Skift Take
Despite doubling its room count over a decade, Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano remains optimistic about the company's growth potential. He's betting that high-margin luxury hotels and a tech revamp will help sustain fat fees.
Marriott CEO and president Anthony Capuano faces a pivotal point in the growth trajectory at the world's largest hotel group.
He is focusing on filling out the map worldwide with various types of properties so that Marriott always has a property to offer its most loyal guests for every type of trip. The CEO is betting specifically on the luxury hotel category because he believes it will generate fat fees that could compensate for the company's expansion into lower-margin mid-tier brands.
Marriott has also launched a multi-year technology revamp that should help its staff become more efficient and encourage more guests to buy more services.
"I can't see the end of the runway for growth," Capuano told Skift Monday during an interview at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit (ALIS) in Los Angeles.
Still, the challenges are real – here's how Capuano said he's handling them.
Will Future Development Hit Profit Margins?The challenge: Marriott has more than doubled its room count over a decade. It's gone from managing 675,000 rooms at the end of 2013 to 1.59 million at the end of last year. Can it keep up the pace?
Some skeptics say Marriott has put hotels in all the key cities it can by now — grasping the low-hanging fruit of prime locations. Future development may be in third-tier markets generating third-tier margins.
Capuano's optimism: "Some have asked us, 'Aren't you running out of street corners here at home?' The answer is a resounding no."
Marriott said on Monday it added 91,000 rooms in the U.S. and Canada last year. Roughly a third o