Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

The management of this Marriot Hotel did yes, but it's encouraging that Marriot's corporate management immediately overruled the Hotel on this and apologised to the group.

Marriot do have a spotty history on such issues, but I think we should commend them when they attempt to do the right thing. Yes this shouldn't have happened in the first place, but given that it did they do seem to be doing their best to make it right.

I'm not going to post this reply to every single other comment ragging on 'Marriot' here, which is all but one top level comment, but come on people. Read the article. Oh, and now that top level comment that was actually informed and provided useful context is getting downvoted into oblivion. We can do better than this.

View on HN

Side note for those who don't know: most Marriott properties are Marriott-managed, not Marriott-owned.

It usually doesn't matter, but on policy questions there can sometimes be some friction between owner preferences & Marriott corporate preferences.

Usually this is over things like "Your food and service isn't up to Marriott quality, because you're under investing." But I imagine politics is also a sensitive point too. Regardless, Marriott corporate usually wins, as a hotel-without-the-Marriott-name prints less money.

Edit: Although in this instance, from the scarce details, it sounds like it was divergence from corporate policy by local management. Which, if you're putting management teams in ~7,900 properties, is probably a thing that happens.

Basic summary: https://marketrealist.com/2014/10/why-marriotts-hotels-have-...

Marriott Intl page for franchisees: https://hotel-development.marriott.com/

This is actually true for a lot of hotel brands. It's more of a franchise situation.

Right direction but still not accurate correct: most Marriott "properties" are just Marriott-licensed not even managed. Marriott sets the standards for operation and provides access to its booking system, corporate accounts, rewards system, and some marketing. The actual business operation is a lot smaller than most people outside of hospitality realize.

According to a recent SEC filing, they own 20 properties internationally, lease another ~40. They manage 2,149, and franchise 5,493.

https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001048286/0...

It doesn’t matter. By licensing its name Marriott is taking responsibility for everything these hotels do, along with the risks associated with that. This kind of event was foreseeable, and the corporation completely failed to avoid the situation by providing training on these sensitive issues ahead of time. I don’t see any reason to cut them slack given how suppressed the Uyghur genocide has been by corporations in general out of fear of China, and allowing Marriott to deflect responsibility by blaming everything on local management is exactly what they would want.

Also note that their apology doesn’t explicitly condemn the hotel’s behavior, it just says that they’re providing training. Definitely riding the fence.

Maybe I'm too pessimistic but at first I only see a big corporation (with an history) putting the blame on the local management.

Maybe it's due to my bad English, but I'm not able to find any sign of actual "overrule" of this decision. Is the WUC was finally accepted at this Hotel?

Thanks.

It's easy to give into a pessimistic spiral; I always wanted these kinds of issues to become well-known, but it seems like the response is often some kind of "yeah, figures.", foregoing the conclusion.

In a similar, but lesser vein; John Cena's apology video didn't once mention what he was apologizing for, and still got lots of flak from mainland Chinese because of that. It was plain to everyone involved what the video was aimed to do, but it's the kind of fence-walking that we miss.

> it's encouraging that Marriot's corporate management immediately overruled the Hotel on this and apologised to the group.

Where are you seeing this?

Maybe not overruled, but called out:

> The Marriott spokesperson clarified in a statement to Axios that hosting the conference would not have violated any "political neutrality" policy, and said the reference to "corporate management" in the email referred to "hotel-level management."

> "We are working with the hotel team to provide additional training and education on our longstanding practices of inclusion," she said.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com