Ray Bennett, a top-ranked Marriott International executive who presided over franchising operations in the U.S. and Canada regions, died May 5 from complications related to a heart attack. He was 53.
Bennett rose through the ranks of the world’s largest hotelier across his two decades there, overseeing its eastern and Midwest regions before taking on the roles of chief lodging services officer for the Americas and, by 2015, chief global officer for the Bethesda company’s global operations. In that role, he was supervising the breadth of Marriott’s guest services, from mobile apps to room amenities to anchor restaurants across its thousands of properties worldwide.
In 2020, he was named president of Marriott’s domestic franchising operations, as well as its Managed by Marriott Select Brand hotels, in the U.S. and Canada. That brought more than 1,100 franchise management companies across more than 4,500 hotels nationwide, along with another 1,000 hotels in the pipeline, under his…
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