Department of Global Business

and Enterprise

M.Sc. International Business

and Data Analytics

Marriott Events
Data Analysis Project

Image 1: Marriott Logo (Armin, 2014)

Lecturer: Omer Hafeez Student: Tabea Bodamer

Module Data Analytics Student ID: B00795877
Module ID: BMG 880 Academic Year: 2019/2020, Semester 2
Events Manager: Sam Thornton Word Count: 2,446
Data Analysis of Marriott Events Department; May 2020; M.Sc. International Business and Data Analytics; Tabea Bodamer

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 Data Analysis of Marriott Events Department; May 2020; M.Sc. International Business and Data Analytics; Tabea Bodamer

Table of Contents
Introduction to the Problematic Situation in the Organization ............................................................ 4
Data Lifecycle Framework linked to Marriott ..................................................................................... 6
Dashboard Solution: A Critical Analysis and Justification ............................................................... 10
Implementation of BI or analytics system: Conclusion and Recommendation ................................. 14
Appendix ............................................................................................................................................ 16
The Dashboard ............................................................................................................................... 16
Content ....................................................................................................................................... 16
Context for the Analysis of the Events Data .............................................................................. 16
References .......................................................................................................................................... 21

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 Data Analysis of Marriott Events Department; May 2020; M.Sc. International Business and Data Analytics; Tabea Bodamer

Introduction to the Problematic Situation in the

Organization
In the context of an operational change within the organization Marriott Grosvenor Square,
events with less than 30 attendees that have been managed, processed and organized by
the London Sales Office (LSO), an external office, will from now on be passed on straight to
the relevant property e.g. the Marriott Grosvenor Square Hotel. This is particularly important
to the higher management in order to be able to prepare the relevant resources such as
labour force and hours when the change is implemented.

Therefore, together with the cooperation of Mr. Thornton, an analysis of the raw events data
of 12 Marriott Properties in London of the event size as a primary focus as well as the
revenue, their status within the process (e.g. lost, in process and actual) was conducted for
the practical part of this report and the dashboard solution in Power BI will be explained.
This allows the management to evaluate the performance and make conclusions (Johnston,
2014).

In times of an increasing importance of Big Data (Chen et al., 2014), using data analytics
and Business Intelligence systems allow to give valuable insights on data and is therefore
helpful for an organization such as Marriott. Some of the data analytics tools are for example
Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, R, Python (Turban et al., 2014). According to
Eckerson (2006), performance dashboard communicates strategic objectives and enables
decision-makers to evaluate key activities and processes.

This analysis takes place in the context Business Analytics which is the ‘process of
developing actionable decisions or recommendation for actions based upon insights
generated from historical data’ (Turban et al., 2014 p.49). The methodology of this research
is a qualitative data collection (Sekaran and Bougie, 2016) in form of an excel sheet following
confidentiality clauses in order to conduct the analysis.

The situation in Marriott was identified by using the Performance Management Cycle
according to which an organization sets objectives, acts to achieve them, tracks the progress
and reviews outcomes, all based on its goals and values. It is mainly implemented to create
greater visibility into the business which is what the events manager is looking for. More
details about the Performance Management Cycle is in the appendix.

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 Data Analysis of Marriott Events Department; May 2020; M.Sc. International Business and Data Analytics; Tabea Bodamer

Marriott’s core values are for example pursuing excellence or putting people first which
implies establishing a corporate culture that focuses on the overall health and growth of the
organization (Mission Statement Academy, 2019). Its mission is to become the world’s
favourite travel company (UKEssays.com, 2016).

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 Data Analysis of Marriott Events Department; May 2020; M.Sc. International Business and Data Analytics; Tabea Bodamer

Data Lifecycle Framework linked to Marriott

Business Analytics (Table 2) is an umbrella term to groups analytics, BI and performance
management (Tanase, 2015). According to the Business Analytics Model, it is created by
people, processes and the people involved and closely linked to BI. To implement a
successful BA process, a clear structure is needed. The first layer is the business-driven
environment where managers are setting strategic goals (vision, mission, objectives),
usually represented via KPI’s (Laursen and Thorlund, 2010). In the second layer is the
operational decision maker who needs information. In the third layer report developers and
analysts create this information to improve daily operations.

Table 2: Business Analytics Model (Laursen and Thorlund, 2010)

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 Data Analysis of Marriott Events Department; May 2020; M.Sc. International Business and Data Analytics; Tabea Bodamer

Based on the Performance Management Cycle which identified ‘pursuing excellence and
growth’ as a key strategic goal, designing a real-time data analytics system can be a good
fit for Marriott. As a result, the design and deployment plan for a BI tool as well as the use
of a performance dashboard are discussed in this report with the help of theoretical
frameworks.

To connect different frameworks, it can be said that Performance Management creates the
global business strategy from above. Business Intelligence can be used parallelly as a
process as it aims to create valuable insight. However, it is based on the transformation of
raw data in order to ‘track’ the PM process and gear the business in the right direction
(Tanase, 2015).

According to Tank (2015), the Business Intelligence Framework (Table 3) explains how data
is getting in the organization and how it is going out. Information is extracted from various
information systems and sources e.g. ERP or CRM systems (Tank, 2015) through a data
warehouse and transformed into static data that is stored in data warehouses. BI collects,
transforms it and uses visualizations tools such as graphs, cubes etc. in order to create
insights.

Table 3: BI Framework (Tank, 2015)

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 Data Analysis of Marriott Events Department; May 2020; M.Sc. International Business and Data Analytics; Tabea Bodamer

In order to understand the architecture of a Business Intelligence System, there are mainly
four major components which are visible on Table 4.

Table 4: A High-Level Architecture of BI (Eckerson, 2003 as cited in Turban et al., 2014)

Once the BI architecture is defined, the data is examined and analysed. This can be done
by following the Data analytics Life Cycle (Table 5) according to which there are various
stages (Hernandez, 2018).

Table 5: Data Analytics Lifecycle (Hernandez, 2018)

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1) The cycle begins with the discovery phase where the analyst assesses the industry,
resources, infrastructure, technology, evaluates if he has enough data to solve the problem
and builds a hypothesis.

Here, it is important to determine how much knowledge is needed to develop a model and
interpret results later. In this case, it was liaised with the Marriott events manager to identify
his needs, implications and necessary actions to satisfy that need (Hernandez, 2018). He
wanted to know the number of events with more than 30 attendees in the context of an
operational change. The data was evaluated and assessed whether the resources e.g.
technology, tools, systems, people, and time are sufficient.

2) After that follows, the usually most labour-intensive step, the data preparation phase
during which the quality of the data is evaluated, explored and pre-processed as well as a
model is started (Turban et al., 2014). It is advisable to follow the ELT (Extract, Load
Transform) framework, become familiar with the data, clean it and identify the information to
be kept and dismissed. Visualisation tools can be used to get an overview of the data and
identify dirty data. Here, it was found that there are some flaws in the Marriott data regarding
the number of attendees, peak room nights and the classification into different stages which
was rectified as much as possible.

3) During the third stage, the data is explored to identify relationships and key variables are
chosen to plan a model. This can be e.g. clustering, association rules, regression,
classification, time series analysis, text analysis or decision trees and logistic regression,
depending on the industry. In the case of Marriott, relationships between e.g. the number of
events, contacts, and events size and revenue were analysed.

4) During the model building phase, datasets for ‘testing, training and production purposes’
are developed and tool to run the models are considered. Here, a Power BI Performance
Dashboard using BI tools for Marriott’s Events data was created and is in the appendix.

5) After that, results and key findings and doubts about the interpretation of some data were
communicated to the Director of Events and reviewed together. Still, some flaws in the data
were identified which caused the analysis to be skewed.

6) Lastly, these results as well as their business value are evaluated for their implementation
on an operational level. Possibly, a pilot project is run to implement the model. In the case
of Marriott, first, errors first need to be removed in order be able to take adequate decision.
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 Data Analysis of Marriott Events Department; May 2020; M.Sc. International Business and Data Analytics; Tabea Bodamer

Dashboard Solution: A Critical Analysis and

Justification
This section analyses which data analytics tool is better and outlines why a dashboard was
chosen to create an interactive analysis and visualise results and valuable insights.

Today’s business world is very competitive which is why it is crucial for firms to have up-to
date data and make the right decisions to increase profitability and efficiency. Therefore, it
is important to implement Performance Management to create among others greater
business visibility (Table 6) and constantly evaluate and review the business performance.
According to Armstrong (2006), performance management (Table 7) is an ongoing process
of improving performance by setting and following strategic goals both for teams and
individuals, assessing progress and developing people’s capabilities. The ‘Act’ and ‘Track’
stages are particularly important where results are achieved.

Table 6: Why Implement Performance Management? (TDW1 Research, 2004 as cited in

Eckerson, 2011)

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Table 7: Performance Management Cycle (Armstrong, 2006)

Performance Management can be reviewed for example through a data visualisation tool
such as a performance dashboard. The organisation can use its functionalities which are
measuring e.g. KPI’s, monitoring the performance and processes, analysing the root cause
of issues, and managing people and processes (Eckerson, 2011). This enhances the
decision-making process and helps to gear the business in the correct direction (Table 8).

There are three main types of performance dashboards: operational, tactical and strategic
(Eckerson, 2011). In the case of Marriott, an operational dashboard was chosen.

There are several benefits of a dashboard such as the interactivity, communicating and
refining a strategy, displaying data through measures and targets, increasing visibility of
daily operations as well as the coordination between departments to collectively improve the
business performance, helping staff and executives to gear the organisation in the adequate
direction, and creating information on which one can act immediately. (Eckerson, 2011). On
top of that, performance dashboards reduce costs by most relevant information together and
possibly eliminate unnecessary reporting systems and data warehouses.

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Table 8: Charting a Course (Eckerson, 2011 p. 7)

As mentioned previously, one of the data analytics and reporting tools are e.g. Excel or
Power BI. Excel and Power BI are similar as they share the same Vertipaq Data Model and
Power Query Editor (Havens Consulting Inc., 2020). However, Power BI was chosen for the
dashboard of this report due to its sophisticated visualisation tools, online features, high
analytics tools (Havens Consulting Inc., 2020) as well as the possibility to display interactive
data easier than in Excel.

Moreover, it represents a great benefit and opportunity for the analysis of data for the
organization Marriott, the Events Department and the end user, the manager.

Firstly, the Events Department has been mainly using SmartSpace as a software to visualize
the business performance which does show the number of events depending on the stage
within the process. However, some of it is unclear and it is not displaying all necessary KPI’s
e.g. the total net revenue compared to the received contacts or conversion rates for the
management and does not use a dashboard. This can be personalised, such features and
meet this need. On top of that it allows an interactive access to the data which makes it easy
to draw conclusions (Microsoft, 2020).

Second, a dashboard can enhance cooperation and communication between departments

such as Events, Banqueting, Human Resources and Finance as it can be easily shared, and
results can be communicated to staff members and Head of Departments (HOD’s). This
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could help the entire department and hotel to have a better overview of the business
performance and align strategies accordingly (Microsoft, 2020).

Third, both unstructured and structured data can be analysed which is a tremendous help
as the events team does have numerical data such as the date of when the event is planned
for, the date when the enquiry was received, the number of attendees, the total net revenue
etc; but it also has a lot of data in text format such as the names of the properties, the
different stages, business type codes etc. which can be analysed in Power BI.

To summarize, a performance dashboard is an excellent way to ‘translate the organization’s

strategy into objectives, metrics, initiatives, and tasks customized to each group and
individual’ (Eckerson, 2011 p. 4) and basically is a performance management system which
allows users to monitor processes, analyse the root cause and manage people and
processes.

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Implementation of BI or analytics system:

Conclusion and Recommendation
In the mentioned Business Analytics Model (Table 9), the management creates strategies
within the business-driven environment; the operational decision makers are in need for
knowledge; analysts create this needed information; the ETL developers are database
specialists and extract data from the data warehouse, transform and load it to make it
accessible and lastly, the IT professionals manage the data generating source systems
(Laursen and Thorlund, 2010).

Table 9: Business Analytics Model (Laursen and Thorlund, 2010)

When applying the framework to Marriott, it first can be said that an information strategy
could be based on the global vision ‘pursuing excellence and putting people first’ which
therefore implies using sophisticated analytic tools. Then, objectives for the operational
business processes are established e.g. a specific number of events taking place per year,
an occupancy of the event space of a specific percentage etc. Consequently, the operational
decision maker in this case the events manager requires certain information and knowledge.

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In the middle part of the model is the analysis and reporting development environment where
analysts specify which information is needed in order to achieve the set objectives and
analytical and statistical models of data coming from a data warehouse are deployed in
order to generate insights and knowledge. In the case of Marriott, most data is stored in the
software Oracle in the Property Management System PMS. Given the fact that some errors
e.g. in the number of attendees or room peak nights were identified during the preparation
phase because the data was entered manually, this registry process should be reviewed.
Therefore, it can be recommended to automize it or add categories from which one can be
selected.

So far, most of the analysis is done in a software called SmartSpace which mostly sources
data from the internal property management system in Oracle. However, there have been
some issues in the technically orientated part. The data warehouse should also be
connected with Data Analytics tools such as Power BI in order to visualize the data, have a
more solid analysis and create better insights. Furthermore, it can be suggested to connect
various sources of data such as from finance, costs, or Human Resources. This can be
updated by linking it to the new data. A major issue with the visualization software
SmartSpace is that it does not provide a full and detailed analysis about enquiries and
conversion rates for example. The second issue is that some data is not shown or obviously
incorrect which means that the way the data is entered in the data warehouse PMS as well
as how it is connected to a visualisation tool should be reviewed. A dashboard in Power BI
created great visualisation tool which can regroup requested key indicators. The
organisation must also consider the cost to implement such a BI system which are however
rather low.

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Appendix
The Dashboard
Content
An interactive dashboard was created on Power BI analysing and visualizing the number of
created contact, events that took place, potential and net revenue as well as a market
analysis was conducted in order to identify the most frequent as well as the most revenue
generating client. The Dashboard was created in order to follow the story of the number of
meetings and the clients related according to (Petty, 2018) (Dykes, 2016).

Context for the Analysis of the Events Data

The Dashboard explains certain elements in the beginning to understand the context of the
analysis and relevant abbreviations. Furthermore, there are several internal features that
need to be explained such as the meeting size which is determined by the number of
attendees:
- A small event for example is defined if it has less than 30 attendees
- A medium event has usually between 32 and 80 attendees
- A large event has between 85 and 2000 attendees

Regarding the internal process, there are several stages an enquiry goes through until it is
a final event, staring with the creating of the first contact with a designated identification
number. Overall it can be distinguished between events that did not take place which are
shown as DNTP in the Power BI Dashboard; those that are still being prepared which are
shown as PROC and those that actually already took place which are depicted as ACTU.
This is a simplified version of the internal stages.

The detailed version is visible in the ‘Block Status’ column which displays the following
stages:
- ACT = the events took place
- PRO = prospect and possible business
- TDN= turned down business
- LOS = lost business
- DEF = definite event
- CON = confirmed event
- TE1 = internal ‘in process’ stage
- TE2 = internal ‘in process’ stage
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The first page provides an overview of the received contacts, number of events and net total revenue with a breakdown by meeting size.
On top of that, the potential revenue was calculated and added on the right.
 Data Analysis of Marriott Events Department; May 2020; M.Sc. International Business and Data Analytics; Tabea Bodamer

Second Page: Market analysis of the main frequent client as well as the most revenue generating client. For simplicity, the market was first
divided into four main groups. The detailed breakdown is underneath.

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The third page compares events that did not take place (DNTP) combining cancelled, lost, and turned down events with those that actually
took place (ACTU), by meeting size.

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