Marriott Names Tony Capuano as New CEO

Marriott Intercontinental Inc.
MAR -1.35{56ef4555b1160ba09e855af6afd9aff20ca1ee0c32187e33609ae0a92f439672}
has tapped
Tony Capuano
as its new main government officer, selecting a longtime veteran of the world’s largest hotel company to steer it through the industry’s most crippling period of time in memory.

Mr. Capuano, 55 years aged, has been with the organization for 25 decades and was most a short while ago a group president responsible for main Marriott’s global development, design and style attempts and operations.

He usually takes above the leading location right after previous CEO and President Arne Sorenson died final 7 days. Mr. Sorenson had been identified with stage-2 pancreatic most cancers in 2019.
Stephanie Linnartz,
52, a Marriott team president overseeing customer operations, technological know-how and emerging enterprises, is the company’s new president.

Resort operator’s difficult year

In managing Marriott, a 1.4 million room worldwide lodging behemoth, Mr. Capuano assumes one particular of the most hard work in all of American company.

The lodge sector is nevertheless reeling from the outcomes of the coronavirus pandemic, which has induced world wide vacation to dry up, introduced hotel closings in metropolitan areas across the U.S. and compelled rounds of layoffs and furloughs industrywide. Mr. Capuano is also replacing a beloved CEO who manufactured a stage of connecting with everyone from the company’s group leaders to housekeepers.

In an job interview Tuesday, Mr. Capuano stated he would proceed with the very same kind of administration type as Mr. Sorenson, who just before his ailment was on the road additional than 200 times a 12 months viewing Marriott accommodations and workers.

“I will incredibly much embrace that type,” he stated. “There is basically no substitute for encounter to deal with conversation.”

Contacting the pandemic “the most challenging crisis in the historical past of the company and travel market,” Mr. Capuano stated his most very important task was “getting us to the issue the place consumers feel safe” at accommodations and Marriott can rebuild desire. Its hotel occupancy degrees stood at 35{56ef4555b1160ba09e855af6afd9aff20ca1ee0c32187e33609ae0a92f439672} in the fourth quarter, about 50 {56ef4555b1160ba09e855af6afd9aff20ca1ee0c32187e33609ae0a92f439672} of where they stood a year previously.

Nevertheless, he included he was hopeful. He observed indicators of a vacation recovery in China, the place Marriott has 383 motels, and stated he sensed a fantastic deal of pent-up demand in the U.S. to journey once more.

He stated predictions that organization journey will not return to everywhere in the vicinity of the prior amounts just before the pandemic are overblown. But he included that Marriott will intention to adapt to rising developments, which includes serving the so-named bleisure tourists who search to merge function outings with vacations. He said Marriott would make confident lodges are armed with enough bandwidth for a great deal of video calls and emailing.

The new CEO reported that Covid-19 has led Marriott to rethink some tactics in means that could carry on even after the pandemic is beneath manage. Mr. Capuano pointed to “innovations in housekeeping,” however he declined to say no matter whether Marriott would seem to lessen the number of workers if guests ongoing to prefer unmade beds to permitting outsiders into their rooms.

He also stated that resorts could count more on touchless characteristics in rooms, and that food and beverage hrs and provider could also be greater customized to fulfill guest requires.

Marriott functions 30 lodge models, some of which it assumed just after getting Starwood Resorts & Resorts All over the world Inc. Makes consist of Ritz Carlton, W Hotels, Edition and Sheraton. Although some in the lodging business have instructed that the corporation has far too many models and that distinctions among the them can blur, Mr. Capuano mentioned he was snug with that selection.

“Customers say they like the breadth of choice,” he explained. “The critical point is to make sure every single brand has a distinctive place of view.”

In 2012, Mr. Sorenson turned the to start with human being outside the house the company’s founding household to head the lodge operator. Marriott did not glance far past its top company ranks for his successor as CEO, which came down to Mr. Capuano and Ms. Linnartz who have both of those been with Marriott for additional than two many years.

Marriott insiders have long assumed that a person or the other would arise as the up coming CEO, even just before Mr. Sorenson designed his ailment public, say people common with the company’s contemplating.

Generate to Craig Karmin at [email protected]

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