Marriott on the Move

Hi, my name is Valerie McSwain, I am a concierge at the Washington Marriott, and here today, I am guest blogging for Mr. Marriott.

Reflecting back on Marriott's 80 years in the hospitality industry, one word summarizes our company's enduring success: opportunity.  This weekend in San Francisco, I'm challenging our JW Marriott, Marriott and Renaissance General Managers from around the world to look for opportunities for their associates to grow and build careers within Marriott. When your employees see personal opportunity, the company thrives, and that has helped Marriott get to where it is today.  At the recent Residence Inn and TownePlace Suites General Managers Conference in San Antonio, I shared with all the General Managers the following story about an opportunity my father was fortunate enough to receive. 

I was really happy to hear the President talk about immigration reform in his State of the Union, and even happier to see the bipartisanship that seems to be coming together around this issue.

We really received a lot of comments on the blog about Marriott's decision last year to take all our hotels in North America 100 percent smoke free.  That includes Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott, Marriott Hotels, Renaissance, Courtyard, Residence Inn, SpringHill Suites, our Fairfield Inns, and even our TownePlace Suites.

One of our very best customers who smokes blogged back to me and said, "I'll never come back to a Marriott."  Well, that's a tough pill for us to swallow.  But we made this decision because we knew it's what our customers wanted.  And it certainly is what our associates deserved.

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.

There's nothing I love more than a great Marriott cheeseburger and French fries.  Boy, I just love French fries.  I started cooking French fries back in 1950 when I worked in the Hot Shoppes in Salt Lake City.  And all my boys joined the company when they were 15 and 16 and worked first cooking French fries in the Hot Shoppes.  So I love French fries.

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.