Marriott shuffling workers

Marriott International Inc. is reorganizing its Salt Lake call center, eliminating 110 full-time hourly positions but adding 180 jobs in other departments of the call center.

"People are changing their buying habits," said Steve Lundgren, the lodging company's general manager for Utah. "Everybody goes online. Voice calls, people calling and talking to an agent — that side of our business is declining."

The positions that will be eliminated will be on the toll-free reservations desk and the "regional desk," which is in charge of booking reservations for people who call hotels in Utah, Nevada and Arizona. The customers' calls are transferred to the regional desk at the Salt Lake call center, near 2100 South and 300 West.

For the past few years, the Bethesda, Md.-based company has been consolidating call centers in North America, reducing the number of centers from 12 to seven.

The Utah call-center positions will be eliminated from Feb. 1 to April 18. In that same time period, the center will increase the number of positions in four other departments. The company will add 20 reservations agents for Marriott-owned The Ritz-Carlton, 60 agents for the frequent guest program called Marriott Rewards, 70 agents to answer calls for the timeshare resort villas of the Marriott Vacation Club, and 30 additional home agents.

Employees who work in the home-agent program, which currently employs 70 people in the Salt Lake area, dial into the Marriott telephone system from their houses in order to work a six- or eight-hour shift.

"The reason we do the home agent is we find that people are looking for more flexible work schedules and types of work," Lundgren said. "We find that people who are trained can work just as effectively out of their homes as out of a call center."

The 110 employees who are laid off will be considered first for the new positions, Lundgren said.

"For most of our associates, there should be a good opportunity" to get a new job within the company, Lundgren said, but the new positions may not offer the same shifts.

The laid-off employees will also get special consideration if they apply for positions in Marriott's Salt Lake-area hotels.

The managers who are laid off will have to decide whether they want to take a severance package and leave the company, take a position at a Salt Lake-area hotel, or take another job within the Marriott company outside of Utah.

There are 13 managers in the Salt Lake call center.

"Four of those managers will remain in position," Lundgren said. "The other nine will be looking for another opportunity. The plan is there will be two new management positions as well."

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E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com

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