How Peggy Roe is driving loyalty at Marriott

After an internship at Amazon and jobs at Homestead and GE, Peggy Roe found herself at a career crossroads two decades ago. It took a chance encounter with a life coach while waiting in line at the airport to help her find the right path forward—and she hasn’t looked back. “I really wanted to work in a consumer-facing business, but my passions were around party planning and travel,” Roe said. The coach helped her realize that her perfect job was at Marriott, where she has spent the last 20 years in various roles. As executive VP and chief customer officer, Roe now handles brand marketing, data strategy and activations, customer experience and innovation and global design. She also heads up Marriott Bonvoy, the brand’s fast-growing loyalty program. Roe was responsible for headline-grabbing rewards such as offering Marriott loyalists a chance to attend Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and she helped Marriott launch in Fortnite. Such efforts have helped Bonvoy reach 200 million members. Roe said Marriott has moved well beyond its hotel roots, extending into yachts, villas and retail products. She’s motivated by discovering customer interests as a way of driving repeat visits and continued fidelity. “At the surface, loyalty looks like a points program that people like to redeem for—and there’s a certain group that likes to do that—but as you talk to people you start uncovering the whys under the layers,” Roe said. “People will tell you they come back to a Marriott hotel because of an experience they had; it’s so much about how we make people feel.” Read about Ad Age’s 2024 Leading Women here What advice would you give to your younger self? Take jobs as close to the customer and central operations as possible. Understanding how customers feel and how businesses operate at the core will serve you well for many years to come. Have kids early. Don’t spend too much time worrying about how you might have kids and work. You won’t know how you feel until you have them and, once you do, you will adjust life and priorities based on how you feel then. What’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken? Making the decision with my husband to move our family from Washington to Hong Kong when our kids were 3 and 5. The move was for a role I suspected would be quite demanding and it also required my husband to shift careers. It was a huge risk, but it also turned out to be one of the best decisions we ever made as a family. If you weren’t doing your current job, what would you be doing and why? Teaching yoga, hosting dinner parties, exploring country music with my Texan husband and traveling to see the endless number of places I have discovered through my career that I don’t have time to visit right now! What should the industry do to encourage more women and people of color into its ranks? It needs to start with a change in the hiring mentality. Rather than looking for prior experience, the industry should be prioritizing passion, desire and grit. Then, invest more into teaching and coaching that talent. You will find that most people when challenged or given the opportunity, will rise to it. How will AI impact your job in the future? I cannot wait for AI to free up my time by handling tasks such as emails or building PowerPoints. It is my hope that the hours I get back from this can be used for more creativity and more time spent with people—our associates, customers and owners. This tool can help get us back to talking about how we move our business and the world forward. Read about Ad Age’s 2024 Leading Women here

How Peggy Roe is driving loyalty at Marriott

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