Quick Read Key Points

  • Marriott International executives said on the Q4 2025 earnings call that the company is "actively investing" in technology, data, and AI, aiming to improve customer and employee experiences.
  • The hotel group expects to spend $1.1 billion in capital expenditures this year, with more than a third of that going toward ongoing digital technology transformation investments.
  • CEO Anthony Capuano said on the call: "The majority of our technology investment is the re-architecture of our three most important technology platforms: central reservations, property management systems, and the loyalty platform." All systems have moved from development to deployment, and the company expects them to go live at a "significant number" of hotels this year.

Deep Dive

Marriott International is one of several hotel industry giants pursuing AI-driven productivity and experience enhancements.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts revealed last year that it had deployed more than 200 AI agents to handle guest service support at 7% of its hotels globally, leveraging technology partners such as OpenAI, Canary Technologies, Salesforce, and Oracle.

Choice Hotels' CIO Brian Kirkland credited AI copilots with boosting software development output and accelerating employee onboarding processes.

"Companies like Microsoft and Google release new technologies and capabilities every week," Kirkland told Hotel Dive last year. "Ensuring we stay closely connected with them, collaborate deeply, and position our franchisee and hotel data in the right places for guests to find is important to us."

The industry's enthusiasm is colliding with customer concerns.

Nearly two-fifths (about 2/5) of consumers surveyed by Reputation worry about losing the human touch as AI tools are rolled out. Privacy and data security, service failures, and difficulty resolving issues also rank high on the list of employee concerns.

For Marriott, leveraging AI is part of a multi-year technology overhaul it is undertaking.

"We view AI as an opportunity to potentially redefine the customer acquisition paradigm that has dominated our industry over the past few decades," Capuano said. "We believe our industry-leading scale, the breadth and depth of our global portfolio, our large and highly engaged customer base, and our strong relationships with partners in the ecosystem position us well to capture the significant opportunity that GenAI represents."

Despite ambitious AI deployment plans, Marriott executives cautioned that the technology is still in its early stages.

"In our industry, people often discuss various aspects of the business from the perspective of 'what inning are we in,'" Capuano said. "I want to tell you, we are driving into the players' parking lot. We haven't even put on our jerseys or stepped onto the field yet."