Marriott on the Move

The year 2008 is knocking on our door. At the end of each year, I record the Chairman's message for our employees, who we call associates. It's my electronic New Years card and this year, I thought I'd share it with you in this video. If you're listening to my blog rather than reading it, you can listen to the audio portion but I urge you to watch the video. Before you do, I want to wish everyone a happy, healthy and safe New Year.

(Bill Marriott): This is my 75th Christmas. I thought about Christmas as I was thinking about the season this year, and I have spent every Christmas in Washington, D.C. I came home from college for Christmas, I got home on leave from the Navy for Christmas and I have been fortunate to spend every Christmas at home. How lucky I have been.

Christmas in our family is all about being together with the family. And for every . . .

I had a great Thanksgiving. I spent it at our Fairfield Farm, which has been our family farm for over 56 years. It's in Virginia, not too far from Front Royal. I have a lot of fond memories of this farm through the years, like going on hayrides with my kids and talking with my dad about politics. Of course I remember falling off the horses and watching my kids fall off the horses too. That was not the fun part. But the farm inspired the name of our Fairfield Inn hotel brand.

We launched Fairfield over 20 years ago and today have . . .

I blogged a little while ago about tipping and I've had more responses to this blog than any blog that I've done so far. Everybody seems to be worried about tipping and I know it's always been a problem for most people because you never know quite how much to tip. I blogged about the little boy and how he changed his order from an ice cream sundae to just a scoop of ice cream because he wanted to have enough money left to tip the waitress.

One story that made me smile was a story from Feras Werr. He wrote about a customer . . .

I've blogged quite a bit lately about what our hotels are doing to make Marriott a greener company. Earlier, I told you we are on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by almost one million cubic tons by 2010. But I believe that being green starts at home and our home is our headquarters just outside of Washington, D.C.

Our goal is to have zero net waste from our headquarters building in five years. To start, we've eliminated plastic utensils and Styrofoam . . .