What Marriott Bonvoy expects from its ICC partnership

Cricket tournaments don’t just fill stadiums, they fill hotel rooms and drive up hospitality revenues. During the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 hosted in India, host cities generated USD 861.4 million in revenue from tourism, including accommodation, travel and food and beverage because of the influx of domestic and international fans. 

Hotels across these cities saw occupancies exceeding 90 percent on match days, and in some cases average room rates surged between 120 - 150 percent, with select properties reporting up to a 500 per cent jump due to match-driven demand. 

Across platforms, accommodation bookings spiked sharply, Ahmedabad recorded up to a 777 percent increase in reservations tied to World Cup dates. 

With cricket already demonstrating its power to move travel, bookings and spend at scale, Marriott Bonvoy is now leaning further into the sport through its four-year global partnership with the International Cricket Council (ICC).

From visibility to engagement

For Marriott Bonvoy, the ICC partnership isn’t just about visibility, it’s about relevance.
Calling it one of the brand’s “new global flagship partnerships,” Andrew Watson, Chief Commercial Officer, Europe, Middle East & Africa, explained that cricket offers a powerful entry point to future audiences.

“It will play a role of allowing us to connect with our members of the future, and connect to them through their passion for cricket,” Watson said. “It will be a platform to allow us to produce content, drive awareness, and also bring unexpected experiences to our current and future members around the world.”

The idea is to move beyond transactional loyalty and tap into emotional currency, using sport as a shared cultural language across markets.

Digital-first media plan

From a media standpoint, the partnership will live largely in the digital ecosystem, driven by content designed to travel across platforms and geographies.

Watson noted that the focus will be on creating social content and amplifying it through the right channels, while ensuring the storytelling feels authentic and local.

“It will majorly be digital,” he added, indicating a lighter reliance on television and a sharper focus on digital platforms where fandom-driven communities already exist.

ROI beyond numbers

For John Toomey, Chief Commercial Officer, Asia Pacific (excluding China), the return on investment spans awareness, acquisition, and deepened engagement. With the ICC’s reach touching nearly two billion fans globally, scale is only the starting point.

“We want to increase our awareness of the Marriott Bonvoy program,” Toomey said, before pointing to the next layer, enrollment into a loyalty ecosystem that’s “more than just points.”

But the most powerful ROI, he believes, lies with existing members.

“It’s about our current membership base having the opportunity to take advantage that only Bonvoy points can unlock.”

By focusing on digital-led content and member experiences, Marriott Bonvoy is treating the ICC partnership as a longer-term engagement effort rather than a one-off campaign. Its effectiveness is likely to be assessed not only through awareness or enrolments, but through whether these initiatives lead to sustained member participation.