Marriott International’s Senior Vice President of Global Residential Operations, John Hearns, on hiring for heart, building communities instead of condominiums, and the marathon story that explains everything.
Marriott International’s Senior Vice President of Global Residential Operations, John Hearns, on hiring for heart, building communities instead of condominiums, and the marathon story that explains everything.
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John Hearns has spent 45 years at Marriott International – longer than some of its branded residences have existed. As Head of Global Residential Operations, he oversees a portfolio of roughly 150 open residences across brands including The Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, and Bvlgari, with a pipeline that will nearly double that number over the next five years. We spoke about what it actually means to bring a century of hospitality culture into the places people call home.
John Hearns is Senior Vice President of Global Residential Operations at Marriott International. The company’s branded residences open portfolio spans 14 brands and nearly 150 properties worldwide.
John: The difference is that our customers live with us. They become part of our family — and frankly, we become part of theirs. In the hotel business, you’re trying to create a relationship in three or four days. In our residences, that relationship has no checkout date. Our job is to learn as much as we can about these owners, in a respectful way, and then keep raising the bar. Every year, I challenge our teams so that their owners will come up to them and say, “I never thought it could get better living here. But every year it does.”
John: It starts with the opening general manager and director of residences. Those are the most important hires we make. And wherever possible, we want to open a Ritz-Carlton Residence with a Ritz-Carlton leader, someone who carries that service culture in their bones, not just their training. We bring them on no less than nine months before opening, and ideally a full year out. We want them building relationships with owners before those owners have even taken possession of their unit. Because moving is already stressful enough. Our job is to take the difficulty out of that transition, to make them feel at home before they’ve unpacked a box.
John: Radar on, antenna up. As soon as we’re in the presence of an owner, we’re constantly listening, constantly watching behavior that we can note, so that the next time we encounter that owner, whether at their home property or somewhere else entirely, we’re identifying and acting on what we know. People say, “How did you know I like Diet Coke?” That’s our job. But it’s not just the technology that supports it. It starts with the people. You have to hire individuals who, at their core, want to be of service to others. You can train skills. You can’t train that.
John: I’ll give you one we actually animated with AI for a leadership conference we just held in Santa Barbara; 180 leaders together at The Ritz-Carlton there. An owner at The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Miami Beach stopped by the concierge desk on his way to Tokyo to run a marathon. He was excited. He mentioned it was going to be his sixth marathon, and he named the five cities where he’d run the others. Our team in Miami reached out to The Ritz-Carlton, Tokyo to ensure a warm welcome. But then they went further. They contacted our teams in each of the five previous marathon cities and asked them to record a personal video message. When he crossed the finish line in Tokyo, his phone lit up with congratulations from all six locations. And when he returned to the residence, the team had engraved six rocks glasses (one for each city) with the marathon course etched into each one. That comes from people who genuinely want to bring joy to others. You can’t script it. It comes from the heart.
John: I think luxury has a timeless element to it. Whether you’re 35 or 65, anticipatory service still creates a wow. That doesn’t change. What I think does change is how you communicate, and how you personalize the experience beyond service. Let’s say we have 120 residences in Miami Beach. There’s no reason our team should be sending a blast email to every owner about a wine dinner. We know which owners love red wine. We know which ones are cyclists. We know their hobbies, their interests, what makes them feel seen. So we curate the event, the invitation list, the experience itself. And that approach doesn’t care whether the owner is 35 or 67. It works because it’s personalized to them. As our ownership base evolves, the interests evolve with it, and the tools evolve to match.
John: Privacy is one of the most important things we protect. I’d put it in any buyer’s top ten reasons to purchase a branded residence; the trust that we, as a brand, will respect who they are and how they live. Our owners know that the threshold into their unit is closely guarded. If an owner says do not enter, that’s it. We respect it without question. Breaking that trust would be the worst thing we could do for the relationship and for the brand. The way we think about personalization is that it’s built through interaction, through listening, through what owners share with us willingly over time. Discrete communication, what you might have known as the earpiece culture at the Ritz, still exists, but it’s about internal coordination, not surveillance. The goal is always to make an owner feel known, not watched.
John: ONVIA is our owner recognition platform. It is a way to create community and connection above the property level, so that owners feel valued and recognized not just at home, but wherever they travel within our ecosystem. It starts at the moment of purchase: we want owners to know they’re joining something from day one. There are twelve aspects to it, but at its core, it elevates their status within Marriott Bonvoy as a residence owner. It extends benefits across our full portfolio, not just our luxury hotels. If an owner is visiting their children in Minneapolis and stays at a Courtyard, they should feel that recognition wherever they go. And then there are partnerships; we were recently on stage with the president of Moët Hennessy in North America, because their customers are our customers. We have a portfolio average price point of $2.5 million across our residences. That gives us the ability to build partnerships that a standalone luxury condominium simply cannot. That’s where scale works in your favor.
John: It is. And it reflects where I think we are right now as an industry. A clean lobby, a smiling associate, and an attentive team are the table stakes. Everybody should be doing that. We’ve moved up a level. We’re building communities around owners’ interests. We’re curating art collections. We’re hosting live concerts inside our residences. The emerging artist series introduces owners to a curated portfolio of artists we consider to be on the ascent. The idea being that everyone wishes they could have bought an Andy Warhol before he was Andy Warhol. But honestly, what I care about most isn’t how many pieces our owners purchase. It’s that we made the connection. That’s what we wake up every day to do.
John Hearns is Senior Vice President of Global Residential Operations at Marriott International. Marriott’s branded residences open and pipeline portfolio includes The Ritz-Carlton Residences, St. Regis Residences, Bvlgari Residences, and W Residences, among others, across 17 brands. Learn more at https://marriottresidences.com/.
