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FEATURESFORBES ASIA FEBRUARY 20 20ability 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 last year.
But despite the plaudits, 2018 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 workers’
wages cut into its 2018 revenue, and Trump’s xe-
nophobic rhetoric caused a slump in internation-
al 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. Sorenson un-
derwent successful surgery in November and is
back at work and in full swing. “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 significance of the diagno-
sis 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 eldestThe octogenarian patriarch of the hotel empire had
anointed Sorenson as Marriott’s CEO just three
years earlier, the first time someone from outside
the family had led the 92-year-old firm. Now So-
renson was going to propose something crazy:
Spend $13.6 billion to buy rival Starwood Hotels,
which ran upscale chains like the W, St. Regis and
Le Meridien. This at a time when Marriott’s mar-
ket cap was just $20 billion and traditional hotels
were fighting a furious rearguard action against in-
ternet upstarts like Airbnb and Vrbo.
“It was obvious he was thinking, Oh, my God,
are you kidding? A $13 billion deal?” Sorenson
recalls. “Everything’s going so 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 Airb-
nb 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
have almost quadrupled since Sorenson took over
in March 2012, besting competitors like Hyatt (up
100% and Hilton (up 170% since its 2013 IPO)
and crushing the S&P 500 (up 130%). That mar-
ket performance, plus its reputation for job cre-
ation (it has 730,000 workers), alongside sustain-→ Arne Sorenson was either out of his
mind or making the best move of his
career when he picked up the phone in
October 2015 and dialed Bill Marriott.