W Sydney

APAC - RESERVATION NEWSLETTER

EMPOWER RESAPP UPDATE
SYSTEM MAINTAINCE UPDATE/ PROPERTY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM / GRA-TRAINING / CHANNEL
UPDATE (GC) / ENHANCEMENT RESERVATION SOLUTION / SERTIFI / SUPPORT CHANNELS

WELCOME!

Welcome to our 02nd edition of Asia Pacific

Reservations Newsletter 2022. The purpose of this
newsletter is to share the latest updates related to
Reservation Discipline, which includes system
enhancements releases, reservations processes best
practices, optimization initiatives updates, and
support resources available to all on-property
reservations associates.

in this edition, we have included the updates on

EMPOWER ResApp, System Maintenance, Property
Management System (PMS), GRA –Training, Channel
Update- CTAC, Enhancement Reservation Solution,
Sertifi, and Support Channels.

Thank You,
The Ritz-Carlton, Harbin APAC Reservations Team

©2022 Marriott International, Inc. proprietary and confidential 1

EMPOWER RESERVATION - UPDATE
FIREFOX BROWSER TO BE REMOVED BEGINNING FEB. 28
Firefox will be removed and blocked from all workstations and
servers on the Marriott network for both Windows and Apple
macOS devices. Once Firefox is uninstalled, the only Marriott-
supported browsers will be Edge/Chrome for Windows and
Safari/Chrome for Apple macOS devices. Marriott will no longer
be testing and ensuring that business applications are fully
functional with Firefox. Therefore, should associates choose to
continue using Firefox, an application may not operate correctly.
Associates who need to access “EMPOWER Reservations” are
advised to use the Google Chrome browser moving forward.

MOBILE CONTROL PANEL SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE AND DOWNTIME

MOBILE CONTROL PANEL & MOBILE GUEST SERVICES UNAVAILABLE DUE TO SCHEDULED
MAINTENANCE
The Mobile Control Panel will undergo scheduled maintenance on March 1 beginning at 13:00hrs
HKT During the downtime, the Mobile Control Panel and Mobile Guest Services will be
unavailable, and some GXP and PMS functionality will be impacted.

It is critical that all front desk/Reservation associates and leaders are familiar with the impacts,
prepared to answer guest questions, and ready to complete steps to sync GXP with PMS after the
downtime. Click here for detailed instructions and key impacts for your reference.

ABOVE PROPERTY OPERA 5.6 MAINTENANCE SCHEDULE

Kindly be reminded of the Above Property Hosting Opera 5.6 scheduled maintenance outage.
Please refer to your hotel’s operations. During the maintenance, the Opera version will be
upgraded to 5.6.15.13.

✓ Singapore Hosting Opera 5.6 (HA05) :

March 10th (23:00) – March 11th
(05:00) Singapore Standard Time
✓ Singapore Hosting Opera 5.6 (MAR3)
: March 16th (23:00) – March 17th
(05:00) Singapore Standard Time
✓ China Hosting Opera 5.6 (CHN1) :
March 16th (23:00) – March 17th
(05:00) China Standard Time

Refer to the MIMPG maintenance outage job aid for Lightspeed Hotels, Opera 5.4 and 5.6 on-
prem, and Opera 5.6 Above Property Opera.

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©2022 Marriott International, Inc. proprietary and confidential
MARRIOT BONVOY - FLEXIBLE POINT REDEMPTION RATES LAUNCH 29th MARCH

The transition to flexible point redemption rates will

go into effect on March 29, and this enhancement
will provide flexibility and options for Members
while deepening their engagement with the
Program.

With the introduction of a flexible redemption rate,

the points required for hotel stays will fluctuate and
be more intuitive to Members than they are today
and may encourage redemptions on nights with
lower occupancy.

Discipline-specific support resources, optional training, and updated FAQs will be shared in early
March and we encourage property reservation teams to review the FAQs to be aware of the
changes and are prepared to answer Member questions

In addition to flexible point redemption rates, Members will soon be able to expand the value of
their Free Night Award by adding up to 15,000 points per Free Night Award, giving them access
to even more hotel and resort options across the portfolio.

In the meantime, you may refer MGS for existing Flexible Redemption resources

GROUP RESERVATION AUDIT (GRA) – TRAINING UPDATE

Group Reservation Audit (GRA) is a no-cost solution that helps shorten the room block audit
process by enabling associates to identify potential rooms booked outside the block for attrition
and commission reconciliation purposes by comparing Planners’ list of attendees to Hotels’ in-
house guest list.

The GRA training on DLZ is now available in 8 languages including English and Simplified Chinese.
The course has been assigned as Recommended to the following functions: Event Planning,
Event Leaders, Group Housing, and Sales & Service functions. The 23-minute course introduces
the GRA tool and the steps to perform an audit.

This course will enable you to:

✓ Prepare the Planner Guest List
✓ Generate a Group Reservation Audit Report
✓ Prepare and Run an audit file
✓ Review the audit results to identify potential rooms booked outside a room block

For more details on GRA, please visit the MGS page

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©2022 Marriott International, Inc. proprietary and confidential
ENHANCED RESERVATION SOLUTION (ERS) - UPDATES
ENHANCED RESERVATION SOLUTION (ERS)
ERS is a shopping and booking experience that offers customers more choice and flexibility to
customize their hotel stay. ERS presents customers with room features (“attributes”) they are
willing to pay for and want to guarantee at the time of booking. Currently, we have 2100 + hotels
live globally and 500+ hotels live in APAC.
In 2021, 304 LIVE ERS hotels generated USD 2.5M USD new attribute revenue.
We now encourage all ERS live hotels to follow the item listed below to track attribute revenue,
Retail rate calculation, and Inventory change

1. TRACK ATTRIBUTE PRODUCTIVITY

Live hotels are recommended to use SEG27
REPORT data in their sales strategy meetings
to track attribute performance and identify
opportunities.

2. USE RETAIL RATE CALCULATOR

LIVE hotels should use a retail rate
calculator in order to look at their retail
room type pricing strategy. This tool is
located under revenue management tools,
or you can access it via ERS retail rate
calculator

3. INVENTORY CHANGE
Hotels should reach out to the ERS team for Inventory Change in case they identify an
opportunity to:
• Modify/Add/Delete room pool count
• Modify/Add/Delete Attributes
• Modify accommodation name
• Update maximum occupancy (Room pool/Room Type)

NOTE:- It is important to validate the total of rooms sold at room pool level and balancing to be
carried out from room pool level. This ensures that hotels have existing room categories
available and prevent overselling of some specific room pool.

2022 ERS DEPLOYMENT UPDATE

In 2022 ERS team is looking at a small-scale deployment approach for 2022 and we have
identified 60 selected opera properties to GO LIVE this year. The deployment will occur in 4
waves spread out throughout the year.
©2022 Marriott International, Inc. proprietary and confidential
 The Westin Nanjing Resort & Spa

Ritz-Carlton Reserve, Jiuzhaigou

The Ritz Carlton Sanya, Yalong Bay

CTAC (CENTRALIZED TRAVEL AGENT COMMISSION) – TRAINING UPDATE

CTAC – CENTRALIZED TRAVEL AGENT COMPLETE UPDATED CTAC TRAINING

COMMISSION (POSTED ON - 17th Feb 2022)

CTAC is Marriott’s proprietary system that Timely and accurate commission payments
facilitates consolidated commission payments are critical for driving topline revenue,
on behalf of hotels to Travel Agencies, Travel maintaining our Group intermediary
Management Companies, Online Travel partnerships, and preference for our
Agencies, and Group Intermediaries. CTAC hotels. Hotel associates responsible for
works by compiling all travel agency booked setting up and managing groups are highly
stays into a “batch” for the hotel to review. encouraged to take the following group
Hotels must review and approve their CTAC commission training to prevent future errors:
batches daily.
❑ Hotel associates responsible for mini-hotel
Every hotel is required to have at least two setup: Group Commission Overview
CTAC users per property – one reviewer and and Setting Up & Managing Group
one approver. Our recommendation is to Commissions.
assign Reservation associates as Reviewer ❑ Hotel associates responsible for managing
and Finance associates as Approver. CTAC batches: Group
Commission Overview and Managing
On daily basis, we should review, edit, and Commission Batches in CTAC.
approve commission batches within the CTAC
application as per policy SMRM-051 Additional resources are also available
on Centralized Group Commission (Group
CTAC) Program Procedures.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• CTAC CPS User Guide (PDF)

• MRDW - Hotel Production by Intermediary is available on ITM13 and ITM14 reports.
• Library of Group Sales Agreement Clauses (DOC)
• Travel Agent and Group Intermediary Commissions (Control-2) Standard
• Group Intermediary Participation and Compensation StandardThe(SMRM-020)
Westin Nanjing Resort & Spa

©2022 Marriott International, Inc. proprietary and confidential 5

SERTIFI – “REFRESHER”

Sertifi allows you to conventionally collect credit card

authorization forms electronically by automating the process.
This gives customers a simple and improved experience.
Authorization forms are secure and payment data is tokenized.
This ensure the payment authorization is PCI compliance and
eliminates the risk of using physical authorization forms.
Sertifi is available to Managed and Franchise teams, globally, who have a valid EID password.
Sertifi currently offers Marriott International two business solutions:

1. SERTIFI EAUTHORIZE is a web-based portal used to securely and electronically manage the
sending/receiving of third-party credit card authorization forms on property.

2. SERTIFI ESIGNATURE is a secure solution that enables electronic signatures for sales
agreements and event-related documents. It provides flexibility to meeting planners where
they can review and sign documents virtually anywhere, anytime, and from any device (e.g.,
desktop/laptop, mobile device, or tablet).

Click Send File from the home screen.

1
You will require an Admin or above role
to create and send a form

Enter the file name (customer-facing

2 and must be unique using the naming
convention)

3 Enter the email id of the recipient

(Guest/Event Planner/TA )

Enter the message you want to include

4 in the signing room (best to keep the
message short and concise)

Pre-Fill form link to complete any field in the forms (booking

5 details, amount, arrival/dept dates, and charges paid)
6 Click “Finish & Send”

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©2022 Marriott International, Inc. proprietary and confidential
RESERVATIONS SUPPORT CHANNELS
SERVICENOW (SNOW) – APAC DEDICATED RESERVATION SUPPORT

Raise Tickets through ServiceNow

• Go to Service Now and click on

GET HELP
• Support Category - Continent On
Property
• Select - Asia Pacific On Property
• Select the Category as
Reservations
• Select applicable subcategory from
the list available

VISIT ASIA PACIFIC RESERVATIONS DISCIPLINE FOCUSED INFORMATION ON MGS

Home > Continental Divisions > Asia Pacific > Asia Pacific Consumer Operations > Sales &
Distribution > Reservations

Visiting our MGS page where you will find reservation process-related details, job aids, recorded
webinars, newsletters, links to different reservation-related systems, etc. to support Reservation
operations. This page is updated constantly to reflect any recent updates and changes in the
process.
EMPOWER RESERVATIONS CHATTER GROUP – Click To Join

The EMPOWER Reservations Champions Chatter group located within the EMPOWER: Guest
Experiences (GXP) module allows you to connect with other EMPOWER Reservations users
and serves as an open forum to ask questions and share feedback directly with associates and
across the globe .

©2022 Marriott International, Inc. proprietary and confidential 7