What's interesting is you kind of think that people love Marriott Bonvoy because the points, right? But what they ultimately tell you when you dig deep enough is that it's some relationship in some hotel, right, that they've had or a feeling that they got because of how they were treated.
You know, big companies have a hard time with CX because it often requires tough trade-off choices around operations and finance. But you just have to tip the scales more towards the customer. I think when I think about the digital guest experience, I think about it quite holistically from when people are thinking and dreaming and shopping for travel experiences. When they're actually booking, we need to make sure that our website and our app is fast and easy to navigate and search. Now, our sweet spot is when you land in the hotel. Getting there is, for us, a big moment of truth. You open the door and you see your room and the key is trying to understand what customers want in that moment and being in their head and anticipating that need. And of course, those are changing all the time and they differ person to person. What we heard customers tell us was a pain point in home rentals, right? They came to us and they said, hey, I worry that when I get there, will the home actually look like what I saw in the pictures? And so the VOC metrics became the most important. And we started listening to social and setting up this community of over 2,000 members and customers that we could talk to every week and every day. Constantly listening to our customers, finding a way to systematically get that feedback into our plans and actions has been something we have done, again, for close to 100 years. From the people who lead our food and beverage concepts to the people who design furniture and environments in our hotels to our digital teams. You have a view of customer experience that's different based on what you're doing because most of the people in our company have joined because they love this mission of serving the customer experience. And to let that then define what technology we need, what data we need. You know, I often think about homes and villas as the disruption to the disruptor. We started that business with 2,000 homes in 2019 and doubled down and invested throughout the pandemic and are close to 50,000 homes right now. Our mission overall is to not only just be a hotel company, right, but to have a portfolio of experiences and a brand in Marriott Bonvoy that you trust to take you to those amazing experiences when you want them. And so if we could do it right, that's really where our competitive advantage can lie. Hospitality and the hotel business, it always still comes back to the human interaction and the human connection. I think Marriott's values are to serve our world. I think that we believe very strongly that how we do business is just as important as the business that we do. While we stand for quality, consistency, and service, our mission is actually to help people see the world, right, to discover something new, to connect with other people, and to support customers when they're whatever they want to achieve around the world. And that means forever, right? Like we're going to have to be anticipating and thinking about what customers need when they go do that. And that's a lifelong journey.