Before Peggy Roe became Marriott International's first Chief Customer Officer in 2023, Roe started her career in customer relations at Six Flags Over Georgia on the “I Spy Photo” team.
“I would stop people and take their picture and then tell them they could pick it up in those little key chains,” she tells Glamour. “I did that as my first job. The year after that, the company that employed me—it was a third party—asked me to run the business for them. So I hired all my friends as photographers, and we worked in the theme park. It was pretty fun. And I got to ride roller coasters after the park closed.”
Apart from being the coolest summer job ever for a teenager, this role also helped lay the foundation for Roe's entire career. As she says, “It sort of foreshadowed hospitality. I worked at Ruby Tuesday's, and I was a Walmart greeter. All the stuff, when you think about it now, it's what I love to do today, but I didn't know it at the time.”
But, what exactly does a Chief Customer Officer do? Roe oversees global consumer strategy across the more than 30 brands and nearly 9,600 properties owned by Marriott International across 143 countries. This includes leading brand strategy integration with Marriott Bonvoy, their customer loyalty program, and testing how to use data and AI innovation to improve customer experience.
“AI has sort of exposed for us that there's so much in the industry that's still manual; in order for our associates to deliver the experience, we have to do a lot of work,” she explains. “So we're focused on making that simpler so that they can show up to customers in a more personal way and get to answers faster.”
After all, talking to a customer service representative who just gets it can be the difference between a five- and four-star experience. For the latest installment of Doing the Work, Roe talks about her hands-on approach to customer relations and why Marriott International is changing how and where they show up for customers.
Glamour: What is your typical morning routine? What time do you get up in the morning?
Peggy Roe: I'm going to start around 6-6:30 a.m., but my mornings are anything but routine. I traveled over a hundred nights last year. When I'm at home and when I'm traveling is quite different. If I'm at home, the first thing I do is pet my dog, wake the kids up, and make coffee. Those are my priorities. And then, very quickly, I actually wake up to many customer emails. I quickly try to sort through those and read what's happening in the world and get that off to people who can handle the issues before I actually start my day.
How does that engagement with the customers early on allow you to show up better in your role?
I am very passionate about listening to customers in real time, and that's why I read these emails. If you read five emails from customers every day, you have a pretty good idea of what's happening in the world. Now that I've been in this job for a couple of years, I can see the trends of what's happening throughout the year and the intensity. It allows me to be a better leader, more connected to what's happening in the real world.
Throughout your previous jobs and different paths, how do you typically deal with rejection?
That's a great question. I don't deal with it very often, I guess, because I refuse to take no for an answer. There are a lot of no's, right? Internally and externally. There are a lot of people saying, you can't do this because of this, or for whatever reason. Usually, when they say no to me, I like to
challenge myself to turn it into a yes. I'm always trying to figure out, well, why is it? I don't deal with no well.
In the past, Marriott has showed up at Coachella and Stagecoach. This year, it's the official hotel supporter of the FIFA Men's World Cup 2026. Consumers have always been interested in these fields. That's not new. So why is Marriott now deciding to show up in food, sports, and music events?
In the past, we had these once-in-a-lifetime experiences where you can use your points and redeem them for hotel stays. Post-COVID, people were shifting their dollars from things to experiences. It was to the extreme, and that revenge travel turned into, “I'm going to go pursue every passion I have because I haven't had a chance to do that in the last two to three years.”
That trend has continued post-COVID. We realized the reason people travel is not to stay in the hotel—it's actually because of the experiences that they're looking for. Ultimately, our vision is to be the brand that gives you access to these experiences over a lifetime.
We've got members who've been in our program now for 30 and 40 years. They've stayed with us during life's most important moments. It wasn't just the business travel. Sure, they were with us for business, but they've celebrated birthdays and anniversaries and their first child. That's really special. Our brand has this role to play that's much bigger than just points for hotels. We're a brand that can be part of someone's life. That's, first of all, a big commitment and a tall order, but a really exciting opportunity.
Companies across industries are exploring how AI can help their business model, especially with customers. But there's also technology fatigue and social media fatigue too. How does Marriott use AI, and how are you planning to use it in the future?
So, we started with the Gen AI Studio so that we could test and learn. As the technology is rapidly improving, we've been experimenting in multiple areas. Some of it is about the efficiency in which we can operate and deliver the services that we do. Some of it is about helping customer get answers faster. We're making progress on both sides. We're experimenting with things in the call center. For example, if you call about a problem, the system is experimenting with trying to find the answer to the problem so that the system can tell the associate who's talking with you to get the answers faster.
What else is coming up for next for Marriott International?
We're excited about sports tourism. Obviously, the Super Bowl and FIFA, and we also signed a partnership with ICC Cricket. The number one sport in the world is soccer. In terms of fans, I think it's 3.5 billion. The second largest fan base is actually cricket, which is not wildly popular in U.S., but it's 2.5 billion [fans]. These are two big sports that we're excited about being a partner with. So you're going to see us activate and do a lot of creative things.
