Marriott on the Move

Almost 52 years ago, my wife and I honeymooned at Banff in Canada. We stayed at the Banff Springs Hotel, a beautiful, beautiful hotel, in that wonderful part of the world. And I took my wife up to Lake Louise and took her for a canoe ride. She was absolutely terrified because she was afraid I'd tip the canoe over. She forgot about all my canoeing experience when I was a camper at the age of 10 at Camp Idlewild in New Hampshire. We had a successful canoe ride - nothing happened and we got back to shore without getting wet.

We didn't have a Marriott in Canada back then, so when we stayed at Banff Springs, I said . . .

About once a year, rumors start flying on the Internet about hotels storing personal information, like your credit card, on those plastic card keys with magnetic strips. It's like one of those urban myths. Let's set the record straight as far as Marriott is concerned.

I remember when you checked in at a hotel they gave you a key to your room that looked a lot like the key for your front door at home. Our guests would . . .

Over the past 80 years, our company has achieved many milestones and many firsts. We opened the first Marriott Motor Hotel in Washington, D.C. 50 years ago, we opened our first international hotel in Acapulco, Mexico back in 1969, and we opened our first European hotel in Amsterdam in 1975. Amsterdam was a very memorable opening as we had a professional diver dive off the roof into a barrel full of water. As soon as he hit the water, the barrel broke and water went all over the street, but he was OK. We sure wouldn't want to try a stunt like that today.

This month, we're celebrating another first for Marriott - the opening of more than 100 hotels over the next 100 days. And we're on track to open our 3,000th hotel by the end of the year.

I remember when we opened hotel number 100 . . .

It's Environmental Awareness Month at Marriott, so I want to pick up our discussion on the environment. Judging from some of the comments you've sent, there's a lot of interest in global warming. Many of you challenged me on whether our company's efforts were strong enough and that's really great. That's why I started my blog --
because I want to hear from you.

What you had to say mirrors consumer trends, especially in travel. People want to do business with companies that do the right thing. I think conserving natural resources and reducing Marriott's environmental footprint is the right thing to do. I told you about how . . .

People often ask me, "What is your favorite hotel?" That's hard to say because we've got 3,000 of them and some of them are absolutely spectacular. But, you know, it goes back to, "Where are your roots?" and "Where have you spent your happiest days?" and it always comes back to Camelback Inn in Scottsdale, Arizona.

We've been going to Camelback as a family since 1948 -that's a long time. Camelback's got a great history. It was the first resort hotel built in the Scottsdale area of Arizona back in 1936. It had a dirt road in front of it . . .