Essay: Marriott International PESTEL

Industry Analysis
In 1927, J. Willard Marriott(1900~1985) first opened a bear stand which grew into a restaurant chain and developed into today’s Marriott International hotel company. For the next 58 years, he built the Marriott brand on a foundation of guiding principles that remain embedded in the company’s culture today. In 1957, the first motor hotel in the world opened in Virginia under the management of Marriott’s son, Bill. Then for the next 25 years, Marriott became a global enterprise and his son Bill became a CEO. In 2016, it became the largest hotel company in the world offering more than 1.1 millions rooms across 110 countries and 30 brands with 5700 properties.
Marriott International operates and franchises over 2600 hotels and resorts in 127 countries and has 30 brands in total. According to survey done by Fortune magazine, the company is ranked as the lodging industry’s most admired company and one of the best places to work for. In the year of 2017 the revenue was $22 billion with 1.7% of annual growth since 2011. The company has been guided by family leadership for 90 years and headquartered outside of Washington, D.C. in Bethesda, Maryland.
Trends and Drivers
Nowadays compared to the past ten years, hotel users are more demanding, urbane, cosmopolitan and pretty challenging to please. Their expectation for customer service has got higher so hotels try to fulfil customers’ demand by providing better service with more entertainment and memorable experience. Technology is developing and changing and consequently, guests and hoteliers’ interaction is becoming less frequent within the travel industry. Furthermore, the numbers of people booking and searching in web is to continue growing which means hoteliers and people who work in the industry need to keep the pace. It is expected that there will be high seasonality effect. To be specific, more demand in Summer and on holidays due to Disneyland’s visitors’ preference.
Legal, Political & Economic Factors
According to Greater Toronto Hotel Association, the GTA must level the playing field for all hotels with the illegal hotel rooms industry. These businesses are currently not paying municipal commercial property taxes, licensing fees and meeting other rules and regulations that hotels are required to meet. Based on the preliminary analysis the illegal hotels rooms industry represents about $60M in room revenue and about 8% of the hotel room supply. (Illegal Hotel Rooms. (n.d.))
As for tax breaks, The Trump administration has pushed its tax reform framework with a big emphasis on middle class and working class Americans. In particular, the Trump administration has highlighted that reducing the statutory federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 20% would benefit workers. Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson has been outspoken in supporting corporate tax reform, but he said that bringing more cash onshore would not cause him to hire more workers or raise wages. At the same time, the Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Kevin Hassett has put out an analysis that corporate tax reform would lead to at least a $4,000 wage increase annually on average for workers (Sinclair, 2017).
Sociocultural Factors
As Disneyland Toronto construction is finished, Torontonian’s lifestyle and living conditions will be completely changed. The population density in the heart of Toronto will get even higher. It will be associated with the increase of amenities, and development of both tourism and hospitality industry. However, in long term perspective, the high population density will affect the rise of condominium fee in downtown of Toronto. Consequently, the number of people who would like to migrate to rural area, where they can find condos or houses with their budget, will add up.
Technological Factors
When it comes to environmental intensity reductions, in the year of 2015 compared to a 2007 baseline, Marriott International had lowered the energy intensity by 13.2 percent, the water intensity by 10.4% and the GHG emissions intensity by 13.2% include owned, leased and managed properties, and rooms from franchised, franchised and timeshare properties are excluded.