Marriott Looks to Video Game for Recruiting

Wall Street Journal: While it's not clear if "Farmville" ever did anything to inspire future farmers, Marriott International Inc. is hoping a hotel-themed online game could be a recruiting tool for the hotel industry.

At "My Marriott Hotel," orders stack up at the restaurant. Meanwhile, the manager has to decide how many pieces of shrimp to buy for the shumai. The kitchen runs out of croutons for the Caesar salad and there's not enough money for a new stove.

"They'll find that in fact this is a very intriguing business," said David Rodriguez, executive vice president for global human resources at Marriott, speaking about the game, which is making its debut this week on Facebook. The game "will demystify it."

Unlike Zynga Inc.'s "Farmville," which was developed as a revenue-generating game, Marriott's title is part of an emerging trend of using computer games for recruiting. Nearly a decade ago the U.S. military introduced America's Army, which proved to be a wildly popular and effective tool that cost very little, according to Ethan Mollick, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School who has written about the game.

Mr. Rodriguez declined to provide details on the cost of developing Marriott's game.

Siemens AG unit Siemens Industry Inc. in March brought "Plantville," which simulates the experience of being a manager for a bottling facility, a vitamin factory or a plant that builds trains.

Another genre of service-industry simulation games—sometimes called time-management games—turns the inner workings of a diner, hotel, nail salon or other type of service business into a game generally played on mobile devices.

In "Hotel Dash" from PlayFirst Inc., users simulate the actions of Flo, who rushes to deliver luggage, deliver room-service orders and decorate a dilapidated hotel into a more high-class venue.

More than Fun

Marriott says "My Marriott" will be more realistic.

"Those are great because they brand the hospitality industry and get people thinking about hotels and travel, but I think people are smart enough to know" the difference, said Susan Strayer, a human-resources branding expert at Marriott who helped develop its game with input from people within the company who operate restaurants and hotels.

"That's why our game is so appealing," Ms. Strayer said. "Not only am I having fun but I'm actually getting an understanding of what it takes to run a kitchen. "

Ms. Strayer's group at Marriott has the challenge of attracting newcomers to around 50,000 hotel positions this year, many in emerging markets such as India and China, which don't have strong hospitality-industry traditions.

The company hired Evviva Brands LLC, a recruitment-branding consulting firm, to develop a solution. Evviva Chief Executive David Kippen said he came up with the idea for a social-media game while on a market-research trip to India.

The first iteration includes only one game, which depicts a Marriott kitchen. The player buys ingredients, such as lettuce for the hamburgers and cheese for the spaghetti, after being given an array of options in quality and price. The player also hires staff, choosing from a range of experiences and salaries, and buys stoves and kitchen utensils. During rounds in the kitchen, players have to direct tickets to cooks and inspect food orders for quality before sending them out to customers.

The company says it will roll out games depicting other aspects of the hotel business and will introduce mobile-phone play next year.

Wharton's Prof. Mollick said most companies that have attempted such games have found it difficult to create a game that is enough fun to be effective marketing and realistic enough to attract the kinds of people to a job who would be suited to it.

The 'Holy Grail'

He said the "holy grail" of recruiting games—which would market a job and determine people who would be good at it—so far remains elusive.

Ms. Strayer said Marriott's game is designed to be purely marketing and shouldn't be confused with an attempt to evaluate and select employees. That doesn't mean there's not an important dose of reality, however.

"You get to see what kinds of decisions people have to make when they're running the hotel," Mr. Rodriguez said. "You better pay attention to inventory and make sure you're not running out of ingredients."