Marriott on the Move

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 . . .

I received two interesting comments from a reader named Brian. He asked me why Marriott doesn't sponsor people from other countries to train in our hotels in the United States.

Actually, we do sponsor international associates to train in our country. Currently, we have 590 people from different countries training at our hotels in the U.S. on what's called a J-1 visa.

These associates train for a year in our domestic hotels and they are a great asset to our company. They possess great skills and bring . . .

I was recently interviewed on Nightline and had an opportunity to talk about my role as a Mormon bishop, which happened almost 40 years ago. I was in charge of a ward-which is really a parish-of around 800 members, and about 300-400 of them were Hispanic. I had an opportunity to work closely with these wonderful people who were struggling to make it in America and trying to keep their family together, feed their children, find a . . .

This is a special week for us here at Marriott. At our headquarters here in Bethesda, Maryland, we're honoring ten of our most outstanding associates with the Marriott Award of Excellence. They come from all four corners of the world, so they're really excited to come to Washington and see where the company's based. And an extra special gala will be held in their honor when they are presented their awards.

Each of the associates has a commitment to excellence, to teamwork, and to the "spirit to serve." And each one has a really unique story to tell.

Let me tell you a little bit about . . .

I'm blogging from the road today. I'm in San Antonio for a Residence Inn and TownePlace Suites General Managers' meeting. We had almost 850 people in our auditorium this morning and boy, are they enthusiastic about the future of the business and the way their properties are doing.

I've always loved San Antonio. It's a city that's so rich in history and culture. It has a very heavy Hispanic influence and we have a lot of diversity in this city and in our company. And I want to see that diversity continue to be reflected....

I was just out in Los Angeles last week visiting our hotels. I got to about 15 of them, and I was thrilled to see that over nine or 10 of them had totally renewed their interiors in the last six months. Some of them are still underway, but they really look sharp, and I was very proud.

Visiting these hotels is a great chance for me to connect with our associates and make sure they're all happy and smiling. You know...