Marriott on the Move

This afternoon, our Chief Operating Officer, Arne Sorenson, is accepting an award on behalf of our company.  I’m very proud that the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council has named Marriott one of the Top 20 Corporations for Supplier Diversity.  This is a tremendous accolade for our company as we strive to be a diverse company in every aspect of our business.

We’re proud that we’re the first hotel company to ever receive this honor.  In fact, nearly 5,000 of the companies we do business with are minority-, veteran-, LGBT-, or woman-owned.  And, in the past 5 years, we have spent $2.3 billion dollars with these diverse suppliers.

I’m blogging from our new JW Marriott Resort in San Antonio’s beautiful Hill Country.  This is not what I think of when I think of Texas and certainly not San Antonio, which is, of course, famous for the Alamo and its very popular Riverwalk.  Hill Country, located between San Antonio and Austin, is made up of rolling green hills with quaint towns, antique shops, wineries and lavender fields.  The hotel is along the same latitude as Orlando, Florida, so it stays warm here most of the year.

This resort is a gem in our portfolio.  It’s a fabulous hotel with wonderful restaurants, a beautiful spa, 36 holes of championship golf and lots of meeting space.  It’s a really wonderful property and, perhaps, the greatest hotel in the state of Texas.

I was recently in Orlando, Florida, and had the chance to stop by one of the iconic, independent hotels in our new Autograph Collection and meet with the owner, Richard Kessler.  He took me on a great tour of his Grand Bohemian hotel and, boy, was I impressed.

Richard is an avid art collector and the lobby has a gallery with original paintings by local artists.  Throughout the hotel, Richard showcases his vast art collection, including many great sculptures from Rome and bright, modern classic art.  Like me, Richard loves deep red and the hotel is filled with plush, red furniture.

This has been a very exciting week for Marriott in Europe!  First, we celebrated 35 years since we opened our first European hotel, the Amsterdam Marriott.  I remember that opening so well.  We had a large barrel of water on the ground and we had diver who dove off the top of the hotel into the barrel.  As soon as he hit the barrel, it broke and the water went all over the street, but fortunately, he survived and wasn’t harmed.  That’s what you remember about some of these openings a long time ago.

Thank you, Mr. President!  President Obama signed the Travel Promotion Act into law this week, representing a great victory for our business and the U.S. economy.  We’ve been working on this for years and the credit goes to Senators Reid, Dorgan and Ensign and Congressmen Blunt and Delahunt for a job very well done.  They had great bipartisan support—which is hard to come by these days!

I've blogged about the Travel Promotion Act – or TPA, as we call it – before, and thanks to all of you who weighed in with Congress. It sure paid off.  TPA is historic.  For the first time in our nation’s history we’ll have a promotional campaign to attract international visitors to the United States, and, boy, do we need it.  In 2009 the U.S. welcomed 2.4 million fewer visitors than we did in 2000, while 46 million more travelers were taking long-haul trips.

I was recently in the Caribbean to visit some of our beautiful hotels in that region.  It was a great change from the snow storms in Washington, D.C.  I was only there for a few days, however I managed to make it to three different islands!

My first stop was Aruba where I met with the new Prime Minister, Mike Eman, to talk about our exciting new Ritz-Carlton property that is coming to his island.  It will provide 700 new jobs and lots of opportunity to an island that has struggled with the economic crisis, along with the rest of us.  It will be the island’s first Ritz-Carlton and major luxury hotel and I know it will become of our most popular resorts.