Bill Marriott , Jr . cuts the ribbon to open the new Marriott corporate office in Bethesda , Maryland .
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Marriott sets the bar on how to office
NEW HEADQUARTERS AND STRATEGY FOCUSES ON FLEXIBILITY AND CHOICE .
By HOTELS EDITORS
Hotel guests want more flexibility and choice today . So , post-pandemic , why shouldn ’ t hoteliers , their line staffs , corporate support teams and just about everyone who has chosen hospitality as a career want the same ? Yet , the very nature of this 24 / 7 business makes that concept a challenging proposition . The post-COVID hybrid work model is a work in progress and it remains too early to tell where the dust will settle . But for some early insight , the industry has a great example in Marriott International , not only the world ’ s biggest hotel company but the owners of a new global headquarters in downtown Bethesda , Md ., that opened in September with 785,000 square feet of LEEDv4 Gold-certified space for corporate associates supporting over 8,100 hotels in 139 countries and territories around the world .
Ty Breland , executive vice president and chief human resources officer , told HOTELS that the Marriott brain trust wanted to get their teams back to the office as soon as possible because they felt it would help bring travel back . But there was a new learning curve and Breland said the big takeaways from 2020 were the ideas of flexibility and choice . Those concepts were used to “ round the edges ” as the final touches were put on the office design as well as to support the execution of new work-life protocols .
“ This idea of flexibility and choice is something that we ’ re really trying to do across all of our jobs , definitely here at headquarters and at all of our continent offices , but also the property level ,” Breland said . “ New associates are requesting career development and then flexibility . That flexibility piece used to be much farther
10 hotelsmag . com Jan / Feb 2023