MATTHOUSTON/APFORBES.COM NOVEMBER 30, 20 1978
THELIST—THE^JUST100tional travel to the U.S.
All those pale next to Sorenson’s most personal
challenge yet: Stage 2 pancreatic cancer. In late
August, a week after finishing his chemothera-
py treatments, Sorenson says his hair is a little
thinner and his form trimmer. “My barber says
don’t shave it because there’s a lot of guys who
do comb-overs,” he says with a laugh. For a man
used to spending 200 days a year in Marriotts on
the road, one of the biggest changes has been his
decision to stick closer to home, both to protect
his health following radiation treatment and to
be nearby for surgery in November.
“I don’t want to be a cancer CEO. I don’t think
of myself as a cancer CEO,” Sorenson says. “I am
optimistic, but I am also very aware of the signif-
icance of the diagnosis that I’m confronting.”
The Minnesota native got into the hotel busi-
ness when John Willard “Bill” Marriott Jr., the
son of the hotel chain’s founder, plucked him
from a D.C. law firm in 1996 after he represented
the company in a lawsuit. Known as a good lis-
tener who will “quibble” over something if he dis-
agrees, Sorenson proved the perfect understudy,
moving up from head of M&A to chief financial
officer in just two years. By 2003 he was the pres-
ident of Marriott in Europe. Six years later, he
was named president and chief operating officer.
Sorenson was not only a competent executive; he
also shared important values with the devoutly
Mormon Marriott family. Sorenson was born in
Tokyo to Lutheran missionary parents, and faith
was a cornerstone of his upbringing.
That connection was key when Bill Marriott
abandoned his first plan, to pass the business
directly to one of his four children. His eldest
son, Stephen, died in 2013 from a health con-
dition that had left him blind and mostly deaf.
Daughter Deborah Marriott Harrison left Marri-
ott to raise a family in the 1990s and rejoined in
2006 in its government affairs office; she is now
a board member.
Another son, John Marriott III, followed his
father’s footsteps into the business, rising from
hotel cook to operations exec. But he also battled
a drug and alcohol problem. By 2005 his father
had decided he wouldn’t succeed him. David, 12
years younger than John and in his 30s when So-
renson took charge, is now the chief operations
officer for the eastern region of the Americas.
Bill Marriott trained Sorenson in the family’s
ways, including a willingness to take risks and ad-
herence to the family motto, “Success is never fi-
nal.” Even now, the 87-year-old board chairman
likes to call Sorenson from New Hampshire and
talk about the business, particularly after hearing
an earnings report. “I think we’re similarly driven
toward winning, similarly driven toward makingso well already, why would you add this to it?”
But Sorenson couldn’t shake the idea of add-
ing Starwood’s 11 brands, including Westin and
Sheraton, to Marriott, which would create the
largest hotel company in the world. When the
former lawyer sat down with Bill Marriott to re-
view financial models four days later, he was per-
suasive. Marriott signed off.
The rise of Airbnb and changing tastes in trav-
el among Millennials, favoring Instagram charm
over cookie-cutter predictability, risked making
hoteliers irrelevant. Marriott under Sorenson
has been anything but. The company’s footprint
has doubled during his tenure to more than 1.3
million rooms. Its revenue topped $20 billion in
2018, up 62% over five years. Postulate that Air-
bnb is an industry killer and Sorenson, 61, quick-
ly points out that Marriott’s revenues per avail-able room have grown in each quarter for the last
five years. “Is that the death of hotels?” he says,
the corners of his mouth curling into a smile. “I
don’t think so.”
Investors can also smirk—Marriott’s shares
are up 226% since Sorenson took over in March
2012, besting competitors like Hyatt (up 69%)
and Hilton (up 117% since its 2013 IPO) and
crushing the S&P 500 (up 113%). That market
performance, plus its reputation for job creation
(it has 730,000 workers), alongside sustainabil-
ity efforts like the decision to stop offering sin-
gle-use plastic toiletries, powered Marriott’s re-
turn to Forbes’ Just 100 list of America’s best cor-
porate citizens this year.
But despite the plaudits, last year was rocky
for Sorenson. Marriott discovered a massive
data breach in Starwood’s systems, leading to a
$126 million fine. Strikes in the U.S. over work-
ers’ wages cut into its 2018 revenue, and Trump’s
xenophobic rhetoric caused a slump in interna-Bedtime Story
Bill Marriott, seen with sons Stephen, David and John in 2004, built his family
empire on acute attention to detail, like the right way to change a bed.