The story
Founded by J. Willard Marriott in 1957.1
Foundation and early years
The Marriott hotel chain began when the Hot Shoppes, Inc. restaurant company decided to diversify into hotels. Its first hotel opened in 1957 in Virginia, the Marriott Motor Hotel, adjacent to The Pentagon and Washington National Airport. The company's second hotel was the nearby Marriott Key Bridge Motor Hotel, which opened in 1959. This was soon followed by Marriott Motor Hotels in Dallas in 1960, Philadelphia in 1961, Atlanta in 1965, and Saddle Brook, New Jersey in 1966.
Hot Shoppes, Inc. was renamed the Marriott Corporation in 1967, by which point it was operating 8 hotels.
In 1967, Marriott acquired its first resort hotel, the historic Camelback Inn in Arizona, United States. In 1969, the Paraiso Marriott, the first international Marriott Hotel, opened in Acapulco, Mexico. That same year, Marriott bought the famed Essex House overlooking Central Park in New York City.
In 1972, the Marriott lodging division acquired the Greek-based Sun Line cruise line, which it owned until 1987.
In 1975, Marriott Hotels & Resorts expanded to Europe, with the opening of the Amsterdam Marriott. In 1980, Marriott opened its first hotel in the Middle East, the Riyadh Marriott, in Saudi Arabia. The Cairo Marriott followed in 1981, the chain's first hotel in Africa.
In these first several decades, Marriott International owned and managed many of the hotels within its portfolio. In 1993, the company decided to spin off the real estate ownership operations as a new company, Host Marriott, while retaining hotel management services under the Marriott International company name.
Development since 2000
By 1999, there were over 360 Marriott Hotels & Resorts in 47 countries, and in November 2010, Marriott Hotels & Resorts announced the opening of what is said was their 500th property, the Pune Marriott Hotel & Convention Centre, in Pune, India. In September 2005, Marriott Hotels & Resorts unveiled its first new room designs in ten years. Dubbed "mSpot", the new rooms feature clean lines and updated technology.
In 2013, Marriott committed to transitioning to cage-free eggs at all properties. In 2018, the company renewed its pledge to eliminate eggs from caged hens by 2025. Marriott released an update concerning the status of its commitment in May 2025, which noted that by year-end 2024, 92% of egg purchases in managed hotels were cage-free. However, only 64% of global purchases at managed hotels and 47% of purchases by franchised properties in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean and Latin America were cage-free at that time. In their statement, Marriott cited challenges related to avian flu-induced supply chain dynamics. In response, activist groups staged numerous protests globally, which included disrupting the speaking events of Marriott executives and creating "a website that featured grotesque AI-generated images of Marriott International CEO Anthony Capuano surrounded by bloody feathers and dead chickens."
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In August 2020, Marriott announced it was ending its Make A Green Choice program. In October 2020, the UK data privacy watchdog fined Marriott Hotels £18.4 million for a serious data breach that exposed the millions of the companies customer's data to cyber-criminals.
In July 2022, The Marriott Hotel revealed that the company's data had been breached. Hackers were able to compromise the hotels' data which led to 20GB of data which included internal documents and information in addition to consumer data such as credit card information. The hackers broke into a server at the Marriott Hotel at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The group shared screenshots of customer information and were in contact with the Hotel chain. This data breach marks the third data breach for the company in the last 4 years.
In 2023, a criminal investigation was opened against Marriott in Poland, claiming that it acted fraudulently and unethically against the Lim company, the owner of a Warsaw hotel. During the COVID-19 period, Marriott would not keep up the hotel's maintenance and shifted the costs of maintaining the empty hotel to the Lim Company. At the same time Marriott prevented the Lim Company from renting the hotel to the National Health Fund for doctors' housing or contracting for advertising deals until the Lim Company would pay unwarranted bonuses to Marriott.
From Wikipedia’s article on Marriott Hotels & Resorts, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4