The Marriott team

THEY are all new to the hotel industry, this Marriott sales team of Cleofe Albiso (director of sales and marketing), Frances Alfafara (marketing communications manager) and Nico Ivan Velasquez (public relations officer). They also all come from different backgrounds, but they blend very well together, with the Marriott mantra of “Put people first” always in their minds.

Albiso is a teacher by profession, a graduate of De La Salle Andres Soriano Memorial College in Toledo City. She taught with the Arts Magnate for the Performing Arts, then worked for the Audio Net group of companies, which was her first exposure to marketing. Before she joined Marriott, she worked with Globe as marketing head for the Visayas.

Alfafara is a cum laude graduate of Mass Communication from the University of the Philippines-Cebu. She worked with Unionbank and then moved to Graphic FX where she was marketing officer before she moved to Marriott.

Velasquez  is a graduate of the University of San Jose-Recoletos where he was an Amparito Lhuillier scholar. He worked with MLhuillier after graduation and decided to have a career shift after four years in the company. That’s when he moved to Marriott.

Asked how they work so well together, Albiso replied, “I always extract ideas from my team. The key is to think you’re like the audience. The hardest thing to do is to top what you did the last time. Sometimes you’ve extracted everything you got and there seems to be nothing else to do. That’s an exciting time. We’re all new to the industry and so we have no biases, nothing to unlearn. We have a general manager (Patrick Carroll) who supports us in our programs. We’re happy about our new marketing team.”

For her part, Alfafara said when she was with Graphic FX, she was into events, into back-and-front production, so her job in Marriott fits her “like a glove.” Of her new job, she said: “The people here are always on the lookout for fresh ideas: what else has not been done? The challenge is always top it next year. When they present us with a program, we ask: has this been done before? This is my first hotel job but I was able to blend well with the hotel. The personalities are extraordinary. The best thing is we bring out the best in each other. Our flaws are identified, so we can correct them ourselves. One may need improvement but our accomplishments are appreciated.”

For Velasquez, he said, “I am actually the youngest in the group but I pointed out it’s never about age but what you can bring to the table. Right at the start, I put into action the tagline ‘Put people first.’ In terms of innovation, we don’t want to be bored.

We easily get bored so we have to keep looking for new things. If it animates us, it will also animate our guests.”

Albiso said Marriott has a Global Sales Office and she represents Cebu Marriott. She has done a lot of marketing abroad, as well as a lot of international training. She recently attended the hotel’s “Women in Leadership  Conference” in Macau with some 60 other women representatives. The focus was on the well-being of the employees so they will be happy. This changed her lifestyle—no more “humba” to treat her staff with. And she has convinced them all to do yoga.

Alfafara echoed that they have a lot of training, whether online or actual. And this goes to their files. They have also learned to “pick a cue.” A guest may be looking at a map so she approaches him and puts him on his way to where he wants to go.

Velasquez shared that they have to play lobby host regularly. When they do that, they act as the hotel manager. Any problem that may arise, he has to solve them. One perfect afternoon, when there was absolutely no problem to be solved, he was wondering what he could do. He saw a guest who had been staying in the hotel for four days and just doing basically nothing. He approached the guest and asked him if he would like a visit to the spa, to which the guest replied: “That would be perfect.” For Velasquez, it made his great day even greater.

This team of Albiso, Alfafara and Velasquez is just one reason why being in Marriott feels so welcoming: everyone there has the culture of “Put people first,” not to mention making one good thing in the hotel even better the next time around.

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