Mapping a Multi-Property B2B Journey: Marketing Cloud Strategy for a Leading Hotel Group

The Challenge: One Clear Path for B2B, Across Every Property

Hospitality groups run on complexity most guests never see. Behind every corporate stay, conference booking and event enquiry sits a web of teams, properties and systems that all need to agree on who a B2B customer is and how they should be managed.

For this group, that picture wasn't yet joined up. Sales data and customer profiles lived outside Salesforce. The processes for creating and managing B2B accounts varied across corporate stays and conference or event bookings. And no one had a single, agreed view of how a B2B journey should flow through Marketing Cloud, or how it should tie back into the accounts and bookings sitting in Salesforce.

What Needed to Come Together:

• A Single Definition of the B2B Customer: The business needed one clear, documented set of processes for creating and managing B2B accounts — separating out conference and event bookings from corporate stays, and closing off any pathway that could accidentally create a B2C contact instead.
• A Data Model That Reflects Reality: Booking behaviour needed to be understood property by property, then translated into a data model that correctly ties bookings back to the right B2B account.
• Integration Clarity Across the Stack: With Hapi and Opera sitting alongside Salesforce and Marketing Cloud across multiple properties, the business needed a clear-eyed view of what needed to connect, and why.
• A Marketing Cloud Journey Worth Building: Leadership wanted a high-level view of audience definitions, the B2B journey itself, and an enhanced preference centre — before a single build decision was made.
• A Roadmap the Business Could Commit To: Above all, the group needed a prioritised, signed-off backlog and a realistic view of how many phases the implementation would take — not just a wish list.

The Solution: A Focused, Time-Boxed Discovery

Zenyus led a structured discovery engagement, working closely with the Marketing, Salesforce Operations and IT teams to turn a genuinely complex, multi-property environment into a clear, actionable plan.

1. Business Process Discovery for B2B Customers

We worked with the business to document exactly how B2B customers are created and managed today — covering the distinct paths for conference and event bookings versus corporate stays, and how each of those should map onto accommodation bookings with the group's properties.

2. A Data Model Built for Multi-Property Bookings

Rather than assume one property behaves like another, we identified where the data model needed to change to properly manage B2B bookings and keep them correctly linked back to the parent account — while closing off the gaps that had been letting B2C contacts slip through.

3. Integration Discovery Across Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, Hapi and Opera

With multiple systems in play across every property, we ran a dedicated discovery stream to understand the integration requirements between Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, Hapi and Opera — giving the business a realistic view of what needed to connect and where the complexity really sat.

4. Ideal-State Discovery Within Marketing Cloud

Working alongside the Marketing team, we mapped a high-level view of audience definitions, the end-to-end B2B journey, and an enhanced user preference centre — laying the groundwork for a Marketing Cloud experience built around how B2B customers actually engage.

5. A Backlog and Design the Business Could Act On

Discovery closed with a signed-off, prioritised requirements backlog, requirements broken into epics and user stories at the right level of detail for this stage, a high-level solution design covering the key B2B requirements, and discussion documents setting out the options considered along the way.

The Outcome: A Roadmap Grounded in How the Business Actually Works

Delivered within a disciplined three-week window, the engagement gave the group far more than a set of documents — it gave them a shared, cross-functional understanding of their own B2B environment.

• Three Weeks, Fully Scoped: Discovery was completed within three weeks, with any unused time carried forward into the design and build phase rather than lost.
• Every Team, Aligned: Marketing, Salesforce Operations and IT worked from the same set of discovery activities, so the resulting roadmap reflects the business as a whole, not just one function's view of it.
• A Backlog Ready to Build From: Requirements were signed off, prioritised and structured into epics and user stories, giving the delivery phase a clear, de-risked starting point.
• Multi-System Complexity, Made Visible: Integration requirements across Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, Hapi and Opera were identified property by property, rather than assumed to be uniform across the group.
• A B2B Journey Worth Building: Audience definitions, the B2B journey and an enhanced preference centre were mapped at a high level, giving Marketing Cloud implementation a clear, customer-led direction.
• A Phased Path Forward: The engagement defined how many phases the implementation would need to deliver all key requirements — turning a broad ambition into a sequenced, deliverable plan.