Marriott on the Move

Tonight is our annual Award of Excellence gala where we honor the best of the best within Marriott. These are the associates who have gone above and beyond to provide stellar service to our guests, fellow associates and the communities where they work.

This year, our honorees come from many different places around the globe - Singapore, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, San Francisco and Georgia, to name a few. We flew them all here to our headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, to take part in this great event.

Yesterday, they were warmly welcomed by hundreds of their fellow associates and given a tour of headquarters. After that, we . . .

Today I'm blogging from Food and Friends in Washington, D.C. Food and Friends is a non-profit organization that provides groceries and meals to people who are seriously ill and unable to leave their homes to get their own food. I'm volunteering here today as part of Marriott's annual Spirit To Serve Our Communities Day that takes place every May. Our properties participate in different community service events throughout the month and our 300,000 managed and franchised associates around the world are given time off from work to participate.

I've had a great time here today. I've been bagging groceries with my daughter Debbie Marriott Harrison and my son David Marriott and Bill Shaw, who is vice chairman of our company. I put cereal in the grocery bags and I've been putting the menus in the grocery bags and moving the bags around.

Some of our associates are preparing meals and we're also delivering the meals to the homes of the people who need them. That's being provided by transportation by Connect by Hertz. So we have cars going . . .

Today marks an important milestone at Marriott and one I am very proud of - the 25th anniversary of Marriott Vacation Club International, our timeshare business. I'm also very proud to tell you the story of an outstanding MVCI associate, Abri Kruger, who is a sales executive at our MVCI Surf Watch Resort on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. He was giving a potential timeshare owner a tour of the property when he saw a 3 year-old girl fall into the pool. He rushed over to where she was and pulled her out of the water as fast as he could, saving her from drowning.

Abri later said he didn't usually take the route he was on when he gives tours, but for some reason, that day, he decided to switch things up and go a different way. He truly believes that fate put him in the right place at the right time to save that little girl. This type of care and service has been a standard for our MVCI division for the past 25 years.

We ventured into timeshare back in 1984 when we purchased a company called American Resorts. Our first timeshare, Marriott's Monarch Resort, was on . . .

I've blogged many times before about the wonderful service our Marriott associates provide to our guests. Today, I have yet another great service story to share, but it's a little different from those in the past.

It takes place at the Residence Inn in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. A guest of the hotel came to the front desk one morning holding a pair of black pants on a hanger with a very panicked look on his face. He explained that he had come into town for a meeting that morning and in his haste, had accidentally packed his wife's slacks instead of his own. He was hoping there might be an extra pair in the hotel's lost and found or that someone could direct him to a store to buy a new pair of pants as he had a meeting very soon.

There was nothing in the lost and found, and with only 10 minutes until his meeting, he was never going to make it to a store in time. However, one of the hotel's front desk associates, Krasi, noticed that he happened to be the same size . . .

It's the end of March, so that means I'm taking my annual trip to Scottsdale, Arizona. I've come out here for spring break to our JW Marriott Camelback Inn every year for 41 years to celebrate my birthday and spend time with my family. It's always great to have everybody together, particularly in one place - especially a place with such beautiful weather and scenery.

But, like I do on most of my trips, I will be visiting some of our Marriott properties while I'm in the area. I'll even be attending the grand opening ceremony for our newest Residence Inn in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area. This is a very unique hotel as it actually sits on the campus of the Mayo Clinic hospital and caters to patients and their families, as well as researchers and other medical professionals who are visiting the hospital.

Our Residence Inn brand is perfect for many patients of the Mayo Clinic and their families as these hotels are designed . . .

Not too long ago, I blogged about my stay at the Harbor Beach Marriott Resort in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Over the years I've been coming here, I've formed close relationships with many of the associates who are part of a great team. One of these associates is Robert, one of the resort's drivers. He and I have driven around many times together during our trips down here.

And of course he drives a lot of our guests every day. But recently he had an experience that he will surely never forget. Just before Christmas, he was driving a couple from Denmark to the airport when the man suddenly became very ill. When he temporarily lost consciousness, Robert decided . . .