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Soft-spoken and camera-shy, Arne Sorenson is the president and COO of Marriott International at a time of superlatives – the group celebrating its 35th year outside the US has opened its 500th international property in Pune, and is promising to deliver 100 Marriott hotels in the next five years. Hotelier India spoke to him on his recent visit to India.
Promising a century in cricket-happy India is a great move – when Arne Sorenson, president and COO of Marriott International visited India to open the group’s 500th property worldwide, he took time to announce expansion plans that would take the tally of Marriott group’s India properties to a 100 in the next five years.
“India is a great, growing economy and as that economy grows, its need for hotel rooms grows too. We’re excited to be here for obvious reasons,” says Sorenson, as he outlines how India is getting increasingly significant even though it currently houses only 11 of the group’s 3400 properties.
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“We estimate that there are only about 140,000 hotel rooms in the entire nation of India today. That is smaller than the city of Las Vegas. It has the second-largest hotel development pipeline in Asia, and is expected to double the number of branded hotel rooms over the next three years to about 120,000 rooms,” he says.
He says he is thrilled that about 10% of those new rooms are slated to carry a Marriott International brand flag.
“We are opening our first Ritz Carlton in about 18 months. We’re particularly excited about the Courtyard brand, which has launched with tremendous momentum – there are five branded Courtyard hotels that have opened in the last 12-18 months that are doing extremely well,” he says.
Marriott International is looking at going to 20 in the next 12 months. The company has signed management agreements for seven new hotels in India, including five moderate-priced Courtyard hotels, one for the upscale Marriott hotel in Jaipur in western India and another for the lifestyle Renaissance property in Raipur in central India.
When all signed hotels are opened and added to the company’s portfolio of 11 operating properties and 23 previously announced hotels now under construction, the Marriott portfolio in India will total 41 hotels by 2013.
The last month has seen Sorenson busy in other parts of the world as well – on November 9, he was in London purchasing the Berners Hotel, with plans to turn it into a boutique Edition brand hotel.
After opening the 416-room hotel and convention centre in Pune on November 11, he was off to Brazil by November 17, announcing plans to boost Marriott’s Brazilian hotel count from four to 54, with 50 Fairfield by Marriott, in conjunction with Rio de Janeiro-based real estate developer PDG Realty. Whilst in India he also talked about doubling the brand portfolio in China in the next five years.
“One of the big areas of focus for us as we go forward is our global expansion. This year we celebrated the 35th anniversary of our first hotel outside the US, the Amsterdam Marriott,” Sorenson says.
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COMMENT
This man is really soft spoken person. We saw him in pune during the opening of marriott hotel. truely a man to look upt