Marriott on the Move

Our company's roots go back to the restaurant business. My mom and dad opened their first A&W root beer stand in 1927 and when the weather got cold they put on chili, hot tamales, hamburgers and hot dogs and we were in the restaurant business. We opened a bunch of drive in restaurants called Hot Shoppes in the 1930s and 1940s and our roots are really grounded in food.

So we have always had a test kitchen at Marriott. Even back in the 1930s we were testing our recipes and making sure they were the best we could make them. We have a wonderful test kitchen here at headquarters and each month I sample the food we serve our guests in our hotels. It's a lot of fun and I give a lot of credit to Brad Nelson. He's our . . .

We know guest room technology is very important to our guests. A couple of months ago, I blogged about some new technology we're installing in our full service hotels. It's an LCD television with a connectivity panel, so you can watch and listen to digital devices through the television. Judging from the reaction we're getting since the marketing and rollout began, it's going to be very popular.

In response to that blog, a lot of you . . .

We hold a lot of company conferences here at Marriott - like the recent gathering of our 800 JW Marriott, Marriott and Renaissance general managers. That's because we want to make sure our associates are informed about all the innovative initiatives we're launching...

Typically, people who attend a conference come home with suitcases full of paper. This time, we wanted to reduce the paper chase and come close to having a paperless conference. So everyone who attended received iPods. . .