Public relations is a funny business, many times you are trying to get people to pay attention to a press release or event you are holding and the job is really about creating a buzz. Other times public relations becomes more about either quelling some bad publicity or having the foresight to recognize an opportunity for good press. It’s not always so easy to spot the great public relations efforts (though a company like Zappos does pretty well) but it is certainly easy to spot when your public relations team has failed and even more easy if that failure is on a global stage. In particular I am talking about the utter failure of the corporate PR team at the Marriott Hotel Chain to react to a groundswell of poor press, tweets and blogs after staff at the Times Square location did not recognize that kicking the new fan favorite of the US Open out of their hotel would be a boneheaded move…Allow me to elaborate.

Even if you are not a tennis fan, it is hard to avoid the hoopla and hype surrounding the US Open.  As one of the tennis majors and hosted in Flushing Meadows, New York, the tournament is extremely well covered and televised both domestically and internationally. As there is almost every year in major sporting events,  this year the tournament provided fans with a real feel good story in Melanie Oudin. Oudin, the previously 70th-ranked 17 year old shocked tennis fans by defeating fourth-seeded Elena Dementieva and former world No. 1 Maria Sharapova and was only recently defeated by ninth-seeded Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark in a 6-2, 6-2 loss. However it is not Oudin’s remarkable tennis run that caused this post, rather it is a story making the rounds (and the news) about how Oudin was forced to leave her hotel and move across the street because Marriott wanted to jack the room rates.  The story goes this way…

Oudin was staying at the Times Square Marriott — because if you’re 17 and in New York, you want to be in the middle of the action – But because she’s never advanced this far in a major and her path was littered with high-ranking players whose last name ended in “ova,” Oudin booked her hotel room for one week. She shared the king-sized bed in the room with her mom. Then down went Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (ranked 36). Then Elena Dementieva (the 4th seed). Then Maria Sharapova (the former world number one). Then Nadia Petrova (the 13th seed). So Oudin, whose stay in New York had been elongated, needed a place to hang her racket at the end of the night. The Marriott Hotel made Oudin and her mom leave when their reservation was up or pay an increased (doubled) room rate.

Now I can understand the front line hotel staff not having the foresight to realize that this was going to be a public relations disaster but doesn’t someone at the Marriott head office stand up and take notice when reporters start calling to ask about a guest. I mean shouldn’t your public relations team have heard of Twitter and started to see the buzz growing? Apparently not at Marriott as the hotel chain said it was shocked to hear the news of an ousted Oudin.

“We had no knowledge Melanie Oudin was staying at the hotel. There were no guests registered under her name. The hotel was absolutely shocked to receive this media inquiry,” a hotel spokesperson said.

Even if the hotel chain had no knowledge of Oudin’s ordeal, I find it tough to believe that when reporters started calling nobody thought to pick up the phone and call the manager at the Times Square location to confirm what had actually happened. Surely the people working at the hotel knew who Oudin was and recognized the fact that this 17 year old girl now had to employ security guards to protect her when she makes the short walk from the locker room to the practice courts or when returning to her hotel. Even if the front line staff did not recognize the poor move of having this girl leave their hotel, how could nobody at the corporate level recognize the opportunity to turn a PR disaster into something remotely positive. It would have been extremely easy to turn this situation around even after Oudin had found a room at another establishment. Here’s how I would have played it

First, once I realized that head office getting a call from a reporter about a teenage tennis player in the US Open was not a hoax I would have immediately made two phone calls. I would have the manager of the Times Square Marriott on one line and begin explaining to him that I didn’t care who was in the nicest suite in the hotel, s/he was to turn that sucker into a 17 year old tennis phenom’s dream. Lavish pillows, bubble baths and whatever else is saved for the top guests. Then (and I am assuming that there is some level of authority granted to the executives at Marriott) I would have made it my business to figure out who represented Ms. Oudin (which is not very hard considering for this article I found it in two minutes) and would have called her representative to not only offer apologies but to let them know that the hotel had prepared the best suite for Oudin and that of course her and her family were guests and did not have to pay for their stay. Of course that seems like the easy way to stem the negativity that was already brewing in the press. I probably would have even taken it a step further and paid Oudin so my  marketing team could whip up some quick viral advertisements that played on Marriott’s error in judgment. Giving the girl a lavish suite and showing that the hotel chain could laugh at itself would certainly be better than the absolute nothing that they did do.

Great job Marriott, now you have America’s newest sweetheart booked as a guest on “The Tonight Show” and “Ellen” where no doubt the easy story to tell will be about how big bad Marriott kicked her out of her hotel. Ya, that’s what you want. For a company that tries to espouse a commitment to community and family values I’d say you could mark this as a pretty complete failure.


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