The Keys to Mandarin Oriental's Successful Digital Transformation

📌 Key Takeaways

• Mandarin Oriental built a unified digital transformation program across marketing, operations, technology, and HR, rejecting the siloed approach where separate teams worked on separate things

• The company built on a foundation of its brand DNA before deploying any solutions

• Change management wasn't an afterthought. Mandarin Oriental created a dedicated “transformation office” with change leadership baked into the program from day one, running contests and celebrations as hotels implemented new systems

Today's insights are from Monika Nerger, who led digital transformation as Group Global Chief Information Officer at Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Listen to our full conversation here on the podcast →

Most digital transformations fail because the approach is wrong.

One team builds an app. Another team works on CRM. A third tackles operational systems. They all launch separately. Nothing connects. Nobody wins.

Monika Nerger watched others make this mistake. Then she did something different at Mandarin Oriental.

"We didn't want to do these initiatives as silos," she told me. "We were going to put it together as a unified program."

Here's why that decision changed everything.

The Problem Most Miss: Technology Without Foundation

When the pandemic hit, Mandarin Oriental's situation was stark. Hotels went empty almost overnight.

"Ours was pretty pronounced because the guest for Mandarin Oriental is global, international, very international, C-level, luxury," Monika explained. "We were not well positioned to pivot into staycation. It's not our market."

She lost 40% of her technology team through furloughs and layoffs. Resources were constrained. Everyone was just trying to keep systems running.

Most companies would have frozen transformation plans.

Mandarin Oriental did the opposite.

"We knew this was the time to do something and think ahead," Monika said.

But they didn't start by picking technology. They started by asking fundamental questions about who they were.

Start With Brand DNA, Not Technology Solutions

Coming out of the pandemic, heading into 2023, Mandarin Oriental brought in a new CEO, Laurent Kleitman. His first question wasn't about technology.

It was about identity.

"What is this company's strategy?" Monika recalled. "We started again foundationally. What's the DNA of the brand? Where do we fit into the market? What's our key differentiator?"

This was a strategic necessity.

"Through the pandemic and coming out of it, we could see there was some compression in luxury and ultra luxury," she explained. "Things were starting to look a lot alike in terms of product. And then we were all saying some of the same words. Uber-personalization. Service excellence. So we really needed to do some soul searching."

Once they understood their brand DNA, something shifted.

"How are we going to elevate the brand? How do we accelerate growth? What are the opportunities to optimize and deliver service excellence? Underneath all of this is technology, and it was almost a natural collaboration."

Marketing, operations, technology, and human resources came together. Not as separate initiatives. As one unified program.

Mandarin Oriental’s Cross-Functional Approach

Mandarin Oriental didn't silo the work.

Monika and leaders from marketing, operations, and HR worked across geographies—Hong Kong, London, New York—literally around the clock.

"A lot of that work was done remotely, at all hours, and everybody was all in," she said. "And then we finally got together in Hong Kong. What an opportunity to sit at the table, look at each other and say, okay, we're going to do this, right?"

The breakthrough came from how they structured the program.

"One thing we learned from looking at what was going on in the market is that we didn't want to do these initiatives as silos. This team's working on an app. This team's working on the new CRM strategy. This team's going work on operational excellence and what technologies we need. No, we were going to put it together as a unified program."

Another critically important decision: Creating a proper transformation office.

"The most important part was the support to get a proper transformation office where we had change management and change leadership baked into the program. That changed the game for us in our ability to deliver in a relatively short period of time, a series of very complex programs that all needed to come together."

Working Backwards From the Problems

When Monika's team looked at colleagues’ struggles, one problem kept surfacing: information fragmentation.

"You're at the front desk, you're trying to check three or four different systems to figure out who's in front of you," she explained. "I should know Josiah is in front of me, who you are, and that you've been there, and that I extend some hospitality to you when you arrive."

The solution? A tool called “Guest Lens” that provides colleagues with guest context at critical moments, from the front desk to morning team meetings.

But they didn't start by picking software.

"You always have to work backwards," Monika said. "What's the process today of bringing that morning meeting together? What's working, what's not working? What are the gaps? What does a general manager and hotel manager wish they could know that morning that they need to convey to the team?"

Then came the key insight:

"It's really getting into the weeds and understanding the processes and not looking for a technology solution to make a better morning meeting. That doesn't work."

This is where most transformations fail. They deploy technology, hoping it fixes process problems. Mandarin Oriental fixed the process first, then found technology to support it.

Data Governance Before Guest-Facing Tools

While competitors rushed to launch apps and chatbots, Mandarin Oriental did something critical: they organized their data first.

"Data governance was really an imperative for us to get our data organized so that we could start to use it for intelligence, insights, visualization, and now AI," Monika explained.

They set up a proper data governance team. They established ambassadors for each part of the business—sales, marketing, and operations. Each ambassador owned their data set.

One example on why this mattered: country of origin.

"We didn't do a very good job always of collecting country of origin. And yet that's really super important and powerful. And we don't want the front desk to be collecting this as the last part of a check-in process: ‘So what's your country of origin?’"

They redesigned processes to collect data earlier in the guest journey—not at check-in, when it creates friction.

"That brought us into the whole discussion of what does the pre-relationship with the brand look like, what can we collect from you in a useful and purposeful way without overbearing you with all of that detail."

It’s details like this that many companies skip. They want personalization without first organizing the data that makes personalization possible.

The Transformation Office: Making Change Stick

Creating a transformation office sounds bureaucratic. But Monika's approach was anything but.

"We brought in some outside resources to help us understand how to set up the office. What do we need to do? And then we started to develop programs."

The key insight? This wasn't temporary.

"This is more than ‘We are doing transformation and we're going set up a temporary office.’ This was really about embracing change as part of the culture. Because this is going to go on and on."

They created ongoing programs: “lunch and learns,” a change leadership forum that brought global leadership together for open and transparent communication.

"You have to repeat things over and over — and do that in a meaningful way so that it starts to flow through the whole company," Monika said.

But the most powerful element? Celebration.

"We ran contests. Hotels were putting together their own videos. ‘Look at how we implemented this system!’ And they had big celebrations. Celebrating the wins is so critical when you're implementing a big program with lots of change and people are nervous about how it's affecting their job."

This is what separates transformations that stick from ones that fail. The technology matters. But the change leadership matters more.

The Project That Touched Hearts

When Monika reflects on what she's most proud of during their digital transformation, she doesn't start with the guest-facing app or the CRM system.

She talks about something simpler: a program that offers complimentary room nights for colleagues.

"Mandarin is a relatively small company with 14,000 colleagues, and it was really hard to get a complimentary room night. We were hearing that's what the colleagues were looking for."

With limited funding, they got creative. "With a bit of duct tape and baling wire, because we didn't have a lot of funding for this, we tried to repurpose the tools that we had and the data that we had. And we launched the complementary room night program for our colleagues."

The impact went beyond the perk itself.

"It started to grow and grow, and it became foundational to how we attract people to the brand," she said. "When you do something that really touches the heart and soul of the colleagues that are delivering it day in, day out, it really feels good to be able to do that."

That's the test of transformation. Not just: Does it improve guest metrics? But: Does it make the people who deliver hospitality daily feel supported?

Why the Unified Approach Works

Most hotel companies approach transformation like this:

• IT team picks technology

• Marketing team builds campaigns

• Operations team manages rollout

• Everyone hopes it connects

Mandarin Oriental did it differently:

• Leadership aligned on brand DNA first

• Cross-functional team worked together from day one

• Data governance before guest-facing tools

• Change management built into the program

• Celebrations and contests as adoption strategy

"Brand runs through all of it," Monika said. "We did not design in isolation. The brand was always at the forefront."

When they designed the Mandarin Oriental app, every detail reflected the brand identity. "When you go and see your prior stays, it's got the fans. There's a lot of detail and a lot of thought that went into every part of it."

The app was distinctively Mandarin Oriental. Because they started with brand DNA, not technology features.

Three Questions For You To Think About

1. Can you articulate your hotel, restaurant, or company brand DNA in one sentence? If you can't explain what makes your hospitality unique, how can you build tools that enhance it? Start there.

2. Are you fixing process problems or just deploying technology? Walk through the actual colleague experience. What's broken? What is missing? Fix that first. Then find technology that supports the solution.

3. Who owns change management in your organization? If it's not a full-time job for anyone, transformation won't stick. You need dedicated resources focused on adoption, education, and celebrating wins across properties.

Digital transformation fails when you treat it as just a technology project.

It succeeds when you treat it as a mission-critical business initiative with brand DNA at the core, cross-functional collaboration from day one, and change leadership baked in from the start.

Monika shared the impact of what this feels like when you approach transformation this way. "It's rewarding because you hear it firsthand. You're working with your colleagues and understanding that you're solving problems for them."

That's the real goal. Not implementing technology. Solving problems for the people who make hospitality happen every day.

This insight comes from our conversation with Monika Nerger on leading digital transformation at Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Listen to the complete interview to learn more →

Monika Nerger served as Group Global Chief Information Officer at Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, leading their digital transformation initiatives across their global portfolio.

Want to hear more conversations like this? Listen to the Hospitality Daily Podcast →