WASHINGTON — Bethesda, Maryland-based Marriott International Inc. completes its $13.6 billion acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Friday. The merger creates the world’s largest hotel operator and one of the world’s largest employers with thousands of those jobs right here in the area.
More than 15,000 of Marriott’s 206,000 worldwide employees are in the D.C. region, many of whom are at its longtime Bethesda headquarters, making it the region’s seventh largest nongovernmental employer.
Mergers can mean job cuts and Marriott also is actively searching for a new headquarters location, both of which raise questions about the future makeup of its local workforce.
“Our lease in Bethesda expires in 2020 and we’ve got a few years to finalize things, but I suspect we will build a new building, so we will have to make a decision in the next few quarters,” Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson told WTOP.
While Marriott was committed to staying the D.C. region, according to Sorenson, whether the company planned to stay in Maryland was less clear.
“We’ll give you news when we have it,” Sorenson said.
As for job cuts — “synergies” in merger speak — Sorenson points out that 90-plus percent of the two hotel companies’ jobs are not crossover jobs. The vast majority are employed at the two companies’ thousands of hotels worldwide. But there will be cuts.
“Where there are some job overlaps will be in the more senior ranks of the companies,” Sorenson said. “We will move as quickly as we can to make those leadership decisions, within the next couple of months.”
There is more crossover than in just the executive suites. Everything from marketing and sales to the two companies’ robust IT operations will be subject to review.
Marriott’s more pressing issue now is merging the two hotel companies’ loyalty rewards programs. Both are among the highest-rated in the lodging industry.
Sorenson said members of both programs can immediately merge their account points accruals online, though both programs will be operated separately for several months until they can be seamlessly integrated. (And that hasn’t always gone well in other mergers.)
The new Marriott has more than 5,700 hotel properties worldwide and more than 1 million hotel rooms.
The merger brings together more than a dozen brands, including Ritz-Carlton, Courtyard and JW Marriott with Sheraton, Westin and St. Regis.
Marriott has a rich Washington history.
The company was founded by John Willard Marriott and his wife Alice in 1927 with a root beer stand in D.C. The company opened its first hotel, the Twin Bridges Marriott Motor Hotel, at the foot of the 14th Street Bridge in Arlington in 1957.
Two years later, Marriott opened the Key Bridge Marriott, whose future is now uncertain, Marriott’s longest continuously operating hotel property.
