the way to bed is through the stomach – Business – Kommersant

Marriott Corporation has been around for 95 years. However, the hotels with which she is today associated, appeared only in the middle of the 20th century. And until then, the Marriott family firm cared only about how to drink and feed everyone.

Marriott of Marriott

Now, it seems, there is not a single self-respecting city in the world that does not have a Marriott hotel. 95 years ago, the only place on Earth with that name was a tiny Mormon settlement in Utah, which, of course, did not have a hotel. All its inhabitants were engaged in farming, and they all bore the same surname – Marriott.

John Willard Marriott, who glorified both the settlement and the surname throughout the world, was born in September 1900.

John was the second of eight children, but the eldest of the sons. Therefore, the head of the family, Hyrum, began to accustom him to responsibility and business management from childhood. At first, the boy simply helped his father grow sugar beets and herd sheep. At the age of 13, he earned his first money by growing lettuce on his own and selling the crop. John gave the accumulated $2,000 to his father. And at the age of 14, he was already sent alone to sell a herd of 3 thousand sheep in San Francisco.

“My father taught me a sense of male responsibility. He told me what to do, but never how. Before that, I always had to reach myself, ”John Willard later recalled.

At 19, John said goodbye to the farm. Like any Mormon, he went on a two-year missionary journey through the New England states.

Already on the way home, in the summer of 1921, John found himself in Washington and saw a picture that changed his life forever.

On one of the capital’s squares, a cart selling drinks appeared. A line of people, exhausted from the heat, immediately lined up to him. Lemonade, ice cream, everything in the cart was sold out in no time. John remembered that selling cold drinks in a hot summer was a money-maker.

Beer is the head of everything

While John was traveling, on the other side of the country, the first chain of fast food restaurants in the history of the United States was born. Roy Allen, who bought, restored and resold hotels, ended up in Arizona in 1919. There, in Tucson, a town in the middle of the desert, where summer temperatures traditionally stay above 30 ° C, Allen first tasted root beer – a beer made from the bark of a sassafras tree. Roy liked it so much that he bought the recipe and, returning to California, opened his first kiosk.

The kiosk was wildly popular with the military. The sale of alcohol in the United States was already limited, but the restriction did not apply to root beer, because it was no stronger than kvass. Allen offered the soldiers, yearning for their homeland and alcohol, almost a full-fledged bar. The place looked like a roadside kiosk from the outside, but inside there was a counter along one of the walls and a row of bar stools. And root beer is still beer.

Well, when prohibition began to operate in the United States in 1920, the popularity of the Allen kiosk soared. The businessman said goodbye to the hotel business and switched to developing his own network of root beer sales points.

Allen was one of the first in the US to apply the concept of drive-in (the ability to get a service without leaving the car) in the restaurant business.

In 1922, Allen and his business partner Frank Wright incorporated A&W (the first letters of their last names). Soon, Allen bought out Wright’s share and began to manage the network alone, relying on franchising. Anyone could open a kiosk with the letters A&W on the sign and sell root beer there (the franchisee had to buy the drink itself, of course, from Allen).

One of these “any” was John Willard Marriott. By that time he had graduated from university and realized that neither farm work nor missionary work appealed to him. But I was tempted by the idea of ​​selling root beer in the federal capital.

More than a family restaurant

The establishment opened on May 20, 1927. And two weeks later, John married Alice Sheets – his classmate and, importantly, the stepdaughter of a senator from Utah. So John got a faithful wife, and a wealthy business partner in her person, and useful connections.

In the summer there was no end to visitors, but he understood that with the onset of autumn, their flow would noticeably decrease. And because Marriott thought about changing the concept of his institution. Already in the fall, in addition to drinks, food appeared on the menu: Mexican tamales and hot chili corn – exotic for ordinary Americans in those days.

None of the A&W franchisees before him dared to change the concept of the establishment. And John and his wife did, it seemed, something completely crazy, changing the name of the institution. Now it became known as Hot Shoppes.

In 1928, two more Hot Shoppes opened in Baltimore and Richmond. At the same time, John spied (from the same Allen) the idea to make a drive-in zone in the restaurant. Hot Shoppes became the first fast food restaurant on the East Coast of the United States to operate in this format. A year later, Marriott registered his own company – Hot Shoppes, Inc.

The company was doing so well that by 1932 they had seven restaurants in Washington DC alone. But John was not going to stop there.

In 1937, his company became the world’s first supplier of ready meals to civil aviation. Hot Shoppes entered into agreements with Eastern American, United Airlines and Capital Airlines, then the largest carriers on the East Coast. And during World War II, Hot Shoppes began to supply food to defense factories and government agencies, including the US Department of the Treasury.

Finally, in 1953, Hot Shoppes went public. Its shares were placed at $10.25 apiece. A couple of hours were enough for investors to buy back all the securities issued for free circulation.

Not beer alone

But 1957 was a historic year for the Marriott company. It was then that Hot Shoppes discovered the hotel business.

John’s decision seemed revolutionary, unexpected, but very logical. After all, after the guest has been fed and drunk, he must be offered an overnight stay.

Thus was born the Twin Bridges Marriott Motor Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. The motel was located on the banks of the Potomac River and boasted views of the Capitol and the Washington Monument. And next to the motel were the Pentagon and Washington National Airport. All this, of course, played into the hands of Twin Bridges. Then there were other motels and hotels.

Hot Shoppes Inc. was already too diversified to be associated with family restaurants. This is how the Marriott Corporation was born.

In 1969, Marriott became too crowded in the US. And then the first foreign hotel opened – in Acapulco.

The number of hotels has grown steadily. It was getting harder and harder to keep track of everyone. Yes, John did not aspire to this.

Remembering how successful Roy Allen’s A&W business model had been, Marriott developed the business along the same lines. Now Marriott hotels were franchised.

They could be anywhere, controlled by anyone, and look like anything. One thing was and remains unchanged: in every room of this huge chain of hotels and inns there should be a Book of Mormon.

exorbitant appetite

John did not know what a break from work was, and the expansion of Marriott Corp. is an example of this.

In 1972, Marriott became the first hotel company in the world to enter the cruise business by partnering with the Greek cruise operator Sun Line. The Greek company was later taken over by an American one.

That same year, 72-year-old John decided it was time to bring in his son, John Willard Marriott Jr., to run the company, retaining his chairmanship and oversight of the company’s strategic development.

The change did not affect John Sr.’s appetites in any way. The company continued to look for new niches for expansion. In 1983, she entered the middle price segment by opening the first hotel under the Marriott Courtyard brand. In 1984, the American Resorts Group chain of resort hotels was acquired.

By the time John Sr. died in 1985, his Washington DC kiosk had grown into a business empire with dozens of brands and businesses. 1400 restaurants (including franchised ones), 143 hotels worldwide, two theme parks. The turnover was in the billions.

Wellness treatments

John Jr., heading the company, at first showed paternal appetites. The collection of brands was supplemented by Residence Inn, the Fairfield Inn economy class chain and the Marriott Suites luxury hotel chain. And in 1988, the corporation reached Eastern Europe: the 500th Marriott opened in Warsaw.

But expansion could not continue forever. Marriott, seeking to cover as many lines of business as possible and own as many hotels as possible, found itself in debt. New hotels were built on loans, and the tax reform of the Ronald Reagan administration in 1986 significantly increased the tax burden on the company.

John Jr. had to temporarily forget about his father’s managerial methods. Marriott needed a “major overhaul”, which the son took up. In 1989, a restructuring was announced.

Marriott began to get rid of everything superfluous. Superfluous recognized, so to speak, the roots. The division involved in the delivery of food to aircraft and the restaurant business were sold. In 1993, the corporation split into two companies: Marriott International and Host Marriott Corporation. The first deals exclusively with the development of a hotel chain, and the second deals with additional services for guests. Most of the corporation’s debt was also rewritten to the second company – $ 2.9 billion out of $ 3.4 billion.

The restructuring helped Marriott return to profitability and continue its expansionist streak. In 1995, the Ritz-Carlton chain added to the collection of brands, and a couple of years later the Renaissance Hotel Group was also bought out. In 2016, the collection was replenished with Starwood brands – Sheraton, Le Meridien, Westin, St Regis and others.

Now Marriott International is more than 7 thousand hotels all over the planet. By the number of rooms (more than 1.4 million), it ranks first in the world.

As for the Marriott family, their reign came to an end in 2012 when Arne Sorenson became the company’s third CEO and the first not to bear the Marriott surname. After his death in 2021, this post was taken by Anthony Capuano. True, the company does not completely break with family traditions: the post of chairman of the board of Marriott International is occupied by David Marriott, the son of the retired John Jr.

Kirill Sarkhanyants