Customer relations podcasting

Looks like I'm going to re-blog my friend Jan twice today. She's oh so on topic.

Re: The Faux Press :: Politics, Law, Media & Marketing: Bill Marriott's Got a Podcast :: Why Smoke-Free Hotels

In a recent podcast, Marriott defends the decision to eliminate smoking rooms in all his hotels.

In another (one of his first, the podcast enclosed herewith), he addresses new Federal regulations requiring U.S. citizens to show a passport when re-entering the country from Canada, Mexico and a bunch of other places.

The big guys continue to buy into the blog / vlog / podcast fray. Hey, even the President and the Department of Homeland Security have RSS feeds.

Excellent.

The show notes for the smoking piece are:

"We really received a lot of comments on the blog about Marriott's decision last year to take all our hotels in North America 100 percent smoke free. That includes Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott, Marriott Hotels, Renaissance, Courtyard, Residence Inn, SpringHill Suites, our Fairfield Inns, and even our TownePlace Suites.

"One of our very best customers who smokes blogged back to me and said, "I'll never come back to a Marriott." Well, that's a tough pill for us to swallow. But we made this decision because we knew it's what our customers wanted. And it certainly is what our associates deserved."

This is precisely the kind of issue that is best addressed by the head honcho.

Well done, Mr. Marriott, though a more conversational tone might lend more credibility and warmth to your show.

Thanks to Joho Blog for the heads' up.

What I love about Jan is she always speaks straight to you. In this case she's speaking straight to Bill Marriott. Bill could learn a few things from Jan.

I don't really have much to add except that I agree with Jan. The biggest issue I have is staying "on topic". While smoking in hotels is absolutely a great topic for a podcast I really question wether the discussion of homeland security passport policy is an appropriate topic when representing a hotel in a podcast. Although, I must say, in this case I really love that Bill has the grit to discuss such an issue, and I have to acknolege that he is not any employee, he's Bill Mariott and it's his hotel he's representing so it's his right if he wants to potentially alienate customers over issues outside of the scope of his hotel chain.