It would be easy to classify Marriott as company out to conquer the world. They have an aggressive acquisition and franchise recruitment strategy that has increased their portfolio to nearly half-a-billion hotel rooms in less than fifty years. Yet this is a company of people, both those who are being served and those who are serving. Marriott has built a reputation that has both categories of people flocking to their doors, and continues to grow from that strategy's success.
Marriott actually started as "The Hot Shoppe" in 1927 by J. William Marriott and his wife, Alice. It remained in the food service business until 1957 when it branched into the hotel business as well. Marriott has always felt ready to take its enterprise into new areas: government food service, airline catering, timeshares and resorts, and all segments of the international hotel industry. It has acquired such companies as the Bob's Big Boy Restaurant and Camelback Inn in 1967 to Ritz-Carlton in 1995 and ExecuStay corporate housing in 1999. Yet it has not been afraid to divest through sale and spin-offs either, as it did with its Senior Service living communities and Marriott Distribution Services. In 2003 Marriott earned $19 billion in revenue, $476 in gross profits, and boasted a network of 490,564 rooms (Timeline).
The strengths of Marriott early on were many. It has been a family enterprise from the start, and is still headed by the founder's son, J. W. Marriott, Jr. They held customer service to be of great importance, since all of their endeavors have been in personal-service industries. Community service is also important to Marriott. The family foundation was established in 1965. The Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities was established in 1989 (Timeline).
In 1990 the company started a program entitled Pathways to Independence: Marriott's Welfare to Work Program (Timeline). This is typical of a company that believes in dev...