Master of Innovation: Arne Sorenson | Hospitality Design
The CEO and president of Marriott International passed away on February 15th, 2021 at the age of 62 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Here, we take a look back at an interview with Sorenson from HD’s November 2018 issue.
Born and raised in Japan until he was 7 years old, when his family relocated to St. Paul, Minnesota, Marriott International president and CEO Arne Sorenson was introduced to travel at an early age. His father was a missionary, dashing off to different countries “mostly in the developing world,” and visitors from around the globe were often fixtures in his childhood home. “As a Lutheran preacher’s kids, it’s not like we had the resources for luxury, but we saw the beauty in Japan,” he explains.
In 1979, during college, Sorenson experienced a life-changing experience when he traveled to Lebanon as a guest of the Middle East Council of Churches, meeting with different religious and academic communities and political institutions, including the Red Crescent and Maronite Church. The country was in the midst of civil war, “so it was an unusual destination, but an eye-opening one,” he recalls.
It was fitting, then, that after a dozen years practicing law, Sorenson landed at global powerhouse Marriott in 1996. He developed a love and respect for the company after taking them on as a client and handling the transaction that separated Marriott and Host. When Bill Marriott approached Sorenson about joining the team, he was keen to make the leap into hotels—but not as a lawyer. He plunged into business development, focusing on the acquisition of companies like Renaissance. Sorenson’s industriousness paid off: Two years later he was named CFO, and by 2012, he was appointed CEO, only the third in the company’s history.
Sorenson marveled at Marriott’s heritage and core values for more than 15 years before he became its chief executive. “It’s only partially tongue-in-cheek to say my goal at the time was ‘Don’t mess it up,’” he quips. “Marriott has a powerful cultural legacy, and I wanted to ensure we were doing what we could to preserve the attractive parts of that.”
Sorenson also knew that growth and innovation were essential. “You look at lifestyle, at what was happening in design, food and beverage, and technology—those were all places that we had to continue to grow and become stronger in,” he notes.
Decades ago, Sorenson adds, a hotel prioritized uniformity because customers “were looking for rooms of a certain size and a great welcome, but not necessarily the intensity of experience they’re looking for now.” With modern travelers seeking distinctive hotels that flaunt share-worthy (read: Instagrammable) points of interest, Sorenson has worked to strengthen Marriott’s lifestyle-driven approach.
Consider EDITION Hotels, spawned by a fateful meeting at Ian Schrager’s Gramercy Hotel in 2007. Schrager, upon learning that Sorenson and Bill Marriott were slated to visit his hotel, hustled back from the West Coast so he could lead the tour himself. “We sat with him in the Jade Bar afterward and Ian said, ‘It would be great to do something together some time,’” recalls Sorenson.
A partnership between Schrager and Marriott International may have appeared unlikely to some, but to Sorenson, the collaboration and founding of EDITION was organic. Marriott was already considering entering this sphere, and Schrager “brought us permission to be in that space,” he explains. “If Ian was disappointed about anything, it was that his genius had been applied to only about a dozen hotels, and he looked back and said, ‘Who can I work with to bring execution skills to my creativity so that we can be mutually reinforcing?’ Ian will tell you he’s not an architect, he’s not a designer. He doesn’t necessarily use the word, but he’s a producer.”
On the heels of the monumental Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resorts merger in 2016, Marriott now counts numerous lifestyle offerings, from Moxy to W Hotels, as part of its vast portfolio of 30 brands. The company even made recent inroads into home-sharing with Tribute Portfolio Homes, a six-month pilot initiative in tandem with London-based home rental management company Hostmaker.
“Different brands have different growth prospects in different parts of the world, and we’ll seize those as best we can,” says Sorenson. “One of the great things about having the portfolio lineup we have is it gives us the opportunity to grow virtually everywhere.”
Photos by Isaac Maselman, Cade Martin, Jeremy Segal, and courtesy of Marriott International