Growing Up Marriott

Growing Up Marriott Inside the family behind one of America’s great businesses: How J. Willard Marriott and his son Bill turned a DC root-beer stand into a worldwide empire. But will any of Bill’s four kids take over the company? By Cindy Rich Comments (0) | Published April 1, 2007 In the lobby of Marriott headquarters in Bethesda, Bill Marriott is on a stage wearing blue jeans and a 1950s-style varsity-letter jacket, telling stories about the old days. Before him stand nearly a thousand employees gathered to celebrate the golden anniversary of the company’s first hotel, near the Pentagon in Arlington. “We had an outside check-in booth,” Bill tells the crowd. When business was good in the summer, he would look into cars pulling in and give rooms to the biggest families: “We got almost $14 for a room with five people.” It’s been 50 years since Bill helped his father, J. Willard Marriott Sr., and mother, Alice, diversify their legendary Hot Shoppes restaurant chain and open that first hotel. Today Bill, at 75, is one of the richest men in America, and Marriott is one of the world’s largest hospitality companies, managing hotels under brands that include the Ritz-Carlton. “Who would have thought on that cold January day in 1957, just before Eisenhower’s inaugural, that we would have almost 3,000 hotels?” he says. “Here’s to 50 more great years.” For some time, many in the industry assumed that Bill’s son and namesake, John Willard Marriott III, 45, would take over for his dad. But when John resigned from his top post in the company in 2005, the business world buzzed with speculation that an outsider would take the reins for the first time. That’s hard to imagine. Marriott is a $12-billion empire built on values passed from one generation to the next. Bill’s three other children are widely liked executives at Marriott. The eldest, Debbie, 49, has an office next to her dad’s. Stephen, 47, though blind and deaf, travels the country to train sales staff. David, the youngest at 33, has on his office wall a white chef’s coat inscribed ceo trainee, a gift from former coworkers. Like Paris Hilton, Bill’s kids grew up as hotel heirs, their family name plastered on buildings. But they are the anti-Hiltons. Raised as Mormons, they were taught to be humble and work hard. As teenagers, they worked scrub jobs at the company as training in the Marriott way. “I don’t look at it like I’m working for a company,” says 36-year employee Ed Rudzinski, general manager of DC’s Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. “I’m really working for a family.” The long line of Marriotts as entrepreneurs starts with J. Willard Marriott Sr., who grew up tending sheep and cattle on his family farm in Marriott, Utah, a small town founded by his grandfather. At 13, he launched a business raising lettuce. The farm work kept him from finishing high school, though he later went to junior college and the University of Utah. Raised by devout Mormons, J. Willard helped out at Sunday school as a young boy. His grandfather, John Marriott, who followed Brigham Young west to Utah in the 1850s, had four wives and at least 30 children, according to Marriott: The J. Willard Marriott Story by Robert O’Brien. At 19, J. Willard did a two-year mission in New England and passed through Washington on his return home. Years later, he took a date to a root-beer stand and found long lines. Remembering DC’s muggy weather, he went to California, tracked down A&W founder Roy Allen, and asked for a license to sell root beer in Washington. J. Willard and his business partner, Hugh Colton, opened a nine-stool, nickel-a-mug A&W stand on DC’s 14th Street on May 20, 1927, the same day Charles Lindbergh started his flight across the Atlantic. The weather was hot. Business boomed. A few weeks later, J. Willard went back to Utah to marry Alice Sheets, his date from that first visit to a root-beer stand. She and J. Willard spent their honeymoon driving back to Washington in his Ford Model T. When winter cut into the demand for their cold root beer, they walked a few blocks to the Mexican Embassy and came back with recipes for tamales and chili, which Alice practiced cooking. The hotter the food, the more people would drink. One day in September they closed the root-beer stand. The next day it opened as the Hot Shoppes. J. Willard and the Perfect Burger As a child, Bill shined his father’s shoes every Saturday so they’d look nice for church on Sunday. If the shoes weren’t perfect, his father told him to do it again. Bill was born in 1932 and named John Willard Jr. His brother, Richard, came along seven years later. They mowed the lawn, washed the cars, and swept the driveway. Their father checked to make sure their rooms were clean. “He was very concerned that he had some money and his children would not learn how to work,” says Bill, who went to St. Albans, the DC boys school next to Washington National Cathedral. His classmates called him “Hot Shoppes.” J. Willard and Alice had become sole owners of Hot Shoppes early on when Colton,who’d graduated from law school, decided the business wouldn’t be able to support two families and sold them his half. They’d also joined a more prominent social circle. In 1930 Alice’s widowed mother, Alice Taylor Sheets, married Reed Smoot, a Republican senator from Utah. J. Willard started playing golf, and he and Alice dined at the White House. A few years later, after Smoot returned to Utah, they moved into the senator’s house on Garfield Street in DC’s Wesley Heights, where Bill and Richard were raised. With jobs at a premium during the Depression, J. Willard hired workers for little more than tips and meals. “He started making big-time money back in 1931,” Bill says. “Everybody was living in apartments. Nobody had air conditioning, so in the summer people didn’t want to cook because it was too hot in their kitchens. They wanted to come to Hot Shoppes and eat in their cars.” The company was the first to open drive-in restaurants; “running boys” brought food to the car. People liked eating outside, Bill says: “The thing that really got the business going was the fact that he was in the right place at the right time with the right product.” Bill tagged along with his parents when they visited Hot Shoppes. His father shook hands with the kitchen workers and called many of them by name—“How are you? How’s your family?” J. Willard visited employees when they were sick and paid their medical bills. “Take care of your employees,” he told Bill, “and they’ll take care of the customers.” Bill saw how his father insisted on order. Cooks had to follow a recipe card for every dish. Hash browns would be turned on the grill only once. Waitresses had to pick up glasses by the sides. Servers couldn’t have mustaches below the corners of the mouth. He listened as his father argued with a manager about how to season a hamburger. “They must have thrown ten hamburgers away,” Bill says. “My father wanted more salt. Eventually he got his point across.” When Bill was 14, his dad put him to work stapling invoices. Soon he was washing dishes and cooking burgers. In his senior year at the University of Utah, where he studied banking and finance, Bill took a class from speech professor Royal Garff, who talked about his daughter, Donna, a freshman. Bill asked a friend to point her out, then engineered a date. Members of the Sigma Chi fraternity were nominating girls for the title of sweetheart of Sigma Chi for an upcoming dance. “I just nominated you for sweetheart,” Bill told Donna. “You have to go with me if you want to be considered.” After the dance, Bill courted Donna for about four months before they began dating exclusively. “It was hard work to get her interested,” he says. “Real hard work.” Upon graduating in 1954, Bill, a member of ROTC, headed to a Navy training school in Georgia. He and Donna spent the next few months writing letters. He knew there was nobody else for him. She was smart and beautiful. She had her feet on the ground. A few months before he began active duty—Bill worked on a Navy ship as a supply officer—he called Donna from Georgia and asked her to marry him. She was shocked it happened so fast. She barely knew anything about his family. “I just need a little bit of time,” she said. “I’d like to run this by my folks.” In June 1955, Bill and Donna were married in Salt Lake City’s Mormon Temple in front of family and friends who belonged to the church. More than 800 guests joined the couple to celebrate that evening. Because Donna’s father didn’t make much money, family friends pitched in with shrimp and a cake with white sugar flowers. Bill’s fraternity brothers serenaded his bride with the “Sweetheart Song,” a Sigma Chi tradition. Battle of Father and Son By the time Bill came back to Washington in 1956, after two years in the Navy, his parents had opened Hot Shoppes from Philadelphia to Richmond. Their catering division was serving airlines. Company stock, first offered in 1953 at $10.25 per share, had sold out in two hours. The company recently had broken ground on its first hotel, the Twin Bridges motor hotel in Arlington near the 14th Street Bridge. The location was a few minutes from National Airport, the Pentagon, and downtown DC. “When they built the first hotel, nobody really knew anything about the hotel business,” Donna says. “Bill went to his dad and said, ‘Why don’t you let me run the hotel, and I’ll learn.’ ” Bill and his parents hung pictures at the hotel until late at night in January 1957, so they could open for President Eisenhower’s second inauguration. Someone called the hotel to see if the family wanted to buy a new Disneyland hotel in California. Bill asked his father. “Heavens, no,” J. Willard said. “We probably won’t be able to make this one work.” Bill led the hotel division and sometimes butted heads with his dad. J. Willard had once told his son, “Nothing good ever happens in a hotel.” He hated the idea of taking on debt—a fear that came from watching his father lose everything in the Depression when he couldn’t repay a loan he’d taken to buy sheep. “I was probably not as sensitive to what he had been through in the Depression,” Bill says. Despite J. Willard’s reluctance, Bill kept pushing. “My dad drove the hotel business,” John says. “We would be a restaurant and food-service company if we were what my grandfather created.” J. Willard demanded perfection from his son. When he visited Bill’s house, he ran his finger along the furniture checking for dust. “Mom went ballistic,” says Bill’s son Stephen. Bill says his mother, Alice, often refereed his battles with J. Willard. Both men trusted her. Tender and loving, she listened to Bill. They traveled to Beverly Hills together to pick out carpets and wall coverings. She helped J. Willard with hiring. She’d later pick the name for Fairfield Inns. “She’d go to his dad when it got really bad and say, “You can’t treat him like this. What are you going to do if he decides he doesn’t want to stay with the company?’ ” Donna says. About once a year, J. Willard praised Bill. “I don’t ever tell you you’re doing a good job because my father never told me I did a good job,” he’d say. “But you are. I’m happy.” In 1964, J. Willard named his son executive vice president, a promotion that meant Bill soon would become president even though he was only turning 32. J. Willard struggled with the decision, according to O’Brien’s biography. The night before the announcement, unable to sleep, he wrote Bill a letter: “A leader should have character, be an example in all things. This is his greatest influence. In this you are admirable. You have not taken advantage of your position as my son. . . .” He attached a list of guiding principles. Among them: “Pray about every difficult problem. Manage your time: Make every minute on the job count. People are number 1—their development, loyalty, interest, team spirit. Develop managers in every area. This is your prime responsibility.” As president, Bill replaced uncles his father had hired with more experienced staff. “His dad wouldn’t do it—he told Bill if he didn’t want them around, he’d have to get rid of them himself,” Donna says. J. Willard, still skeptical of the company’s hotel growth, hounded Bill with questions and second-guessed him. J.Willard agonized over issues; Bill made his decisions quickly. Bill learned some lessons the hard way. Soon after building its first hotel in Atlanta in 1965, Marriott declined to buy a second property nearby—partly because it included an open-air, multistory lobby that a Marriott team saw as wasted space. Bill also didn’t think the company needed two hotels in a city. “Out of our ‘wisdom’ was born the Hyatt Regency of today,” he writes in his autobiography, The Spirit to Serve: Marriott’s Way, coauthored by Kathi Ann Brown. “A steady stream of people passed through the hotel simply to stand in the ‘awesome’ spot in the lobby.” Employees quickly learned that Bill—most called him “Mr. Marriott”—inherited his father’s perfectionism and penny-pinching ways. “There was nothing worse than sitting on an airplane for three hours and having Bill or his dad sitting next to you,” says Jim Durbin, a family friend and former company president. “They’d have your financial statements: ‘How come you had ten peas on the plate with the cordon bleu?’ ” Even today, Bill walks into a hotel and checks for clean carpets and hot soup bowls. If a hotel reports high occupancy rates, he wants higher. He asks managers to learn the business from the bottom up, as he did. When veteran television-news anchor Kathleen Matthews joined the company last fall as a public-affairs executive, she changed bedclothes, cleaned windows, and wiped down a bathroom with a housekeeper. “You’re supposed to clean a room in 20 minutes. Bill says there are 60 steps,” Matthews says. “Within five minutes I was perspiring.” Over the years, Bill developed a reputation for spotting and developing talent. Fred Malek joined the company in 1975. He was leaving the Nixon administration and planning to leave Washington, but Bill persuaded him to stay. Malek spent 14 years with Marriott, including eight as president of the hotel line. Bill impressed him with the way he invited dissent. “He had a good way of not imposing himself in a meeting—of getting everybody to express themselves and getting a dialogue going,” says Malek, who went on to become president of Northwest Airlines and later founded two private-equity firms. “He was easy to argue with because he wasn’t bothered by it. He wanted you to argue with him.” Bill also mentored Al Checchi, who became cochair of Northwest Airlines, and Steve Bollenbach, who now runs Hilton hotels. “It’s significant how many great business leaders Bill Marriott trained,” says former general counsel Sterling Colton, whose father, Hugh, was J. Willard’s business partner in the root-beer stand. “He had a wonderful way of maximizing the abilities of the people he hired.” Bill’s work habits have changed little. Though he recently started a blog, he won’t use a computer and dictates his entries. He hates voice mail; his assistant, Phyllis Hester, types his messages on a typewriter. He carries three-by-five schedule cards in his pocket and bigger cards for taking notes about hotels that he tours. Hester says he’s always checking his watch. When she puts papers in his in-box, he whips through them in an hour. If she doesn’t clear his out-box fast enough, he’ll sometimes put it on her desk. “My mother tried to teach me patience,” Bill once told her. Hester said, “She failed miserably.” Family Time in Kenwood By the time Bill became CEO in 1972, he and Donna had three children. Debbie, their first, was born in 1957 with a congenital heart defect. She cried all the time, but heart-lung machines were relatively new, and doctors wanted to wait to operate. When she was five, Debbie couldn’t walk far without getting out of breath. Bill and Donna brought her to the Mayo Clinic, where they spent the night on their knees praying as she underwent surgery. “The next night, her heart went into fibrillation,” says Donna, who later joined the board of the American Heart Association. Doctors and nurses stayed with Debbie all night and pulled her through. Growing up, Debbie told her dad everything. “Ever since I was a little girl we had this connection,” she says. “He worried about me.” In third grade, she argued with her best friend and wrote the girl a letter calling her bossy. “What do you think of this?” she asked her father. “If I were you, I’d wait a few days, see how it goes, and read it again,” Bill said. Years later he told his daughter he has a drawer of letters he’s written but never sent. Debbie’s brothers Stephen and John arrived soon after she did, a few years apart. The youngest, David, was born in 1973, when Debbie was 16. The family lived in a brick ranch house in Bethesda’s Kenwood neighborhood. Bill made it a point to keep his kids out of the newspapers. When he wasn’t traveling, he was home by 6:30 for dinner. Donna cooked; Debbie made the salads. In the evening, Bill worked in his study but made time to check the kids’ homework. “He’d stop everything and put his pen down and read our papers and edit them for us,” says Debbie, who went to the National Cathedral School for girls. The boys went to St. Albans, Bill’s alma mater. Weekends were sacred to Bill. He took the kids to Annapolis to see boats and to movies, museums, and Civil War battlefields. He and Donna cheered Stephen on during Little League. David remembers Redskins games, NASCAR races with his dad, and especially rides in the Lamborghini that his dad kept in Arizona, where the family vacationed: “I thought it was the coolest thing, like stepping into a spaceship.” Bill was busier when David was young. The company was expanding to Europe, getting into the cruise-ship business, and launching the chain of Great America theme parks (ventures that Marriott later sold). When David’s first-grade teacher asked him to draw a picture of his dad at work and his dad at play, he chose nearly the same image: Bill sitting behind a desk wearing a suit and tie in one picture, a sweater in the other. J. Willard and Alice doted on their grandchildren. Before weekends at the family’s 4,200-acre ranch in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge, they took the kids shopping for cowboy outfits. J. Willard taught Debbie to shoot guns. He let the kids drive his Jeep and took them horseback riding. Debbie and Stephen didn’t like horses, but their grandpa wanted them to ride any­way. “He wanted to make you tough,” John says. “He believed you needed to be beaten up a little to be successful.” The Marriotts spent summers at the family compound on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, as they do today. Each family had its own house. Bill and his brother, Richard, who was running the restaurant division, flew back and forth for business. J. Willard gave the kids chores. When John was eight, his grandpa paid him to pick up pinecones in the woods. “I talked him into paying me a quarter per grocery bag, so I got $1 an hour,” he says. In the mornings, Alice cooked breakfast for the kids, and J. Willard took them on walks in the woods. He told stories about herding sheep as a boy, chasing bears away with his rifle. John laughed at his grandpa’s coyote howl. Bill’s kids didn’t think it was a big deal that their last name was on buildings. They grew up around the business, ate at Hot Shoppes on weekends, and walked through hotels with their dad. “I never said, ‘Wow, look—it’s my name up in lights,’ ” says Debbie, who as a two-year-old cut the ribbon on the family’s second hotel near Key Bridge. Bill and Donna raised the kids to work for what they wanted. “My parents had the philosophy that we only spend money on education and travel,” Debbie says. “We didn’t grow up with fancy cars in a big house.” Donna drove carpool in a station wagon. The kids had allowances. Debbie earned a few dollars a week cleaning her bathroom, washing dishes, and caring for the family’s miniature poodle. John had to pay half the cost of his new bike. “They all got cars when they were 16, and they weren’t Cadillacs,” Bill says. “That was about the only thing we really indulged in—so we didn’t have to drive them around.” When they worked summer jobs with the company, the kids were treated like everyone else. David washed dishes at the Pooks Hill Marriott. Debbie worked at a hotel front desk. Stephen cooked fries at Roy Rogers, which Marriott owned. Bill didn’t pressure his kids to work in the business, Stephen says, but “I know he hoped we’d go into it.” Even as late as college, Debbie wanted to be a doctor; David had childhood dreams of becoming a Redskin. On John’s first day working at one of the Marriott restaurants, he raised a spatula to smash a hamburger, as he’d seen McDonald’s cooks do. “What the hell are you doing?” Bill asked. “The bottom of the spatula never hits the top of the meat.” When Donna accompanied Bill on business trips, she asked J. Willard’s driver to pick up the kids from school. If he arrived in a limousine, Debbie and her brothers wouldn’t get in. “I tried really hard to distance myself from this perception people had that you’re a Marriott so you must be rich,” says Debbie, who wore worn-out jeans when she wasn’t in her school uniform. “I was almost embarrassed by it.” Stephen sometimes put stephen garff—his middle name—on his name tag when he was a hotel manager. Some of John’s friends assumed he’d pay for dinner when they went out. Others wanted free hotel rooms. “When you think somebody’s a really good friend,” John says, “and it turns out they’re not—that’s what’s really hard.” All the kids attended college in Utah, where the family name was well known. The basketball arena at Brigham Young University, which Stephen and Debbie attended, is called the Marriott Center. Classmates asked if they were related to “that building.” “There were a lot of people that used us all our lives, but it taught me to be discerning,” Debbie says. “It was easy to tell. They didn’t want to talk about me. They wanted to talk about my family.” In 1978, when she married Ron Harrison, now Marriott’s president of lodging for Canada, Debbie was anxious to take his last name. She knew the anonymity would help protect her children. Last year Debbie was at a fancy Washington dinner where someone introduced her as “Mr. Marriott’s daughter.” “There was a guy at the end of the table who actually said to me, ‘Now that I know who you are, you’re going to be really interesting to talk to,’ ” she says. “How Do You Work for that Mormon Guy?” Inside a small room in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Potomac, Bill sits on a folding chair, his wife next to him, and takes his scripture book out of its worn brown-leather case. The writing on the chalkboard reads lesson 3—grace for grace (for unto you . . . a savior is born). About 25 people are gathered here on a January morning for Sunday school. Bill’s son Stephen sits in front, closest to the teacher, because of his hearing problem. The ward members—a ward is similar to a parish—watch a video about the birth of Jesus. Down the hall, Ron is teaching a group of church teens; later Debbie will work with the young women’s group. Church is a pillar of Bill’s life. His parents took him to services in the Commerce Department auditorium when he was three months old. As he raised his children, he wanted them to hear the messages he’d heard growing up: Be modest. Be humble. Work hard. In the mid-1970s, soon after David was born, the church called on Bill to serve as bishop for two years. Clergy in the Mormon church are volunteers. Bill put in 70 hours a week at work and 25 more as bishop. He counseled married couples and helped people find work, sometimes in his hotels. He talked with teenagers about church proscriptions on drinking, smoking, and premarital sex. He visited church members who were sick and planned funerals. One day, as he watched worshipers file into the room, he told Donna that he knew the burdens each of them carried. “I think it made me a lot more compassionate,” Bill says. Years ago Bill and his dad decided to put a Book of Mormon in hotel rooms along with the Bible. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me they read it and have become members of our church,” he says. The book is one of the few signs that a Mormon runs Marriott. Bill and Donna don’t serve alcohol at their holiday party. At banquets, servers remove the couple’s wine glasses and coffee cups. “People would say, ‘How do you work for that Mormon guy?’ ” says Bud Ward, a former senior vice president and the industry’s first African-American hotel executive. “Bill’s a Mormon; I’m an Episcopalian. He’s a Republican; I’m a Democrat. And you know what? We never talked religion, and we never talked politics.” The Mormon church calls men at 19 to devote two years to mission work. Stephen went to Canada, John to Japan. But David wasn’t sure he wanted to go. Most of his friends weren’t Mormon, and his high-school life wasn’t centered on the church. He went to parties and listened to the Grateful Dead. He’d taken his parents’ car out before he got his license. Some called him a wild child. “The fact that I come from a very conservative Mormon family—some people may have perceived that just because I behaved like a normal child, I was some wild child,” David says. “I get a chuckle out of hearing people say that. “When you’re that age, your friends are your life. Mormons aren’t perfect. We’ve all had our breakdowns.” Bill at times got angry at David and raised his voice, a rarity, Donna says; “I thought Bill was going to kill him.” Considering whether to go on a mission, David prayed and sought advice from his brothers. “I decided I better take this opportunity to figure out if this is really what I believe and what I want my values to stem from,” he says. He spent two years in Manchester and Liverpool, England. He woke up at 6:30 to study scripture. He could listen only to classical or church music. He went door to door to spread the message of the church. Some people accused him of being in a cult. Some thought Mormons stole women for their harems and smuggled them to Salt Lake City through a tunnel. When people slammed the door in David’s face, he knocked again. “It was the first time in my life I was really looking outward,” David says. “It answered a lot of questions for me.” Bill says the mission changed his son’s life: “He came back ready to go to work, settle down, and have a family.” A Tragedy and a Miracle One afternoon in August 1985, the family had a cookout at its compound in New Hampshire. The sun was sparkling off the water. Bill, Donna, and all the kids except Stephen were there, along with Richard and his wife and four daughters. J. Willard was in his favorite place with his favorite people. The menu included summer corn, which he loved. At some point in the meal, he went inside, saying, “I’ll be back in a minute.” When he didn’t come back, Alice went to check on him. Bill followed. Debbie, then 28, looked through the window and saw her grandpa lying in his big reclining chair in the living room. Her aunt Nancy, Richard’s wife, was doing CPR. Debbie and Ron took turns trying to revive him. He was gagging, which made it seem as if he were breathing. The family waited for the paramedics for 20 minutes before Bill got in his car to look for them. J. Willard died as Debbie and Ron worked on him. The heart attack was at least his sixth. He was 84. More than 2,500 people gathered for the funeral next to the Mormon Temple by the Beltway in Kensington. At the service, President Nixon called J. Willard “one of the most successful businessmen of this century.” Roy Rogers, Strom Thurmond, and Billy Graham attended. Close friend George Romney—whose son, 2008 presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney, is named for J. Willard—dedicated the grave. Bill read from his father’s favorite poem, “Trees,” which is inscribed on a piece of wood outside his office door: The tree that never had to fightFor sun and sky and air and light,But stood out in the open plainAnd always had its share of rain,Never became a forest kingBut lived and died a scrubby thing. . . .Good timber does not grow in ease: The stronger the wind, the tougher the trees. Days after his father’s funeral, Bill and his family returned to New Hampshire and tried to get back to normal, comforted by their belief that Mormons live an eternal life and they’d see J. Willard again. When friends came to visit, Bill said he’d take them for a boat ride, one of his favorite pastimes. He asked Debbie, Ron, and their boys to go along. Bill went to the dock a few minutes early to gas up the boat. It was a humid day, and the air wasn’t moving, so gas fumes gathered around him. When he turned the ignition key to check the fuel gauge, a spark from the starter ignited the fumes. The explosion was so loud that the windows in Debbie’s house shook. She heard screaming and ran. The flames from the boat leaped 60 feet into the air. She saw her dad walking out of the water; he had jumped into the lake. The skin on his hands was peeling off. He had burns on his face and legs. That Bill walked away from the accident was a miracle, Debbie says: “The doctor said the blast should have knocked him out. He would have burned to death.” David was almost 12. That day was the first time he saw fear in his father’s eyes. Bill spent nearly a month in the hospital. Doctors grafted skin on his hands and legs. After the accident, he worked fewer hours, ate better, and exercised. “He stopped and smelled the roses,” Donna says. That didn’t last long. Bill had trouble sitting still. He worried. In 1989, he had three heart attacks, followed by coronary bypass surgery, which sidelined him for about six months. But he was soon back on the job working at full throttle. Today, though he’s well past retirement age and worth $1.7 billion, Bill still brings home at least one briefcase on weekends. He spends a third of his time traveling. Four hours in Toronto for a groundbreaking, a shareholders meeting in Spain. “He’d go through a city’s worth of hotels in one day if you let him,” Donna says. At budget time, Donna tiptoes by his study. “Sometimes you wonder if it’s too much,” Bill says. “But it’s good. It’s good for you.” Ed Rudzinski, general manager at Marriott Wardman Park, says Bill visits at least ten times a year. One time, he rolled down his car window, stuck his head out, and yelled, “I’mmmmm here.” The night of the hotel’s Black Tie & Boots presidential inaugural party in 2001, Rudzinski’s phone rang around 11. “Is that party still going on over there?” Bill asked. “I want to come by and see it—and bring my family.” Rudzinski surveyed the scene. There were 12,000 guests, including President George W. Bush. Hotel staff had set up 75 bars. Beer bottles were everywhere. We need to get things in order, Rudzinski thought. No, he decided, let Mr. Marriott see what we’re dealing with. Bill and Donna arrived with John and David and their wives. They stood at the top of the stairs, above one of the ballrooms. He took Rudzinski by the arm: “How many people you got in there?” “Probably 5,000 in that room,” he said. Bill looked at Donna proudly: “Five thousand people in there.” He took his wife and sons from room to room. “Will you look at this?” he said. “This is what we do.” Outside work, Bill and Donna lead lives that hint at their wealth without flaunting it. In 1991 they moved from Kenwood to the Avenel golf community in Bethesda. Their Georgian-style brick house, which was custom-built, is worth $6 million and has a solarium and a movie theater. One of Bill’s indulgences is his collection of 30 vintage cars, which he keeps in garages next to the house. The walls are adorned with ribbons Bill has won at auto shows. Hester says the only time she sees her boss nervous is when his cars are being judged—“because that’s something he has no control over.” Bill has taken the family on exotic trips to Kenya and Turkey. But he doesn’t own a yacht or a private jet. “The family wants to maintain a major stock share in this company,” says Bill, who shines his own shoes. “I can’t go out and sell my stock. I have all I ever need—so why worry about it?” On his frequent date nights with Donna, Bill wears his Levis and drives his Mercedes; Donna has a bad back so she can’t get into most of his sports cars. They listen to big-band music. Sometimes they eat in Marriott hotel restaurants, but they also like fast food. Marriott employees spotted the two recently at a McDonald’s on a Saturday night. “What are you doing here?” one asked. “This is where we eat,” Bill said. They like going to movies at Tysons Corner Center. John says his dad was happy when he started getting the senior-citizen discount. “Bill likes shoot-’em-ups like Clint Eastwood and Denzel Washington,” Donna says. “We go to those for a while, and then I say it’s time for me to see a chick flick.” The kids are a big part of their lives. John, Debbie, and Stephen live within five minutes of their parents and go to church with them. Bill takes his cars out with John, who has 15 of his own. David, who lives in DC, is building a house nearby. On Christmas morning, Bill and Donna load up their minivan and bring presents to their kids and grandkids. When the family gets together, conversation inevitably turns to the company: “Have you seen the redo of the JW Marriott downtown?” That’s how it’s always been for Bill—family and business blur. Every winter, he and Donna spend three weeks at the Harbor Beach Marriott Resort & Spa in Fort Lauderdale. They sit in the sun and read. Donna does needlepoint. After about a week, Bill gets antsy and starts touring hotels. Once he got up at 4 in the morning to meet a night crew. “He can never retire,” Donna says. “I’ve told him that. I’ve said, ‘You’d just die. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.’ ” Who’s the Next Bill? For years, it was assumed that if any of Bill’s children took over when he stepped down, it would be John. In 2003, at age 42, John became president of North American lodging. He was also in charge of global brand management and sales. Business Travel News had called him one of the “most influential executives” in the hotel industry. During his years as a company executive—early on he was running banquets—he’d learned his dad’s tricks. John would walk into a hotel room and take his shoes off. If his socks got wet, he knew the staff had cleaned the carpet to prep for his visit. He and Bill didn’t always see eye to eye. When an advertising agency pitched an ad showing a man wearing sandals, Bill said, “Get rid of the sandals—that’s not our customer.” “Actually, that is one of our customers,” John said. “They’re trying to go after the next generation.” John, like his brothers, was used to being under a microscope as the boss’s son. “People make it very clear that they expect the worst of you, so you have to prove them wrong,” he says. “They expect you not to work very hard. They expect you to go tell your father everything.” But in recent years, John had frustrations with his role as son and executive. “If the chairman and CEO is your father and you’re a senior executive—but not reporting to your father—then the people who do report to him tell him what they want to tell him about you,” he says. “If they’re interested in his job, and they see that I’m kind of making my way up the ladder, then they see me as a threat,” he says. “It’s a tough position to be in.” He also realized he wanted to be more entrepreneurial—something that isn’t always easy inside a big company. He and his team had developed a strategy of using customer profiles to personalize hotel stays. It was his idea to give guests their airline boarding passes at checkout. “I’m more like my grandfather,” John says. “I’m on the creative side.” John talked with his father and thought about his next move for a long time. He’d founded the family’s private partnership, JWM Family Enterprises, which owns and develops hotels. He decided he’d focus on expanding JWM, a job that would leave him time to work on start-ups. He is particularly interested in a small medical company. “There are different business opportunities where you can make money but it doesn’t necessarily help anyone,” says John, who serves as vice chair of Marriott’s board. “A lot’s been given to me. I need to give back.” Before his public announcement in fall 2005, John told his father he was resigning. “I was disappointed,” Bill says. “He worked in the business almost his entire life.” Though there had been talk that John wasn’t comfortable enough in the spotlight to be the public face of the company, the move surprised some employees. “For John to step aside was quite a shock,” Ed Rudzinski says. One morning in December, Stephen is getting ready to speak to a ballroom of Marriott employees during the company’s Sales School at the Westfields in Chantilly. He stands to the side of the stage, waiting for his introduction. Dark sunglasses cover his eyes. “Two steps,” a colleague tells him, then someone leads him to the podium, which he grips with both hands. “Welcome, everybody,” says Stephen, executive vice president of company culture. “Isn’t this a great hotel?” Stephen’s health problems make him an unlikely choice to replace his father as CEO. They started with hearing loss when he was in ninth grade. His parents thought he wasn’t paying attention at dinner. “Can’t you hear me?” Bill would ask. Doctors couldn’t determine the cause. He wore hearing aids, which made him feel awkward. “Some people have to wear glasses—do you think they’re geeks?” Bill told him. “It’s the same thing.” Toward the end of his Mormon mission, Stephen had trouble driving at night. By the time he finished graduate school, he couldn’t see the chalkboard. It wasn’t until several years later that doctors figured out what was wrong. He’d started to stutter. His hands jerked. A muscle biopsy showed that he has MERRF syndrome, a rare disorder that damages mitochondria—the energy source for cells—and affects the brain and muscles. There is no cure for MERRF syndrome. “My dad likes to fix things fast,” Stephen says. “I think he got a little frustrated because he wanted to fix my eyes and my ears, and he didn’t know how to do it. None of us know how to do it yet.” About three years ago, Stephen lost his sight completely. He sometimes can get a sense of what people look like from their handshakes. He can’t read Braille because his hands shake too much. He uses a voice-activated computer program to scan documents and type e-mails. His assistant, Judy Goulden, reads him his mail. He memorizes his speeches. “Steve can listen to things, and two weeks later he’ll recite it word by word to an audience,” Goulden says. “It’s a gift.” Using his cane, Stephen can find his way from his sixth-floor office to the lower-level gym for workouts. “If he’s in the hallway facing the wrong way, people will say, ‘Hi, Mr. Marriott—let me help you,’ ” Goulden says. He was walking through a hotel lobby once holding onto a friend’s arm when the friend stopped to pick up litter. Stephen, recognizing what he calls “the Marriott bend,” later phoned the general manager to say there was trash in the hotel. Thanks to his hearing aids, he can pick up loud sounds and talk on the phone. During meetings, he sits at the middle of the table and asks colleagues to speak up. He listens to football games on the radio. His son, Blake, a senior at Bethesda’s Walt Whitman High School, cooks for Stephen when his wife, Julie, is away. He plays golf: Friends line him up, and he swings. “What frustrates me is when people put limitations on me,” Stephen says. He once reminded his father that a blind man climbed Mount Everest. Stephen drops by Bill’s office often. They have lunch every few weeks. Bill hugs him at work, as he does all the kids. Unlike his father, Bill’s generous with his praise and affection. “I’m proud of you, Stephen,” he says, “and I love you.” Bill calls Stephen his hero. “He’s got more courage than anybody I’ve ever seen,” Bill says. “I’ve never heard him complain. Every now and then he’ll say, ‘I wish I could see what my daughter looks like when she gets married.’ Those things really grab you.” Debbie only recently stepped into a big role at the company. Last fall Bill offered his daughter the job as Marriott’s vice president of government affairs. Debbie hadn’t worked in the business since she was 21 and clerking at a hotel front desk. After she married Ron, her days were filled with raising their five children­, volunteering on boards, and running a church youth group. She became a mental-health advocate after her twin boys, now 27, were diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “Sometimes you see a person and say, ‘They have everything going for them—the perfect life,’ ” Ron says. “Everybody has issues. Everybody gets scratched.” Her dad’s offer came at the right time. Ron travels four days a week. Four kids are off on their own. The youngest, Kim, is a junior in high school. Soon the couple will have an empty nest. “I told him years ago, ‘You need to have Debbie work here,’ ” says Bill’s assistant, Phyllis Hester. “I thought Debbie was a lot like his mother—very smart.” Bill’s mother, Alice, who died in 2000 at 92, had served on Marriott’s board of directors. She was treasurer for three Republican conventions and vice chair of Nixon’s inaugural committee. “My grandma did things before women were doing things,” Debbie says. Debbie likes that the job combines her interests in politics, Washington, and the company. She also enjoys helping to keep the family values at the core of the company. “A lot of people think it’s about the prestige or the power or the money—but it’s not,” Debbie says. “In our family, it’s more of a stewardship.” She and Bill have stayed close through the years. When Debbie battled thyroid cancer three years ago, Bill and Donna flew to the Mayo Clinic for her surgery. “He called the doctors and made sure I was getting the best treatment,” Debbie says. “Still being mom and dad.” Bill stops by her office every day. They’ll chat about her kids but also work. “I feel a little pressure,” Debbie says. “I don’t want to disappoint him.” If her light is off, Bill will ask his assistant, “Where’s my darling daughter?” It’s a Tuesday before Christmas, and Bill is touring the Renaissance Washington, part of his annual holiday hotel visits with staff. He’s brought David along. Employees gather in the lobby to meet their CEO, cheering when he arrives. Bill walks around saying hello and posing for photographs, his son behind him. “Here comes David,” Bill says. David shakes hands with dishwashers, cooks, housekeepers, and sales associates—people doing jobs he’d once done. “Happy holidays,” he says. “It’s nice to see you.” He’s watched his dad greet employees for years. At 33, David leads a global sales team that handles Marriott’s largest business relationships. He oversees reservation centers and sales offices around the world. He reports to an executive vice president, not his father. “I don’t go to my father if I have issues or challenges,” he says. “Obviously I have a one-way line to the chairman—I don’t want to take advantage of that.” Colleagues ask David whether he’s a candidate for CEO. “I’ve never been one to get ahead of myself,” he says. “Things will work out for the best—whether that means a Marriott is taking over the company one day or a Marriott isn’t. The thing we want to ensure is that we get the right person for the job.” The day after the hotel tour with David, Bill sits on the couch in his office and talks about the future. Should something happen to him, there’s a succession plan. But he says he’s not going anywhere. “A lot of people retire too early and end up very frustrated,” he says. “You’ve been on a fast cycle all your life, and all the sudden the cycle stops.” Bill smiles when he hears that colleagues have mentioned Debbie as his possible successor. She’s very good, he says, but she doesn’t have business experience. What about David? “There’s a lot he needs to learn through the years—but we’ve got time,” Bill says. “We’ll see how it goes. You just never know.” Meanwhile, as the company prepares to celebrate its 80th anniversary in May, the family’s next generation is coming of age in true Marriott fashion. Debbie’s daughter spent a summer pumping gas at a boatyard near the family’s New Hampshire compound. John’s daughter Nicole, 18, has worked bagging groceries. Debbie’s son Chris Harrison graduates from Brigham Young this spring and hopes to get his MBA. He voluntered with a friend last summer at an orphanage in India. He wants a job where he’s working with people. He likes making deals. Two years ago, Chris’s dad, Ron, approached Ed Rudzinski at Marriott Wardman Park about a summer internship for Chris. He told Rudzinski the family didn’t want anyone finding out Chris was a Marriott. Rudzinski wasn’t sure what to do with Chris that summer. He was the first of Mr. Marriott’s grandchildren to get involved in the business. When Bill came by the hotel one day, Rudzinski said, “I understand your grandson’s going to be training here.” “Where are you going to put him?” Bill asked. Rudzinski suggested the front desk or events planning. Bill said, “Put him in the kitchen.” Staff writer Cindy Rich teamed up with television’s Arch Campbell in the March issue to write about his battle with cancer. Categories:People & Politics

J. Willard Marriott biography

J. Willard Marriott biography

QUICK FACTS NAME: J. Willard Marriott OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur BIRTH DATE: September 17, 1900 DEATH DATE: August 13, 1985 EDUCATION: University of Utah PLACE OF BIRTH: Marriott Settlement, Utah PLACE OF DEATH: Wolfeboro, New Hampshire FULL NAME: John Willard Marriott AKA: J. Willard Marriott AKA: J.W. Marriott BEST KNOWN FOR J. Willard Marriott is a 20th century American entrepreneur who started in food service and eventually opened a hotel chain. Synopsis John Willard Marriott was born on September 17, 1900, in Marriott Settlement, Utah. In 1927, he opened an A&W root beer shop in Washington, D.C. and then launched the Hot Shoppe eateries. Marriott eventually became head of the National Restaurant Association and opened the first of the Marriott hotels in 1959. The chain became one of America's largest companies and developed into an international business. CONTENTS Synopsis Early Life Launch of Marriott Hotels Death and Legacy Early Life Restaurant and hotel entrepreneur John Willard Marriott was born on September 17, 1900, in Marriott, Utah. A devoted Mormon for his entire life, Marriott served as a missionary for two years in New England. After completing his service, Marriott attended the University of Utah where he met his future wife Alice Sheet. The two were married shortly after Marriott graduated in 1927. Launch of Marriott Hotels Marriott's first foray into business was as an A&W Root Beer franchisee in the Washington, D.C., area. He opened his first A&W stand in 1927. Marriott soon transformed that business into the Hot Shoppe by adding hot food items. He then started a chain of Hot Shoppes, which was positioned as drive-in family eateries, along the East Coast. Marriott also expanded his business in a new direction in 1937 by providing food for commercial airlines. Continuing to explore new business directions, Marriott opened his first hotel in 1957—the Twin Bridges Marriott Motor Hotel located in Arlington, Virginia. While interested in the lodging market, he continued to expand his food operations in the late 1960s. Marriott acquired the Big Boy restaurant chain in 1967 and started the Roy Rogers fast-food outlets the next year. In 1982, Marriott bought Host International, making it the largest provider of food, beverages and merchandise at the nation's airports. Death and Legacy Marriott and his wife had two sons, Richard and John Willard, Jr., who is known as Bill. While his son Bill became president of the company in 1964, Marriott remained active in the business, serving chief executive officer until 1972 and as chairman of the board until his death. J. Willard Marriott died on August 13, 1985. The company he built became two separate entities in 1990s: Host Marriott Corporation and Marriott International, a giant in the hospitality industry. While the food service and hospitality assets of Host Marriott Corporation now belong to other companies, Marriott International carries on its founder's work with more than 2,500 hotels worldwide. Besides the Marriott brand, the company also operates Ritz-Carlton Hotels, Renaissance Hotels and Resorts, Residence Inns and several other chains. © 2013 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.

Marriott heir hopes Renaissance Dallas hotel’s expansion widens appeal

Marriott heir hopes Renaissance Dallas hotel’s expansion widens appeal By KAREN ROBINSON-JACOBS STAFF WRITER Published: March 11, 2013 9:37 PM Updated: March 12, 2013 12:23 AM

Lara Solt / Staff Photographer A tent set up for the groundbreaking is dwarfed by Renaissance Dallas, recognizable for its lipstick shape. 2 / 2 John Willard Marriott III, grandson of the storied hotelier, is spending $20 million to turn the Renaissance Dallas Hotel into more of a gathering place for groups. Today, the hotel on Stemmons Freeway that resembles a giant lipstick misses out on business from some trade groups and weddings that need more meeting or ballroom space, said Marriott, whose JWM Family Enterprises owns the hotel. He hopes a 30,000-square-foot addition, with two ballrooms and a rooftop terrace, will draw a crowd. “We knew that if we could add additional meeting space, we could bring in more business at higher rates,” said Marriott, 51, who was in town recently for the groundbreaking. “It’s a great building, great location, but strategically there’s a big opportunity, which we clearly saw, in group business,” he said. Marriott is vice chairman of Marriott International, the ubiquitous hotel operator, which counts his dad, John Willard “Bill” Marriott II, as chairman and former chief executive. Marriott International operates more than 3,700 properties, including the Renaissance Dallas. John Marriott III also is chief executive of JWM Family Enterprises, which owns 16 hotels in four states. Two are in Texas — the Renaissance Dallas and a Residence Inn in San Antonio. All 16 are operated by Marriott International. J.W. III, who goes by John, said he’s excited about the addition, which will displace a parking lot and a neatly planted row of live oaks. Mark Woelffer, the hotel’s general manager, estimates the expansion, which is set to open in June 2014, will add $10 million in revenue the first year. Hotels measure business, in part, by counting room nights. One room sold for 10 nights counts as 10 room nights. And the Renaissance Dallas loses about 200,000 room nights a year because of insufficient accommodations for groups, Woelffer said. He’s aiming for groups such as pharmaceutical sales and medical equipment brokers (the hotel is near the medical district) and trade groups of under 500 people. “There’s larger hotels that won’t want to take the size group that we’re looking at,” Woelffer said. Those groups “will then look at us as an option whereas they wouldn’t before.” A slow rebound During the economic downturn, the travel industry overall took a beating. But group travel fell off a cliff as employers conserved cash and sought to avoid the harsh headlines that followed AIG’s post-bailout visit to a California luxury resort. Group travel occupancy rates dropped steeply through most of 2009, according to STR, a travel research firm. Hotel owners felt the pain. From 2008 to 2009, “our partnership went from $6 million of profit to $2 million of losses in one year,” John Marriott said. Group business has begun to rebound, but its recovery “greatly lags” behind sales to the individual traveler, said Jeff Higley, a vice president with STR. “Group business accounted for 3 million fewer rooms sold in 2012 than it did at the peak in 2007,” he said. “I would call the recovery for group business ‘muted.’” Cynthia D’Aoust, interim chief executive of Meeting Professionals International, a trade group, said she’s seeing a nascent rebound in the meetings business. “Our own Business Barometer report, which monitors the industry’s most immediate needs in relation to economic concerns and opportunities, shows increases in meeting budgets and attendance, with unexpected strength being seen in regional meetings,” she said. She sees the Renaissance addition as a “market advantage for them.” Skyline views The addition will include a 16,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom that can host up to 1,500 people for a seated dinner. Directly above that ballroom will be the City View Ballroom and City View Rooftop Terrace, including an additional 10,900 square feet of indoor and outdoor space. The City View Ballroom will feature floor-to-ceiling windows and offer sweeping views of the Dallas skyline. The architect and contractor is HC Beck. Today, the 514-room hotel has 17 meeting rooms with 19,000 square feet of meeting space. JWM Family Enterprises bought Renaissance Dallas from Marriott corporate in 2006 and has since invested more than $15 million in upgrades. In the past two years, the hotel spent $3.5 million to revamp the lobby and the first-floor restaurant, Asador, where, after the groundbreaking, guests sampled flatiron steak with cassava fritas, along with scallops and blood orange ceviche. In 2008, guest rooms and corridors were renovated to the tune of $13 million. An upgrade to the penthouse-level fitness center is expected this year. John Marriott predicts he’ll see a return on his $20 million investment within four years, in part based on Dallas’ economic might. “Dallas is a stronger market than a lot of the other markets,” said Marriott. “Economically, there’s good growth here. You see a lot of cranes when you look around, which is always a key indicator and a very good sign of things to come, and of financial and economic stability. That’s one of the first things I notice, how many cranes are on the ground.” Early in 2006, John Marriott stepped down as executive vice president of lodging at Marriott International to head up JWM Family Enterprises, which at the time owned 10 hotels. As he left corporate, Marriott became vice chairman of Marriott International’s board of directors, where he serves alongside Republican presidential contender Willard “Mitt” Romney, who was named after J.W. Marriott I. Recession As he joined JWM Family Enterprises, John Marriott said he would focus on aggressively growing the company. The recession changed things. “We’re not adding hotels right now; we’re investing in the hotels we currently own,” he said. “We’re paying down debt and making sure we’re healthy for the long term. “It’s nice to see things improving, which they are,” he added. “Our business is coming back, quite a bit. We’re back to where we were before the downturn as far as profitability — $6 million for 2012.” So for now, the corporate focus is on hotel upgrades. Marriott’s personal focus is on ably serving as father of the bride in two months. One of his daughters, a Southern Methodist University grad, is marrying a man she met at SMU. That’s the kind of event Marriott hopes to attract to his revamped hotel. But this affair won’t be at any Marriott property. “She had 16 to choose from,” he joked. And she probably would have gotten a discount. Follow Karen Robinson-Jacobs on Twitter at @krobijake.

JWM Family Enterprises, L.P.

Vì sao Chủ tịch tập đoàn Marriott không trao quyền thừa kế cho con trai?

05/06/2013 - 11:34 Vì sao Chủ tịch tập đoàn Marriott không trao quyền thừa kế cho con trai? (P1) Trải qua nhiều thập kỷ, Bill Marriott đã từng kỳ vọng con trai mình sẽ trở thành thế hệ thứ ba lãnh đạo tập đoàn khách sạn toàn cầu của gia tộc Marriott. Nhưng dần dần ông đã nhận ra mình phải tìm đến một sự lựa chọn khác. Sau đây là câu chuyện lựa chọn CEO ngoại tộc đầu tiên của Tập đoàn khách sạn Marriott qua lời kể của Bill Marriott: Năm 1964, tôi trở thành người đứng đầu của Marriott, nhiều người đã rất ngạc nhiên. Lúc đó tôi mới chỉ 32 tuổi và làm toàn thời gian ở công ty mới được 8 năm. Cha tôi là người đã thành lập ra doanh nghiệp này từ năm 1927, bắt đầu chỉ với một quầy bán bia ở Washington, DC, trước khi chuyển sang kinh doanh nhà hàng khách sạn. Ông có một phó chủ tịch điều hành dày dạn kinh nghiệm, lớn hơn tôi 20 tuổi.Rất nhiều người đã cho rằng người đó sẽ kế nghiệp cha tôi. Vị phó chủ tịch đó cực kỳ xuất sắc về tài chính nhưng lại quá chi li và cầu toàn. Ông ấy đã giành nhiều thời gian thảo các bản hợp đồng và làm việc với các luật sư của công ty. Tuy nhiên ông không phải là người có kỹ năng giao tiếp tốt và cũng không hiểu được các hoạt động của doanh nghiệp. Khi đó, một giám đốc cấp cao trong hội đồng quản trị, (vị này đang làm chủ tịch 2 công ty) và cha tôi thực sự đã được nhờ rất nhiều từ ông ấy. Ông này cho rằng, phó chủ tịch điều hành không phải là một lựa chọn tốt cho chiếc ghế cao nhất. Ông đã đề xuất với cha đưa tôi lên nắm quyền điều hành. Thực ra, tôi đã học hỏi được từ các doanh nhân đến thăm nhà hàng với cha mình từ khi còn là một cậu bé. Tôi cũng đã làm việc bán thời gian qua nhiều vị trí khác nhau trong công ty từ năm 14 tuổi. Cha tôi đã khá lo lắng vì lúc đó tôi quá trẻ, nhưng quy mô tập đoàn Marriott khi đó cũng còn nhỏ (doanh thu hàng năm vào khoảng 85 triệu USD). Tôi nghĩ ông đã tính toán để có thể hỗ trợ cho tôi khi đối mặt với những rắc rối, trong thời gian đủ lâu tới khi tôi thực sự cứng cáp. Suốt nhiều thập kỷ tôi giữ chức vụ chủ tịch kiêm CEO, công ty đã tăng trưởng mạnh mẽ: Cuối năm 2012 chúng tôi đã có 3.800 cơ sở đặt tại 73 quốc gia và vùng lãnh thổ, và doanh thu năm ngoái là 11,8 tỷ USD. Khi lãnh đạo công ty, tôi thường có một vài giám đốc điều hành làm việc cùng mình mà không phải là người trong gia tộc. Nếu có chuyện gì đột biến xảy đến với tôi, những đồng sự này có đủ phẩm chất để tiếp bước công việc ở đây. Một số người trong số họ có thể đã là những người kế vị tiềm năng, nhưng tôi không vội vàng từ bỏ công việc của mình. Năm 1989, tôi bị một cơn đau tim ở tuổi 57 và tôi bắt đầu suy nghĩ nghiêm túc hơn về chuyện tìm người kế nhiệm. Nhưng tôi đã phục hồi sức khỏe và trở lại làm việc nhanh chóng chỉ sau 6 tuần. Tôi biết mình muốn tại vị trong nhiều năm sau đó. Thông tin về Tập đoàn quốc tế Marriott: Thành lập: Năm 1927 Trụ sở: Bethesda, Maryland Có 3.800 cơ sở trên toàn cầu Doanh thu năm 2012: 11,8 tỷ USD Lợi nhuận hoạt động năm 2012: 940 triệu USD. Tôi có 4 đứa con và tôi luôn hi vọng rằng một trong số chúng sẽ kế nghiệp vị trí CEO của tôi, cũng giống như tôi kế nghiệp cha mình. Đây là một công ty 85 tuổi và chỉ có 2 CEO cho đến năm 2012. Sự tham gia của các thành viên trong gia đình góp phần tạo nên tính liên tục tuyệt vời cho cơ nghiệp của gia tộc. Tên tuổi của chúng tôi gắn vào công ty này càng nhấn mạnh trách nhiệm của cá nhân đó. Tôi đã từng lo lắng về việc có quá nhiều doanh nghiệp ngày nay trở nên phi cá thể hóa. Đặc biệt trong lĩnh vực kinh doanh dịch vụ cá nhân, thương hiệu công ty sẽ có lợi thế thực sự khi được đảm bảo bởi kinh nghiệm, thương hiệu của người đứng phía sau và sự quan tâm đến khách hàng. Tuy vậy, không phải tất cả những đứa con của tôi đều làm việc để kế nghiệp cha. Con gái tôi, Debbie, đang là mẹ của năm đứa con và mặc dù con bé đã từng làm việc ở Marriott từ thời thiếu niên nhưng nay nó đã ở nhà chăm sóc con cái 3 thập kỷ nay rồi. Hiện nay, Debbie là đại diện của Marriott trong các quan hệ với chính phủ, nhưng nó sẽ chỉ làm ở vị trí này trong vài năm. Con trai cả của tôi, Stephen, bị khiếm thị và khiếm thính. Con trai út, David mới chỉ 39 tuổi, đang là quản lý giám sát tất cả các khách sạn Marriott ở phía Đông nước Mỹ, từ Maine đến New Orleans. Nó là đứa có tiềm năng nhưng vẫn phải học hỏi thêm nữa. Cuối cùng là con trai John 52 tuổi của tôi. Như tất cả các thành viên khác trong gia đình, những người đã gia nhập vào công ty này (trong đó có cả tôi), John đã bắt đầu làm việc ở vị trí thấp nhất là một đầu bếp. John tiếp tục làm việc trong hầu hết các bộ phận của công ty trong 30 năm sau đó. Nó giành phần lớn khoảng thời gian trưởng thành để chuẩn bị cho việc kế nghiệp tôi ở vị trí CEO. Nó toàn tâm toàn ý học hỏi và trau dồi kinh nghiệm kinh doanh. Nếu thuận theo cảm xúc của mình, có lẽ tôi đã chọn John là người kế nhiệm. Nhưng dần dần, tôi nhận ra điều đó không phù hợp chút nào - cho cả John và cả Marrriott. Thật đáng buồn cho cả hai chúng tôi và tôi sẽ phải đưa ra quyết định đúng đắn cho công ty của mình. (Còn nữa) Thùy Phương 05/06/2013 - 11:39 Arne Sorenson - Từ luật sư thành CEO ngoại tộc đầu tiên của tập đoàn Marriott (P2) Từ luật sư đến nhà quản lý Lần đầu tôi gặp Arne Sorenson, người mà tôi chọn để kế nhiệm mình, là vào năm 1993. Lúc đó, Marriott đã tham gia vào một vụ kiện tụng lớn và Arne là một trong những luật sư đại diện của chúng tôi. Khi đó anh ta mới chỉ 35 tuổi, rất thông minh và nói năng lưu loát. Trải nghiệm đầu tiên mà tôi có với anh chàng này là cái ngày Arne chuẩn bị bằng chứng cho tôi. Vụ kiện tụng đó liên quan đến rất nhiều các chi tiết tài chính vô cùng phức tạp. Arne đã giúp tôi trước tiên để hiểu được và sau đó giải thích với mọi người theo cách khá đơn giản. Tôi thực sự ấn tượng rằng anh chàng này có thể giải thích cái gì đó quá phức tạp theo cách mà bất cứ ai cũng có thể hiểu được. Sau đó vụ án khép lại, Arne và tôi vẫn giữ liên lạc với nhau. Khoảng 3 năm sau, anh ta vào làm việc cho chúng tôi. Nhưng Arne muốn thử công việc nào đó mới mẻ, không liên quan đến luật pháp. Chúng tôi để Arne đảm trách vị trí lãnh đạo nhóm thâu tóm và sáp nhập của công ty. Tôi không tiếp xúc trực tiếp với Arne trong công việc đó nhưng tôi nhìn thấy anh ta đã tiến bộ hơn một chút. Năm 1998, giám đốc tài chính của chúng tôi rời công ty và mặc dù Arne không phải là một lựa chọn hiển nhiên nhưng chúng tôi đã đề bạt anh vào vị trí đó. Với công việc này, Arne đã phải trình bày trước hội đồng quản trị tại tất cả các cuộc họp và đã thực hiện nhiệm vụ rất tốt, các giám đốc đều rất ủng hộ Arne. Ngoài những kết quả nhãn tiền của mình, điều quan trọng nhất mà Arne đã làm được trong nhiều năm qua là phát triển các kĩ năng của bản thân. Tại Marriott, văn hóa của công ty luôn tập trung vào con người, bởi việc ứng xử giữa mọi người với nhau có tốt mới có thể tạo được bầu không khí tốt giúp tất cả mọi người ứng xử khéo léo với khách hàng, và đó là yếu tố cơ bản nhất trong công việc kinh doanh của công ty. Các vụ kiện cáo không phải là môi trường khiến người ta có cảm giác tốt đẹp. Khi tôi nghĩ về một luật sư, tôi không nhìn thấy ai giang tay với mọi người, giúp đỡ, tư vấn, yêu thương và thúc đẩy họ. Và bởi thế đó chính là vấn đề đáng quan tâm. Thế nhưng mặc dù Arne đã giành nhiều năm trong nghề với các đơn kiện hay kiểm tra chéo, anh ấy vẫn có một nền tảng tốt. Cha của Arne là một nhà truyền giáo Tin lành, và Arne được sinh ra tại Nhật khi cha mẹ đang làm công việc truyền giáo. Anh trưởng thành rất tích cực tại nhà thờ. Nhờ vậy mà trong thời gian làm việc ở Marriott, tôi nhận thấy Arne rất kiên nhẫn với mọi người, luôn chu đáo và biết lắng nghe. Anh đã kết hợp rất tốt những điều đó với văn hóa công ty và phong cách lãnh đạo ở đây. Tôi cũng đã nhận thấy Arne có tiềm năng rất lớn nhưng lại không có bất cứ kinh nghiệm nào trong các hoạt động bên trong của việc kinh doanh khách sạn. Bởi vậy, năm 2003, với sự hỗ trợ của hội đồng quản trị, Arne trở thành chủ tịch chuỗi hơn 150 khách sạn trong khu vực châu Âu. Arne vẫn làm việc tại trụ sở chính tại Mỹ, ở Bethesda, Maryland, nhưng anh dành ra một tuần mỗi tháng để viếng thăm các khách sạn ở châu Âu và dần dần hiểu được cách thức hoạt động từ dưới lên trên. Năm 2009 Arne được thăng chức chủ tịch kiêm giám đốc điều hành. Công việc này khiến anh mở rộng quan hệ hơn từ các nhân viên ở trụ sở chính cho đến các nhà quản lí và các nhân viên phục vụ. Tôi đã hỏi những người này và họ đều cho biết Arne đã nhanh chóng được tất cả mọi người kính trọng và yêu mến. Trong thời gian này, Arne là một nhà quản lý thu hút sự chú ý của các công ty khác đang cần nhà lãnh đạo mới. Tôi biết là một số đối thủ cạnh tranh của chúng tôi đã cố lôi kéo anh ấy về với những chức danh rất cao cấp. Có lẽ bạn tin rằng các nhà quản lí ngoại đạo khôn ngoan sẽ tránh xa các doanh nghiệp gia đình bởi vì họ sẽ ít có cơ hội được đề bạt vào các chức vụ cao cấp, thường chỉ dành cho các thành viên trong gia đình, và bạn sẽ cho là Arne nên lấy làm vui mừng trước những cơ hội bên ngoài như vậy. Nhưng theo kinh nghiệm của tôi, những lo ngại về việc giữ chân nhân tài đã bị thổi phồng: Nếu bạn đối xử tốt với ai, họ sẽ muốn được ở lại. Điều này đặc biệt đúng ở Marriott, chúng tôi giúp cho tất cả nhân sự nội bộ nhận thức được cơ hội thăng tiến lên cao hơn. Theo như tôi được biết, Arne chẳng hề mảy may để ý đến việc rời đi. Anh thực sự thích làm việc với văn hóa của Marriott và muốn sống ở khu vực Washington - nơi anh đã sống kể từ thời đại học cho đến khi lập gia đình và cùng vợ mình nuôi dạy con cái. (Còn nữa) Thùy Phương Theo Trí Thức Trẻ/HBR 05/06/2013 - 12:18 Chuyện lựa chọn CEO ngoại tộc ở Marriott: Cha không chọn, con vẫn vui (P3) Không phải là một cuộc ganh đua Khi Arne đang học hỏi việc kinh doanh, con trai John của tôi vẫn tiếp tục thăng tiến trong công ty. Thực tế thì John đã làm việc tại Marriott suốt 3 thập kỷ, nó làm việc tại các nhà hàng, khu vực ẩm thực và giải khát ở các khách sạn, và là tổng giám đốc của Crystal City Marriott ở Virginia. John nắm những công việc trọng yếu về quản lý tài chính và thương hiệu của công ty. Nó giám sát mọi hoạt động bán hàng của công ty như một phó chủ tịch điều hành. John chính thức trở thành chủ tịch của hệ thống khách sạn North American Lodging ở khu vực Bắc Mỹ, chịu toàn bộ trách nhiệm đối với công việc kinh doanh lớn nhất của công ty. Năm 2002, John đã gia nhập hội đồng quản trị Marriott. John hoàn thành rất tốt tất cả các vai trò. Nó đã làm việc rất chăm chỉ và hiểu rõ từ A đến Z công việc kinh doanh này. Tôi đã hết lòng cố vấn và trao cho con trai mình tất cả các công cụ mà nó có thể cần đến để kế nghiệp cơ ngơi này. Tuy nhiên khi chuyển công việc từ các khách sạn đến làm việc ở trụ sở chính, John dường như không mấy vui vẻ. John rất thích được làm việc trong lĩnh vực khách sạn nhưng hiện tại nó thấy áp lực khi phải làm việc ở văn phòng mỗi ngày, tham gia các họp hành liên miên và tập trung làm các công việc hành chính. Tất cả các công ty khi phát triển đều phải trải qua một mức độ quan liêu nào đó, và với một nhà điều hành cấp cao, áp lực quản lý này là một phần quan trọng của công việc. Khi quan sát John thích nghi với vai trò mới ra sao, tôi có thể nhận thấy rằng con trai mình không mấy vui vẻ. Tôi bắt đầu suy nghĩ về Arne với vai trò một CEO đầy tiềm năng. Nhưng điều đó không hề gây ra cuộc ganh đua nào giữa Arne và John cả. Tôi không tin tưởng các các cuộc ganh đua kế vị - đó là mối hiểm họa vì người thua cuộc sẽ rời khỏi công ty. Tôi không muốn như vậy. Arne và John cũng sẽ không hành động như là đối thủ của nhau. Tôi chắc chắn rằng nếu John kế nghiệp tôi, Arne sẵn sàng trao cho John cơ hội đó và tiếp tục ở lại với vai trò quản lý cao cấp. Và mặc dù quyền kế vị là quyết định cuối cùng của hội đồng quản trị thì tôi vẫn tin nếu tôi tác động, các giám đốc sẽ sẵn sàng trao cho John một cơ hội nữa. Tuy nhiên khi nhìn kỹ hơn vào hoàn cảnh hiện tại, tôi càng nhận ra John là một doanh nhân bẩm sinh. Nó không đủ sức vận hành công ty với quy mô như Marriott ngày nay, với 3.800 cơ sở và 18 thương hiệu trên toàn cầu. John không hề muốn bị gắn chặt vào cái bàn làm việc. Dần dần cả hai chúng tôi đã đi đến kết luận rằng, thật tuyệt khi tôi đã không trao Marriott vào tay con trai mình, John là một lựa chọn chưa chính xác. Bởi vậy, năm 2005 John trở thành Phó chủ tịch HĐQT và rời khỏi vị trí điều hành ở công ty. Sau đó nó sáng lập một công ty thử nghiệm y tế, đang rất thành công. John cũng là CEO của công ty gia đình JWM Family Enterprises, hiện sở hữu và điều hành 16 khách sạn. Tôi vẫn làm việc với con trai mình hàng ngày, mối quan hệ giữa chúng tôi vẫn rất tốt. Đến năm 2011 tôi bắt đầu bước sang tuổi 80. Tôi không nghĩ rằng ai đó đã 80 tuổi nên vận hành bất cứ công việc gì. Nhiều công ty có quy định bắt buộc nghỉ hưu khi 65 tuổi, và nhiều CEO ngày nay bắt đầu nghỉ ngơi khi ở độ tuổi ngũ tuần. Lúc đó, Arne đã bắt đầu xử lý một số những công việc hàng ngày của một CEO và tôi quyết định đã đến lúc thực hiện việc chuyển giao chính thức. Arne là một lựa chọn sáng suốt và đúng lúc. Tôi tin tưởng và vui mừng khi trao vị trí CEO của tập đoàn cho Arne và vẫn tiếp tục tin tưởng vào lợi thế của các thành viên trong gia tộc Marriott. Nếu một công ty gia đình lựa chọn vị CEO ngoại tộc đầu tiên, điều đó không có nghĩa là không có thành viên nào trong gia đình sẽ đảm nhiệm vị trí CEO trong tương lai. Tôi nhìn vào công ty Ford Motor, các thành viên gia đình đã vận hành công ty từ ngày đầu thành lập cho đến năm 1979, sau đó là sự xuất hiện của hàng loạt CEO ngoại tộc. Cho đến cuối những năm 1990, Bill Ford đã trở thành chủ tịch và CEO trong giai đoạn 2001 - 2006, sau đó ông lại đưa Alan Mulally lên làm CEO. Khi nhìn vào tương lai, tôi nghĩ một ngày nào đó con trai út David của tôi sẽ trở thành CEO. Nó biết về công ty của gia đình mình và mọi người thích làm việc cùng nó. Arne cũng rất tôn trọng David và David cũng tôn trọng Arne. Nhưng Arne mới chỉ 54 tuổi, còn quá sớm để nghĩ về người sẽ kế nghiệm cậu ta. Đã hơn 1 năm kể từ ngày Arne chính thức đảm nhận công việc, tôi khá hài lòng với những việc đã làm được. Tôi quan tâm rất nhiều tới Marriott, đến nỗi không thể đưa ra lựa chọn mạo hiểm, đó đã trở thành công việc trong cuộc sống của tôi. Và con trai John của tôi rất thích thú với những gì nó đang làm trong vai trò điều hành một công ty 12 tỷ USD. Vợ chồng tôi mới ăn tối cùng vợ chồng John gần đây, và tôi kể lại mình đã dành cả ngày cho một cuộc họp quản lý kéo dài 10 tiếng đồng hồ. John chỉ lắc đầu và cười. Đó không phải cuộc sống dành cho nó. Thùy Phương

Women Decision Makers (Arne M. Sorenso - Participant - CGI 2013 Day Two)

Women Decision-Makers in the Global Economy Investing in women’s employment yields significant gains in the health and education of children, in the prosperity of businesses, and in the economy overall. Despite this, major barriers to entry still exist at all levels—whether women are trying to create small- and medium-sized businesses to compete in the global marketplace, progress as employees in bigger companies, or access the highest level positions in business and finance. In this session, key leaders from across sectors will share HOW members can: • support women in overcoming the barriers that limit their access to decision-making positions, whether it is as small business owners or as board members • discuss whether imposing quotas yields positive results for women, for companies’ profitability, and the economy overall Remarks: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Former Secretary of State of the United States Moderator: Pat Mitchell, President and CEO, The Paley Center for Media Participants: Irwin Jacobs, Founding Chairman and CEO Emeritus, Qualcomm Her Excellency Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi , Minister, International Cooperation and Development in the United Arab Emirates Arne M. Sorenson, President and CEO, Marriott International, Inc. Halla Tomasdottir, Founder and Chair, Sisters Capital

Marriott's earning rise on higher rates, occupancy

Marriott's earning rise on higher rates, occupancy Posted: Oct 31, 2013 4:30 AM Updated: Oct 31, 2013 6:20 AM NEW YORK (AP) - Marriott International's third-quarter earnings rose 12 percent thanks to higher occupancy, room rates and a pickup in short-term group bookings. The hotel chain, best known for brands like Courtyard, Ritz Carlton and Fairfield Inn, reported net income of $160 million, or 53 cents per share, for the three months ended Sept. 30. That was up from $143 million, or 45 cents per share, in the 2012 third quarter. The Bethesda, Md.-based company changed its reporting calendar and this year's quarter is eight days longer than last year. Marriott reported $3.16 billion in revenue, up 16 percent from $2.73 billion last year. Analysts, on average, expected earnings of 45 cents per share and revenue of $3.04 million, according to FactSet. The company's revenue per available room - or REVPAR - was $104.77, up 4.8 percent from the prior year. Analysts had predicted it would be $104. The figure is an important gauge for the industry because it measures occupancy and rates. "Our development pipeline increased for the fifth-straight quarter and we're on track to sign a record number of rooms in 2013," CEO Arne M. Sorenson said in a statement. "In Asia, we expect to open, on average, one hotel every eight days through 2016." Most of the company's growth continued to come from hotels it manages or franchises. Revenue was flat on the handful of properties the company itself owns. The biggest growth was the Caribbean and Latin America market, while the European market and the Middle East and Africa market remain the weakest. Like other hotel companies, the luxury market continues to boom for Marriott. It's Ritz-Carlton brand saw revenue per available room climb 8.2 percent, year-over-year, in North America to $230.95. Budget-focused TownePlace Suites, in contrast, saw just a 1.7-percent jump to $67.54. The company said it expects fourth-quarter profit to range between 47 cents and 50 cents per share, with revenue ranging from $370 million to $380 million. For the year, Marriott forecast profit between $1.98 and $2.01 per share, on revenue of $15.25 billion to $15.35 billion Wall Street is expecting fourth quarter earnings of 55 cents per share, on revenue of $3.35 billion, and full-year profit of $1.99 per share, on $12.74 billion revenue. Marriott International Inc. shares closed Wednesday trading down 41 cents at $44.20, up 19 percent since the start of the year. They were unchanged afterhours. Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. by TaboolaPromoted Content In The News

Marriott Reports Solid Third-Quarter Financial Results

Marriott Reports Solid Third-Quarter Financial Results By Claudette Covey October 31, 2013 10:18 AM Marriott International released third-quarter financial results, reporting almost $3.2 billion in revenues compared to more than $2.7 billion for the same period last year. The company reported net income of $160 million, a 12 percent increase compared to the same period last year. Diluted earnings per share (EPS) came to 52 cents, an 18 percent increase over last year’s third quarter. “We had a solid quarter with worldwide REVPAR up nearly 5 percent year-over-year. Short-term group business picked up in North America and occupancy rates reached nearly 75 percent worldwide,” said Arne M. Sorenson, president and CEO of Marriott International. “Room rates moved higher, in part due to an improving mix of business, contributing about three-quarters of the REVPAR increase in the quarter, and the number of company-operated and franchised rooms in our portfolio rose 4 percent year-over-year.” Because of Marriott’s change in the fiscal calendar beginning in 2013, the third quarter of this year reflect the period from July 1 through Sept. 30 (92 days) compared to last year’s third quarter, which reflect the period from June 16 through Sept. 7 (84 days)

Bill Marriott’s full statement on his retirement (Arne Sorenson appointed President and CEO)

Posted at 05:36 PM ET, 12/13/2011 Bill Marriott’s full statement on his retirement By Jonathan O'Connell J. W. Marriott Jr. announced his retirement Tuesday after 39 years J. Willard Marriott Jr., chairman and CEO of Marriott, who announced his retirement on Tuesday. (Norm Betts - Bloomberg News) at the top of what is now Marriott International. Last year Marriott celebrated the groundbreaking of the 1,175-room Washington Marriott Marquis, which is currently under construction and will serve as the city’s convention center hotel. Here is Marriott’s full statement, from his blog: In 2012, we celebrate the 85th birthday of our company and I proudly celebrate my 60th year of service. During the past six decades, I have had the privilege to know and work with some of the most talented people in the world. Our associates have always been my extended family to me, and one of the greatest joys in life have been to see so many find a welcoming place and rewarding opportunities at Marriott. It’s amazing to think about what has been accomplished since that little root beer stand was opened so many years ago by my mom and dad in 1927. As we look to the future, I can honestly say I have never been more confident about our company. In that regard, one of my most important responsibilities is to ensure that we are well positioned to succeed in the future. With the support and approval of our Board of Directors, I am excited to announce a change in my role and other changes in our leadership team. Effective March 31, I will assume the role of Executive Chairman of the company and relinquish the role of Chief Executive Officer. I will remain chairman of our company’s board of directors. As Executive Chairman, I will continue to share my many years of experience with our senior management team as we pursue future growth. My energies will also be directed at reinforcing the timeless core values that have been the bedrock of our success. I still plan on visiting a lot of our hotels and continuing to be a company ambassador as we build opportunity throughout the world. I am particularly pleased to announce that Arne Sorenson has been appointed President and Chief Executive Officer by the Board, also effective March 31. There is no one more deserving or capable of assuming the role at this important juncture in the company’s history. Arne knows the business, lives our core values and has the respect and admiration of all of the company’s major stakeholders. I have the utmost confidence in Arne as I hand over the day-to-day reins of the business to him. I personally recruited Arne to Marriott in 1996 after working extensively with him in the early 1990’s on the split that created what are now called Marriott International and Host Hotels and Resorts. His success would appear to have come easily, but Arne complemented his wonderful talent with good old-fashioned hard work, team-play and a drive for results. By 1998, he had become our Chief Financial Officer and later added responsibility for overseeing our business in Europe. In 2009, he was appointed President and Chief Operating Officer. As his supervisor, mentor and friend, I could not be happier for him or more pleased for our company. I am also delighted to announce that Bob McCarthy has been promoted to Chief Operations Officer for Marriott International, effective March 31. In this role, Bob will continue to have oversight for Global Lodging Services and The Ritz-Carlton Hotels. Our Continent Presidents will also have a reporting line to Bob in addition to their primary reporting relationship to Arne. As a 35-year veteran of the company, Bob has made significant contributions to our growth and performance and has distinguished himself with his business leadership and stewardship of our company culture. His career, which began as a restaurant waiter, is a tribute to the opportunity that is possible at Marriott. I am proud and pleased to announce this significant career milestone. I am excited by all that Arne and Bob will bring to their new roles and am pleased to continue our great partnership. I ask that you join me in congratulating them and wishing success to all of us in our new roles. I’m Bill Marriott and thanks for helping me keep Marriott on the move. Follow Jonathan O’Connell on Twitter: @oconnellpostbiz By Jonathan O'Connell | 05:36 PM ET, 12/13/2011 Personal Post Tumblr Reddit Stumbleupon Digg Delicious Next: Startup Maryland entrepreneurs take on Texas Gov. Rick Perry in Bethesda Discussion Policy | FAQ | About Discussions 2 Comments Comments are closed. Top CommentsAll Comments Sort: jax75420 12/15/2011 3:35 AM GMT+0700 Mr. Marriott, you ran a fine company, and put a feather in the cap of the Maryland business community. My congratulations are however bitterly tinged by the memory of what Marriott once was, and how the continuity of that was tossed away without any concern for how your customers would feel. I'm referring to the abandonment of the chain restaurant business, a business that Marriott was unquestionably the best at. Your Roy Rogers, Big Boy, Farrell's, and other restaurants never suffered from the reliability and quality problems chains such as McDonald's and Denny's did, that is, until you sold them off to lesser owners who didn't know how to run the businesses the way you did. I went out to my way to eat at Marriott restaurants throughout the 70s and early 80s, and remain saddened that all of the chains you founded or purchased are either dead or mere shadows of their former selves. If it were not for the Plamandon family, Roy Rogers would be just another ghost. At least someone from your organization recognized the value of the restaurants and has worked hard to keep them going and in good shape. When you reflect on the arc of your career, consider how many loyal customers you disappointed by abandoning the restaurants. I truly believe you could have grown the hotel business and not completely dropped Roy's, Big Boy, etc. into the wastebin. Like · Share · Report Abuse immigrant1 12/14/2011 6:28 AM GMT+0700 What a great Company to work for! I'm just sorry to hear that his own son has not been choosen or recognized as a future leader of the company. Like · Share · Report Abuse

CEO of the AES Corp., appointed US Export Council member (***Arne M. Sorenson, CEO of Marriott International Inc)

CEO of the AES Corp., Mong Duong 2 largest shareholder appointed US Export Council member by President Obama | dtinews.vn | September 28, 2013 04:03 PM President Barack Obama is naming seven executives from technology, drug and hospital firms to his export council, which advises him on ways to boost exports, the White House said Wednesday. The seven new members include Kenneth C. Frazier, president of Merck & Co.; Marillyn A. Hewson, CEO of Lockheed Martin; Vanessa Keitges, CEO of Columbia Green Technologies; Ian C. Read, CEO of Pfizer Inc.; Virginia M. Rometty, CEO of International Business Machines Corp.; Arne M. Sorenson, CEO of Marriott International Inc.; and Andres Gluski, CEO of AES Corp., the largest shareholder of the gross 1,240MW coal-fired Mong Duong 2 BOT Power Project currently under construction in Mong Duong Ward, Cam Pha City, Quang Ninh Province. The export council currently includes more than a dozen business leaders, various administration officials and lawmakers from both parties. Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet with the export council on Thursday. President Obama has called exports one of the bright spots in the U.S. economy. He told a group of business leaders earlier Wednesday that he wanted to do more to broaden sales of U.S. products abroad and was working to sign more trade deals to promote American products.

Arne M.Sorenson : "BĐS cao cấp - Cơ hội trong gian khó"

BĐS cao cấp: Cơ hội trong gian khó Đây là nhận định của ông Arne M.Sorenson, Chủ tịch kiêm Giám đốc Điều hành Tập đoàn Marriott International về phân khúc khách sạn, mặt bằng cho thuê cao cấp tại Việt Nam trong tương lai không xa. * Thưa ông Arne M.Sorenson, việc khai thác của Khách sạn Marriott Hà Nội liệu có phải mạo hiểm khi thị trường BĐS cao cấp (trong mảng cho thuê, khách sạn) vẫn gặp nhiều khó khăn về thanh khoản và gặp cạnh tranh từ các thương hiệu tên tuổi khác đến Việt Nam sớm hơn? Tôi tin rằng ở đâu hay tại bất kỳ thời điểm nào, chúng ta sẽ luôn tìm thấy các cơ hội để phát triển kinh doanh. Khách sạn JW Marriott Hanoi là một khách sạn được xây đặc biệt cho mục đích tổ chức MICE, với cơ sở vật chất tân tiến, thiết kế đầy cảm hứng sáng tạo và không gian linh động dành cho hội thảo. Với những bức tường kính từ trên xuống dưới, các khoảng không rộng rãi và 450 phòng nghỉ dành cho khách, đây thực sự là một công trình kiến trúc quy mô. Chính bởi những đặc điểm xây dựng, kiến trúc này mà khách sạn JW Marriott kỳ vọng trở thành điểm đến lý tưởng tại Hà Nội, không du khách nào có thể bỏ qua. Cộng thêm lợi thế về diện tích, với hơn 2.400m2 phòng họp không cần cột chống và 1.200m2 đại sảnh phòng họp nằm trên cùng một tầng, khách sạn sẽ trở thành địa điểm tổ chức MICE được ưa chuộng nhất. Không có một khách sạn nào khác có thể tổ chức sự kiện MICE quy mô lớn như JW Marriott, và cùng lúc, có thể cung cấp phòng nghỉ, dịch vụ nhà hàng, và không gian họp cho hơn 450 phòng. Khách sạn JW Marriott Hà Nội là khách sạn duy nhất được đặt ngay cạnh Trung tâm Hội nghị Quốc gia. Trong kế hoạch phát triển thành phố tới năm 2020, khách sạn sẽ được bao quanh bởi các khu chung cư và nhà liền kề cao cấp, các toà nhà văn phòng và các không gian vui chơi giải trí xanh. Giá trị của thương hiệu JW Marriott cũng là lợi thế giúp chúng tôi tạo dựng điểm đứng ngay khi mới bắt đầu. Với hơn 41 triệu thành viên, sử dụng dịch vụ được hưởng ưu đãi tại hơn 3.700 khách sạn và khu nghỉ dưỡng trên toàn thế giới, Chương trình Marriott Rewards là chương trình khách hàng trung thành cho khách sạn thành công và lớn nhất trên thế giới. Trước khi khách sạn JW Marriott Hanoi mở cửa, chúng tôi đã được rất nhiều thành viên của Chương trình Marriott Rewards trên toàn thế giới đặt phòng. Quả thật, khách sạn đang được thị trường mong đợi vô cùng và chúng tôi mong chờ một tương lai phát triển mạnh mẽ và tươi sáng. Hơn thế nữa, chúng tôi hy vọng sẽ dần dần xây dựng được danh tiếng nhờ vào dịch vụ tuyệt vời tại Hà Nội – không nơi nào ở Việt Nam sánh được. * Thưa ông Bob Fabiano, Giám đốc Điều hành Khách sạn JW Marriott Hà Nội, ông đánh giá thế nào về phân khúc khách sạn cao cấp ở Hà Nội, cũng như ở một số đô thị lớn như Tp.HCM, Đà Nẵng… trong tương lai? Từ những năm 1990, Việt Nam đã đón nhận những luồng đầu tư đầu tiên vào mảng khách sạn quốc tế. Marriott International cũng có khách sạn đầu tiên tại Việt Nam là Khách sạn Renaissance Riverside Sài Gòn. Vào thập niên 2000, Việt Nam đã chứng kiến sự xuất hiện của hàng loạt các dự án phát triển mới. Tuy nhiên, do những khó khăn về kinh tế, một số chuỗi khách sạn và khu nghỉ dưỡng chưa thực sự phát triển. Khách sạn JW Marriott Hanoi chuẩn bị khai trương năm nay, là một trong những đại diện của luồng đầu tư thứ ba của khách sạn quốc tế vào Việt Nam và chúng tôi hy vọng khách sạn JW Marriott Hà Nội sẽ là đại diện cho một tương lai tươi sáng của nền công nghiệp khách sạn & nghỉ dưỡng Việt Nam. * Những phức tạp mới đây giữa chủ đầu tư (Bitexco) với các nhà thầu xây dựng khách sạn Marriott đã được giải quyết ra sao? Điều đó có ảnh hưởng xấu tới uy tín, thương hiệu của Tập đoàn khi mới bước chân vào thị trường Việt Nam? Bên chủ đầu tư dự án và các đơn vị thi công đang làm việc với nhau để tìm ra hướng giải quyết tốt nhất. Chúng tôi hy vọng vấn đề sẽ sớm được giải quyết một cách ổn thoả. * Sau Khách sạn JW Marriott Hà Nội, các ông có thể chia sẻ đôi chút về kế hoạch đầu tư của Tập đoàn tại Việt Nam trong 5 năm tới? Tập đoàn Marriott International nhận thấy tiềm năng rất lớn của thị trường khách sạn tại các thành phố lớn như Hà Nội và Tp. Hồ Chí Minh. Tại các thị trường như vậy, chúng tôi thấy có thể mở rộng phát triển hơn nữa với ít nhất là 4 thương hiệu khách sạn, bao gồm: Ritz Carlton, Marriott, JW Marriott và Courtyard. Cụ thể, Ritz Carlton và chuỗi Khách sạn & Resort JW Marriott nằm trong danh mục các thương hiệu hạng sang; chuỗi Khách sạn & Resort Marriott nằm trong danh mục thương hiệu cao cấp, chuỗi Khách sạn & Khu nghỉ dưỡng Renaissance nằm trong danh mục thương hiệu Lifestyle và Courtyard by Marriott nằm trong danh mục thương hiệu khách sạn tiêu chuẩn. Nghĩa là chúng tôi có thể sẽ có tới 3 đến 4 khách sạn tại mỗi thành phố. Chúng tôi đang nghiên cứu các địa điểm dành cho nghỉ dưỡng như Đà Nẵng hay Vịnh Hạ Long để phát triển các thương hiệu khách sạn đa dạng, tuy nhiên việc này tuỳ thuộc vào quy hoạch và kế hoạch phát triển của các đơn vị chức trách tại các địa điểm tuyệt vời này. Theo Thời báo kinh doan - See more at: http://nhadat24h.net/Contents/10873/bds-cao-cap-co-hoi-trong-gian-kho/y-kien-chuyen-gia/#sthash.nikmKqK7.dpuf

Saigon has one more five-star hotel - Pullman

Last update 07:55 | 28/09/2013 0 0 Saigon has one more five-star hotel hotel, tourism, festival Pullman Saigon Centre, the first five-star hotel in HCMC to bear Accor’s brand Pullman, held a soft opening ceremony on Tuesday. Owned by Que Huong Liberty Corporation and located at the corner of Tran Hung Dao and Nguyen Cu Trinh streets in District 1, Pullman Saigon Centre has 306 superior, deluxe, executive and suite rooms. In addition to two restaurants, an outdoor swimming pool and other auxiliary facilities, the hotel has a section of over 700 square meters for conventions and events. From now until the year-end, customers with the bookings of the meeting package at Pullman Saigon Centre will enjoy a 20% discount.

Hanoi to have first Marriott hotel

Last update 10:00 | 20/10/2013 0 0 Hanoi to have first Marriott hotel The hotel management company Marriott International is preparing to open what will be the first hotel to be managed by Marriot in Hanoi. When in service, the five-star JW Marriott Hanoi will become the second hotel to be managed by Marriot in Vietnam after the Renaissance Riverside Hotel Saigon in downtown HCMC. Speaking to the Daily during his visit to Vietnam early this week, Marriott International, Inc. President and CEO Arne M. Sorenson said Renaissance Riverside Hotel Saigon was one of the first hotels to be opened in Vietnam in the 1990s. Marriott has in recent years planned a variety of projects but has had to temporarily halt them as Vietnam’s economy has been slowing down. The forthcoming opening of JW Marriott Hanoi is a next step of Marriott in the Vietnamese market, said Sorenson. Marriot, he noted, expects to have three or four Marriott hotels in each of Vietnam’s two biggest cities, Hanoi and HCMC. JW Marriott Hanoi is now ready to serve guests but hotel owner Bitexco Hotel Management Co. has yet to decide on an opening date. However, the hotel will be certainly opened to business within this year. Bob Fabiano, general manager of JW Marriott Hanoi, said 40-50% of the total rooms would be used be for MICE (meeting, incentive, convention and exhibition) tourism. In this segment, JW Marriott Hanoi focuses on large businesses. JW Marriott Hanoi has 450 rooms, European and Asian restaurants, ballrooms, fitness center and many other amenities. The hotel also provides the largest meeting space in Vietnam with an area of 2,400 square meters on the same level. About 26.7 kilometers south of Noi Bai International Airport, JW Marriott Hanoi has an area of 80,000 square meters and is adjacent to the Vietnam National Convention Center.

CEO Marriott: 'Khách sạn hạng sang còn nhiều cơ hội'

Thứ tư, 16/10/2013 17:06 GMT+7 CEO Marriott: 'Khách sạn hạng sang còn nhiều cơ hội' Lãnh đạo Marriott International thừa nhận, có dự định vào Việt Nam từ mấy năm trước nhưng kế hoạch bị chững lại do khủng hoảng. Đến nay, thị trường đã có nhiều tín hiệu tích cực trở lại. Giá phòng khách sạn TP HCM thấp nhất 4 năm Rao bán nhiều khách sạn trăm tỷ khu phố cổ Chủ nhân 10 khách sạn 5 sao tại Hà Nội Theo CBRE và Savills Việt Nam, đến hết quý III, doanh thu và giá phòng khách sạn tại Hà Nội tiếp tục giảm so với quý trước. Thị trường này tuy có một số dấu hiệu khởi sắc nhưng vẫn được dự đoán còn nhiều khó khăn. Nguồn cung tương lai ở phân khúc này cũng khá lớn, đặc biệt là khối 5 sao chiếm khoảng 73%. Giữa bối cảnh đó, khách sạn 5 sao mang thương hiệu JW Marriott tại Hà Nội với 450 phòng, vẫn rục rịch chuẩn bị đi vào hoạt động trong quý IV. Ông Arne M. Sorenson - Chủ tịch kiêm Tổng giám đốc của Marriott International, Inc trao đổi với VnExpress.net về cơ hội cũng như thách thức của phân khúc khách sạn cao cấp tại Việt Nam. - Tại sao các ông lại chọn thời điểm này để đưa JW Marriott Ha Noi vào hoạt động, khi mà kinh tế còn nhiều khó khăn? - Mấy năm trước, chúng tôi đã chuẩn bị ký hợp đồng với một số đối tác để đưa vài khách sạn đi vào hoạt động. Tuy nhiên, sau đó kế hoạch này đã phải chững lại do thị trường khủng hoảng. Đến thời điểm này chúng tôi nhận thấy cán cân nhu cầu đã ổn định trở lại. Đặc biệt, gần đây, có một tín hiệu rất đáng mừng là nhiều doanh nghiệp lớn từ Nhật Bản, Hàn Quốc... đã đẩy mạnh đầu tư vào Việt Nam với số vốn lớn. Bên cạnh đó, nhóm khách du lịch khắp thế giới đã có sự di chuyển mạnh mẽ từ đến châu Á. Việt Nam vốn có một nền văn hóa lâu đời, nhiều danh lam thắng cảnh nên hấp dẫn du khách. Chúng tôi cho rằng đó là những cơ hội cho ngành khách sạn. Arne-Sorenson-500-3581-1381832581.jpg Ông Arne M. Sorenson - Chủ Tịch kiêm Tổng Giám Đốc của Marriott International, Inc. Ảnh: J.W. Marriot Ha Noi. - Hà Nội hiện đã có một số khách sạn 5 sao nằm ở vị trí rất đẹp, gần trung tâm. Trong khi đó, J.W Marriott tuy hiện đại và nội thất tốt nhưng lại ở khá xa trung tâm. Vậy đâu là cơ hội cho các ông? - Tôi thừa nhận hiện ở Hà Nội đã có một số khách sạn nằm ở vị trí đẹp, trung tâm. Tuy nhiên, ở phía Tây thành phố đang đô thị hóa khá nhanh cũng đã có rất nhiều văn phòng đi vào hoạt động. Khách đến công tác, làm việc tất nhiên sẽ nghỉ ngơi ở gần khu vực đó. Bên cạnh đó, mỗi khách sạn sẽ có chiến lược phát triển khách hàng mục tiêu riêng. Từ đầu chúng tôi đã nhận định hiện mảng khách sạn hội nghị, hội thảo tại Hà Nội vẫn chưa xứng tầm, trong khi ở TP HCM thì tốt hơn. Chính vì thế, khi quyết định đi vào hoạt động chúng rôi xác định rõ sẽ theo đuổi phân khúc này. Marriott International, Inc. (NYSE: MAR) là tập đoàn khách sạn hàng đầu với hơn 3,800 khách sạn trên 74 quốc gia và vùng lãnh thổ, doanh thu theo báo cáo tài chính năm 2012 đạt 12 tỷ đô la Mỹ. Tập đoàn này điều hành, nhượng quyền, sở hữu các khách sạn thuộc 18 thương hiệu bao gồm Marriott, The Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott, Bulgari, Renaissance, Gaylord, Autograph Collection... Các khách sạn trong khu vực trung tâm do hạn chế về diện tích nên số lượng phòng không lớn. Vì thế, rất nhiều đoàn công tác quy mô lớn, doanh nghiệp đến Việt Nam làm việc mà cần khoảng trên 300 phòng nghỉ thường phải chia ra 2 nơi để ở. Trong khi đó, khách sạn của chúng tôi lại có thể đáp ứng được quy mô lớn hơn và đó chính là là cơ hội. - Trong năm đầu tiên, mục tiêu của các ông là công suất phòng đạt tỷ lệ bao nhiêu? - Kế hoạch của chúng tôi trong năm đầu là công suất phòng hội nghị, hội thảo sẽ đạt khoảng 40-50%, theo đó, số phòng nghỉ cũng sẽ có tỷ lệ tương đương. - Liệu mục tiêu này có quá lạc quan trong bối cảnh thị trường đang rất khó khăn? - Tất nhiên, trong mảng này chúng tôi cũng chia thành nhiều nhóm khách hàng nhỏ để tiếp cận. Thứ nhất là những công ty lớn, đa quốc gia. Hiện có 5-6 đơn vị đăng ký làm các sự kiện với Marriott Ha Noi. Họ có những sự kiện hàng năm và mỗi lần cần phòng họp cho khoảng 300 người. Nhóm thứ hai là của các hội. Ví dụ tới đây sẽ có cuộc họp của Hội Luật gia toàn cầu. Trên thế giới có khoảng 5.000 hội như thế này và họ di chuyển qua nhiều nước. Chúng tôi đang nhắm vào khoảng 15.000 công ty và các hội như thế và hiện đã có khoảng 5.000 công ty chọn hệ thống của tập đoàn làm địa điểm hội họp hàng năm. - Còn với những nhóm khách hàng khác thì các ông định hướng ra sao? - Bên cạnh nhóm khách hàng hội nghị, hội thảo, chúng tôi cũng chú ý đến các doanh nhân và sẽ tận dụng tên tuổi của tập đoàn để thu hút họ. Chúng tôi hiện có chương trình thẻ khách hàng thân thiết và tính chung toàn cầu đang có khoảng 44 triệu thành viên, riêng châu Á là 4,5 triệu người. Khi đi công tác hay du lịch thì họ luôn ủng hộ thương hiệu quen thuộc để có thể sử dụng được loại thẻ này. - Về lâu dài, Marriott International dự định tiếp tục phát triển thương hiệu của mình tại Việt Nam như thế nào? - Với những thành phố lớn như Hà Nội và TP HCM, ở các quốc gia khác, thông thường chúng tôi sẽ có 3-4 thương hiệu ở các phân khúc khác nhau. Chúng tôi hi vọng việc này sẽ sớm được thực hiện. Còn ở những tỉnh còn lại cũng có rất nhiều điểm, khách sạn, khu nghỉ dưỡng có sức hút. Tuy nhiên, chúng tôi chỉ chọn để phát triển những resort có khoảng 100 phòng trở lên. Vì thế trong tương lai tôi đang nhìn đến Đà Nẵng và Hạ Long. Về đối tác, họ phải là những đơn vị có tài chính để đáp ứng được khả năng xây dựng khách sạn; quy trình làm việc chặt chẽ, chuyên nghiệp để có thể xây dựng mối quan hệ lâu dài… Bên cạnh đó, chúng tôi cũng rất quan tâm đến việc họ muốn xây khách sạn ở khu vực và phân khúc nào… Tôi cho rằng địa điểm xây dựng khách sạn rất quan trọng vì thà tốn kém để đầu tư và làm đúng ngay từ ban đầu còn hơn là rẻ nhưng làm sai và sẽ không thể thành công trong tương lai. Ông Reechard Leech - Giám đốc điều hành CBRE Việt Nam cho rằng một số khách sạn 5 sao tại Hà Nội chưa đáp ứng được tiêu chuẩn quốc tế, do đó JW Marriott vẫn còn nhiều cơ hội nếu chất lượng tốt. Ông Trần Như Trung - Phó giám đốc Savills Hà Nội cũng cho rằng tuy nguồn cung khách sạn ở khu vực phía Tây thành phố khá lớn nhưng vẫn có nhiều cơ hội phát triển. Đây là khu vực có tốc độ đô thị hóa nhanh, một số quy hoạch cũng khiến khu vực này có sức hút lớn. Các chuyên gia đều nhận định, đầu tư khách sạn có đặc thù là chi tiền chẵn nhưng thu tiền lẻ. Do đó, không thể nhìn nhận sự thành bại trong thời gian vài năm. Theo lãnh đạo Savills và CBRE thì giá phòng ở phân khúc khách sạn cao cấp ít khi giảm, mà các đơn vị thường cạnh tranh bằng các dịch vụ đi kèm. Ngọc Tuyên