Marriott on the Move

I want to tell you what I learned when I visited our Salt Lake City Downtown Marriott Hotel. You know, I just love to hear stories like this.

Back in March, Pamela Daley took her four year old daughter Sahara to Salt Lake City, Utah, for tests at Primary Children's Hospital. They stayed in our Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown Hotel. To get Sahara excited about the trip, Pamela told her daughter she'd get to see some real snow in Salt Lake City. Since she was from warm, sunny Arizona, Sahara was thrilled she was going to see snow and immediately thought about Santa Claus.

However, when they arrived . . .

It's that special time of year again here at Marriott. I'm blogging directly from our annual Awards of Excellence ceremony held at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center right near our headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland.

We hold this ceremony every year to honor the best of the best within Marriott. This year, we honored nine individuals with the J. Willard Marriott Award of Excellence for consistently providing outstanding service. It's the highest honor a Marriott associate can receive. This year's recipients come from all over the world - Turkey to London and throughout the United States.

We also gave out two other awards tonight. The first was the . . .

By now, I think regular readers of my blog know that I love a good story. I enjoy hearing stories about great service and tales of perseverance and determination. They really inspire me and are a great pick-me-up.

I recently received a compilation of some great stories from the leader of our Residence Inn brand team. Our associates were asked to submit inspiring, moving stories from their properties, and the best ones were packaged into a book we call "We Are INNspiring."

My favorite was about a group of Marines who were displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and they were staying in a Residence Inn outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Two of these . . .

Last week, I told you about our Spirit To Serve Our Communities Day. It's held every May and our associates around the world are given time off from work to volunteer in their communities. They participate in activities that range from building homes with Habitat for Humanity to cleaning up local parks and rivers.

Since fighting hunger is so important to me, I have often volunteered at agencies that serve the hungry and receive food from America's Second Harvest - The Nation's Food Bank Network, an organization our company has supported since 1992.

Hunger is an important issue to me because our roots go back to 1927 when my . . .

Every May, our associates around the world take part in our annual Spirit To Serve Our Communities Day. We give them time off to volunteer in their local communities. In the Washington, D.C. area, for the last 20 years, many of our associates have worked with the Capital Area Food Bank to help alleviate hunger locally.

I was really disturbed several years ago when I learned that many, many young children in the Washington area go to bed hungry every night, and I tried to do what I could to help.

Recently, I attended a Blue Jeans Ball, which was a benefit for the Capital Area Food Bank. Usually, dressing down for me is not wearing a tie, so it was a lot of fun to wear my jeans. While the . . .

A group of Wall Street investors came to visit us and their first question to me was, "What is your vision for the future of this company for the next five years?"

There were a lot of ways I could've answered this question. I thought about it for awhile and I said, "I think the future and the vision for this company is to continue to foster, maintain and improve our company culture."

But what does that really mean? Well, our company culture has been stated many ways. Basically, we believe in taking good care of our people and believe that if we do, they'll take good care of the guests and the customers and they'll return.

This has been embedded in the philosophy of our company for over 81 years. It was started by . . .