Oops, Marriott did it again.

The Marauder’s Map was “a magical document that revealed all of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry… [including the REAL TIME LOCATION] of every person in the grounds, portrayed by a dot. It was also capable of accurately identifying each person…"

I only discovered last month that a Marauder’s Map is, or at least was in use in 2018, in the unglamorously non-magical form of an iPod app, by Marriott Hotels.

Thanks to that app, the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown:

• knew in every moment where every housekeeper was
• knew in real time when every room was done, because the housekeeper had to press a button
• could and would automatically tell housekeepers which room to do next, a few rooms at a time
• all without paperwork, phone calls and other analog annoyances

But…

“Two years later, housekeepers at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown say the new tool… has actually made their job harder”, because:

• it takes away their ability to organize their day, making their work LESS productive
• it makes the work more physically demanding, as it sends them zigzagging across the hotel floors
• increases complaints from customers, who don’t understand because the housekeepers “skip their room”

“We have to take the heat,” housekeepers conclude, “chained to one’s cart with blinders on”.

Marriott, again?

There are advantages in real-time digital tracking of workers, as long as it is transparent, and designed and managed with participation of the workers themselves. In cases like this, for example, a hotel may certainly “track how long it takes to clean a room and tweak its workflow as necessary”. And it is also obvious that those who try something new first make more (necessary, useful) mistakes than late adopters.

Still, at time of writing, this is the third time Marriot gets some… “digital trend” wrong.

As a final observation, and suggested exercise for the reader, this year it would also be interesting to compare the intrinsical limitations of “employee tracing” in a not completely predictable environment as hotel housekeeping with the intrinsical limitations of… contact tracing to fight infectious diseases.

(This post was drafted in April 2020, but only put online in August, because… my coronavirus reports, of course