Marriott Hotels Profile - Research Paper Example

Marriott Hotels Profile Marriott Hotels Profile Company Overview Marriott Hotels are a series of budget and luxury hotels owned andran by Marriott International Inc., a worldwide leader of accommodation that operates over 4,000 properties and over 690,000 hotel rooms in 78 nations and territories by 2013. With record returns of almost $13 billion during FY2013, Marriott Hotels runs and franchises lodges and licenses holiday tenure resorts for 18 brands. Major tenured brands by Marriott International include Marriott Hotels, Renaissance, Gaylord Hotels, JW Marriott, Marriott Executive Apartments, and Marriott Vacation Club brands (Marriott, 2014). The American accommodation industry regularly acknowledges Marriott Hotels as a leading player because of practicing grand business ethics. In addition to being an event and accommodation company, Marriott Hotels oversees the high-quality visitor loyalty initiative called Marriott Rewards and The Ritz-Carlton Rewards initiatives that collectively exceed 45 million members globally (Kuang, 2012). Before 1957, founder J. Willard Marriott, along with his spouse Alice, ran a simple root beer store in Washington D.C. that gradually grew a drive-in diner called Hot Shoppes in 1927 (Marriott Jr. and Brown, 2013). Between 1957 and 1985, Marriott created Marriott Hotels as a means of venturing into the accommodation and hospitality sector fully. This business move was historical for the company since it marked the bold application of the owner’s interest in worldwide enterprise. Before his demise in 1985, Marriott transformed the American, Mexican, and European hospitality sectors with the foundation of the pioneering and biggest motor hotel (Marriott Jr. and Brown, 2013). The takeover of Marriott Hotels by Marriott’s son, J. W. Junior, saw the inclusion of numerous new brands into the organization’s operations and partnerships as a creative model (Marriott Jr. and Brown, 2013). This model was the first of its kind since it aimed at extending stays for business visitors or guests in all Marriott Hotels. In 1993, J. W. Junior formally founds a new organization, Marriott International Inc. that takes over operational and managerial roles for all Marriott Hotels and its brands (Marriott Jr. and Brown, 2013). By 2014, Marriott International had acquired more than five accommodation companies across the world, including The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company and Renaissance Hotel Group. During the same period, Marriott International launched historic brands in European, Asian, and African markets like Bulgari Hotels & Resorts in Italy, AC Hotels in China, and Protea Hotels’ Brands in South Africa (Marriott Jr. and Brown, 2013). Marriott Hotels’ Position in Hospitality Industry Competition Marriott Hotels’ major competitors are global enterprises as well. Companies like Hilton Worldwide Holdings, Inc., ACCOR, and Intercontinental Hotels Group PLC rival with Marriott Hotels for the same markets (Lee and Morrison, 2013). Hilton Worldwide Holdings is a globally leading hotelier with an accommodation empire that encompasses over 4,000 hotels and resorts in roughly 90 nations as of 2013. These figures rival with Marriott Hotels similar 4,000 properties (Marriott, 2014). Hilton’s host of several hundred thousand rooms competes with Marriott Hotels’ near 700,000 rooms located around the world (Marriott, 2014). ACCOR, a top player in the European hospitality sector, is operational in 90 nations, which exceeds Marriott Hotels’ established market of 78 nations as of 2013. ACCOR has and runs over 3,500 hotels across the globe with lodging brand assortments like luxury and budget packages (Lee and Morrison, 2013). A bigger rival company is Intercontinental Hotels Group PLC, which operates over 4,400 properties in over 100 republics. Holiday Inn, Intercontinental Hotels’ backbone, provides budget accommodations in over 1,200 locations in the United States, Europe, and Asia, together with nearly 2,100 partial-service locations working under the Holiday Inn Express trademark (Lee and Morrison, 2013). Clearly, Intercontinental Hotels Group PLC is a serious competitor for Marriott Hotels in local and international markets. Financial Performance Marriott Hotels’ turnover in 2013 was $13 billion, which was an increase from the $12 billion turnover of FY2012. Before FY2013’s annual report, Marriott Hotels made return growth rates projections on the basis of approximations presented by their value line. The past five years have seen an average growth rate of 6% for Marriott Hotels (Marriott, 2014). From this value line, the firm projects a rise in returns growth in the next five years. The first quarter of FY2007 saw strong earnings and kept on growing with every new hotel construction in the United States and internationally. Returns grew by 12% after 2007 through to FY2011 then dropped by 1% to 11% in 2012 (Marriott, 2014). The firm accounted this drop to saturation in hospitality sectors even though its leaders remained positive about its impending prospects. Marriott Hotels trades publicly on the New York Stock Exchange as MAR, an enlisted firm on the Fortune 500 index. In 2014’s third quarter, one-sided average completely diminished shares owing used to determine diminished EPS amounted to 295.4 million as opposed to 309.5 million in 2013’s third quarter (Marriott, 2014). During this phase of the financial year, Marriott Hotels rebought 4.5 million shares of its public stock at a price of $300 million. By October 2013, Marriott Hotels had rebought 20.4 million shares of its own public stock for a total average of 1.2 billion, which breaks down to a mean price of $59.36. The remainder share authorization amounted to 18.9 million shares as of October 2014 (Marriott, 2014). Marriott Hotels makes most of its revenue from organizing events and conferences. Most of the events Marriott Hotels organizes are social events like weddings, fundraising gatherings, sports assemblies, and anniversary celebrations (Marriott, 2014). To do this, Marriott Hotels has even planners ready to help any potential clients in preparing their special occasions. When it comes to conferencing, Marriott Hotels makes profits from offering technological sustenance, video conferencing services, and facilities, and renting small to vast scale meeting centers (Lee and Morrison, 2013). Other sources of revenue for Marriott Hotels are specials and suites. Some of the packages Marriott Hotels offers include last minute weekend suites, client trip design, and holiday packages. Triple A packages allow members to take pleasure in the best accessible discounts on lodges, together with unique offers. Marriott Hotels also provides high-ranking travelling packages and government or military suites that make up a significant portion of the company’s revenues (Kuang, 2012). Financially, Marriott Hotels has not made any recent milestones. However, the company received awards in 2012 from the JW Marriott Kuwait for being an outstanding firm that takes pride in employee gratification and its continuing devotion to diversity (Kuang, 2012). However, media houses and financial analysts may view the company’s $1 billion dollars increase in turnover between financial years 2012 and 2013 a milestone considering its growth rate was on a decline between 2009 and 2011 (Marriott, 2014). Marriott Hotels’ key target market is customers looking for a silent and comfortable atmosphere in the course of their stay. Such clients are normally in their thirties and make a mean yearly income of $150,000 (Kuang, 2012). Such clients largely travel for both personal and business purposes. As a result, Marriott Hotels’ target market is comprised mainly of distinctive, stylish, and well-defined travelers who are ready to pay handsomely for lavish accommodations while on business trips (Kuang, 2012). Founder Marriott originally targeted clients who are in search of quality catering and dining services within Marriott Hotels. Between the 1960s and 1980s, every hotel operating under Marriott’s brand provided genuine dining with freshly selected, local ingredients and prepared by conventional, local cooking experts (Marriott, 2014). Every luxury restaurant under Marriott’s brand employed professional cooks and qualified patrons to give excellent cuisine experience for clients. The atmosphere, architecture, and the serving tradition are also highly authentic and diverse as every city the location of the Marriott hotel itself. For instance, PRIMO, a Marriott hotel in Orland, Grande Lakes, is a good example of Marriott Hotels’ target market (Kuang, 2012). Serving as a contemporary Italian diner focused on the “homegrown” model, PRIMO employed prized chef Melissa Kelly as the head chef. Through this model and chef Kelly, the diner assures the mere usage of the finest ingredients for every meal, which are stored explicitly under PRIMO’s organic garden and domestic plantations. In turn, PRIMO lures only customers looking for high quality cuisine experiences (Kuang, 2012). In the process, the hotel records a higher turnover from offering higher quality service and surrounding for their clients. Marriott Hotels works with seventeen other companies, four of which will be discussed. Marriott Hotels works with American Red Cross and its sister companies by supporting Red Cross through contributing to crisis relief efforts, partaking in blood donation campaigns, and pooling funds for local initiatives (Marriott, 2014). Marriott Hotels has collaborated with Amazonas Sustainable Foundation by giving them $2 million to protect 1.4 million acres of pure tropical forests in Brazil. Marriott Hotels has fostered some of its managed developments in the United States and overseas to turn into Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuaries, courtesy of Audubon International. Lastly, Back On My Feet, an American nonprofit institute considers Marriott Hotels its chief “national employer partner” (Marriott, 2014). Organizational Structure J. W. Marriott, Jr is the current executive chairperson and head of the executive board at Marriott Hotels. Marriott Jr’s leadership style took the organization from a family diner enterprise to a $19 billion firm within a span of five decades (woshidk1314, 2013). The current president and CEO Arne M. Sorenson, applies a more hands-on style of leadership. Sorenson observes and assesses the overall progress of the hotels’ approach to endorse a more and more varied place of work, ownership, client, and retailer communities across the globe. Sorenson achieves these aspects of internal organizational culture and structure by emphasizing the significance of employee associates, promoting a “spirit to serve” culture, focusing on individual hotel looks and design like the design of their respective reception desks, and a culture of respect from and amongst employees (woshidk1314, 2013). Marriott Hotels’ mission statement is to improve the lives of its clients by forming and empowering “unsurpassed vacation and leisure experiences” (woshidk1314, 2013). This mission statement is a reflection of the company’s organizational culture, which is bent on offering its customers a simple stylish atmosphere that enables them to experience a serene stay with optimal comfort. The company’s long-term plan is to increase its presence in states across the world and improve their economies and markets through job creation and the provision of superb hospitality (Marriott, 2014). More specifically, Marriott Hotels seeks to establish more than 150 hotels across African states and create over 25,000 employment opportunities between 2014 and 2020 (Hospitalitynet, 2014). In 2014, Marriott Hotels acquired Protea and afterwards projected the launch of almost 40 extra hotels with over 6,000 lodges (Hospitalitynet, 2014). In the process, the implementation of this plan should create over 10,000 jobs at managerial and franchising levels. African states that will benefit from this plan include Ethiopia, Tunisia, Benin, Egypt, South Africa, and Algeria (Hospitalitynet, 2014). The heads of each Marriott hotel drive operational activities within the firm since they all offer different packages and run different brands and franchise titles. Operational management depends heavily on a supported platform and leadership style. These elements of the organization speed up Marriott’s growth plans and fix its leadership status in the expanding hospitality industry (Lee and Morrison, 2013). For operations, Marriott Hotels close the gap between the fast developments in technology with the operations part of the accommodation sector. Marriott Hotels achieves this by searching for cues from the food sector. For instance, Marriott Hotels is currently planning to collaborate with app developers and launch “restaurant apps” (Abrahamson, 2013). Customers can use these apps to search for Marriott brands in their travel destinations that offer their preferred accommodation and cuisine packages. One key service the app will offer is preordering, which should allow customers to skip queues at Marriott diners (Abrahamson, 2013). Marriott Hotels believes the concept of preordering is what regular business travelers need. Marriott Hotels markets a host of other services other than the main event organization, accommodation, dining, and conferencing ones. i. Grand faculty clubs ii. Executive flats iii. Rentable courtyards iv. Residence and dining inns v. Holiday clubs and resorts Marriott Hotels applies four key advertising methods. First, the company has a strong and economic allocation system called MARSHA (Marriotts Proprietary Global Reservation System). MARSHA drives the company’s totally incorporated returns management, ecommerce, customer devotion, and property administration frameworks (Marriott, 2014). Secondly, strong customer understanding and relationships is a sales approach by the firm that revolves around the client. This advertising method works by offering efficient sales for group, enterprise transient, cuisine, and chosen service and prolonged stay services (Marriott, 2014). Creative approaches and initiatives make up the third advertising method, with returns management being Marriott Hotels’ stronghold. Lastly, simply having the industry’s number one loyalty program advertises the company to its customers, as well as those of rival companies too (Marriott, 2014). References Abrahamson, J. (2013). Marriott on merging hotel operations with hi-tech for the new digital world order. Eye For Travel. Retrieved from http://www.eyefortravel.com/mobile-and- technology/marriott-merging-hotel-operations-hi-tech-new-digital-world-order Hospitalitynet. (2014). Marriotts CEO Charts Exponential Hotel Growth in Africa 2014-2020, Tripling Jobs. hospitalitynet.org. retrieved from http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4066426.html Kuang, K. (2012). How Marriott International Target Their Market and Audience. Welcome to My Hospitality. Retrieved from http://kellykuang21.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-marriott- international-target-their.html Lee, J. and Morrison, A. M. (2013). A Burst of Beds: Why Consumers Purchase Brand Extended Beds in the Upscale Hotel Industry? Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, vol. 7(3), pp. 43-53. Marriott, Jr., J. W. and Brown, K. A. (2013). Without Reservations: How a Family Root Beer Stand Grew Into a Global Hotel Company. Los Angeles, CA: Diversion Books. Marriott. (2014). Marriott International Reports Third Quarter Results; Reaches Milestone 700,000 Rooms Worldwide. Marriott International, Inc. Retrieved from http://news.marriott.com/2014/10/marriott-international-reports-third-quarter-results.html Marriott. (2014). Partners. Marriott International, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.marriott.com/corporate-social-responsibility/hotel-partners.mi Marriott. (2014). Sales & Marketing. Marriott International, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.marriott.com/hotel-development/marriott-sales-marketing.mi woshidk1314. (2013). Marriott International Inc. Organizational Chart. Cogmap. Retrieved from http://www.cogmap.com/chart/marriott-international-inc Read More