How Marriott International scaled training to 38 languages with Smartling AI Translation

Overview

Marriott International is a global hospitality brand operating in 145 countries and territories. To ensure a consistently excellent customer experience across their portfolio, they provide their on-site associates with high-quality training materials, which requires translating large datasets into dozens of languages. 

As demand for new training and localization grew over time, Marriott’s Associate Development team needed a smarter, more efficient way to translate and review content across regions without sacrificing quality or overburdening their teams.

Desafio

For years, Marriott relied exclusively on traditional human translation, a costly and time-consuming process. Translation requests were sent to external vendors, and after initial translation, the content went through multiple rounds of in-country review. Associates from properties around the world were asked to review and validate these translations, on top of performing their regular job duties.

“In 2023 alone, 205 associates globally reviewed more than 3.2 million words,” said Lynnette Glaze, Director of Associate Development Strategies and Solutions at Marriott International. “That volume of internal review created a substantial opportunity cost, limiting how much time teams could spend on other key priorities.”

“In 2023 alone, 205 associates globally reviewed more than 3.2 million words. That volume of internal review created a substantial opportunity cost, limiting how much time teams could spend on other key priorities.”

— Lynnette Glaze, Director, Associate Development Strategies + Solutions, Marriott International

The process also created bottlenecks. Each project required back-and-forth coordination between teams, with feedback taking weeks to reconcile. Despite the effort, the time and expense meant Marriott was falling short of their language goals. 

“To reach the majority of our audience, we needed to be translating into a minimum of 18 languages, but we could only reach seven, and that was just on some of our projects,” Glaze explained. “Human translation was all we knew. But as translation costs took up almost half of our project budgets, it became harder to justify expanding further, both to ourselves and our stakeholders.” 

As Marriott’s learning and development programs expanded, the demand for more languages and faster turnaround became impossible to meet under the existing model. The company needed a new solution that combined the accuracy of human translation with the efficiency of automation—something scalable and adaptable to the company’s diverse content needs.

Soluções

Early on in the transition, Marriott found that the platform’s built-in glossaries, style guides, and workflows gave them control and consistency across all translations. 

Once they saw the reliability of Smartling’s results, they integrated Smartling’s AIHT (AI Human Translation) workflow directly into their processes: Smartling’s AI translation produced high-quality first-pass translations that were then reviewed by Smartling linguists for accuracy. 

To support this shift, Smartling’s Customer Success team worked closely with Marriott to design a workflow aligned to their specific goals and constraints. The team carefully assessed content needs, review requirements, and quality expectations, ensuring translators were set up for success and that the solution fit smoothly into Marriott’s existing processes. Over time, this approach both built trust and dramatically improved speed and scale.

Using Smartling also provided Marriott’s administrators with real-time visibility into every project, eliminating the constant email check-ins and uncertainty that came with vendor management. “The visibility Smartling provides from the admin side has been a game-changer,” said Glaze. “It’s easier for our validators to use, and we can track every detail of a project.”

“The visibility Smartling provides from the admin side has been a game-changer. It’s easier for our validators to use, and we can track every detail of a project.”

— Lynnette Glaze, Director, Associate Development Strategies + Solutions, Marriott International

Since partnering with Smartling, Marriott has expanded its training library from seven languages to more than 19, with some platforms now supporting 38. The translation process went from weeks to just days, and the quality and efficiency gains have allowed internal teams to refocus on their primary responsibilities rather than translation review­. 

By shifting from a fully human translation model to an AI Human Translation workflow, Marriott achieved approximately 40% cost savings, helping the team scale language coverage without increasing budget pressure.

These shifts returned substantial time and capacity to team members across regions, delivering major cost and productivity benefits at scale. Ultimately, this transition ensured that team members had the capacity to do their most important work to push the business forward.

 The Smartling Difference

Smartling enabled the Marriott associate development team to streamline their workflows and scale their translation output:

• Language coverage expanded from 7 to 38
• Translation time reduced from weeks to days
• Reduced translation costs by approximately 40% 
• Generated tangible savings per language translated by reducing internal review effort
• Translation efficiency gains compounded across programs, creating significant economic impact at scale

By freeing internal staff from manual review, Marriott’s teams could finally refocus on strategic learning initiatives instead of translation logistics—accelerating training deployment and improving global employee readiness to better serve their guests.