee team that manages the evolution of the Marriott.com consumer value proposition (a.k.a. Book Right) and associated marketing and merchandising efforts enterprise-wide.
Lead team that is tailoring Marriott.com and global sites merchandising placements and executing on-site campaigns to support continent and global priorities.
Share applicable learnings and recommend opportunities for Ritz-Carlton eCommerce.

Grow ancillary revenue streams

Lead a team focused on improving average order value through effective upsell techniques and better selling ancillary products through digital channels.
In partnership with the Reservations team, re-define Marriott’s ancillary strategy and implementation approach for all Direct to consumer sales channels – especially Marriott.com and the call centers.
Drive collaboration across Product, Merchandising, Digital Personalization, Digital Acquisition, Reservations, and Revenue Management teams to maximize opportunities.
Develop a sales culture within assigned product organization and Merchandising team while creating robust upsell and cross-sell capabilities.
Manage all aspects of the Marriott Media Network to substantially grow its annual revenue contribution. Develop new and innovative ways to aggressively grow revenue while balancing customer needs and conversion/transactional revenue growth.

Build a performance management culture

Create structure to openly share results of key performance indicators (e.g. bounce rate, funnel conversion) for Marriott.com with key team members and stakeholders driving towards actionable insights. Create hypothesis for variances observed and develop recommendations for improvements.
Drive individual accountability models that support aligned product, marketing, and overall business goals.

Lead Discipline Team & Developing Associates

Manage a team of Product managers, Merchandisers, User Experience designers, Technology resources, and external agencies to execute on product roadmap priority efforts.
Maintain high performance levels by hiring the best candidates, providing direct reports with development opportunities, addressing performance issues, and aligning performance and rewards to departmental goals.
Identify skillset gaps and further develop digital capabilities amongst team members and agency partners to better support strategic growth
Further establish a team culture that embraces innovation and rewards risk taking and test/learn cycles.
Support individual team and department-wide efforts to improve Digital team culture and work environment as reflected in annual AOS results.

Deliver Executive communication

Regularly develop and deliver updates to all levels of Executives through in-person presentations, conference calls, and written communications.
Present Marriott.com product strategy and results at key internal/external updates including: Continent forums, Executive updates, Owner/Franchisee meetings, etc.
Represent Marriott as an industry expert through presentations at internal and external conferences.

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