Marriott Big Idea We have learned a lot this semester about analyzing everything from a whole industry to the smallest detail of a company that hinders that company from becoming the industry leader. Marriott is one of the largest hotel companies in the world today and still has problems that could be sorted through and picked out that slow the firm from growing further. Marketing to the right traveler could drastically improve the amount of revenues brought into Marriott. In early 2013, there was a study done on the amount the U.S. travel industry impacts the United States. It states that 70% of travelers within the U.S. travel for leisure; whereas only 30% travel for business. Over $850 billion is directly spent within the travel industry. This includes all costs that are incorporated with traveling from food to transportation to lodging. The lodging industry comprises about 20% of this total amounting to $158.4 billion. Of the 515,000 rooms available through Marriott, and with an average occupancy rate of 71.6% within the U.S., this means that only 369,000 rooms are being utilized at an average given time. From our industry analysis, we gathered that 40% of hotel business comes from business travelers and about 60% from leisure. This shows that it is possible to penetrate the leisure traveler and marketing in the right ways could generate extensive amounts of revenue. Gaining and retaining leisure travelers through package deals, marketing efforts, and special vacationing discounts could increase total revenues by 4% just through the use of U.S. strategy. Marriott makes up about 8% of the total lodging revenues made by the travel industry. Although Marriott is an enormous company, its revenues are small in terms of what the industry makes. For the year ending 2012, Marriott made almost $12 billion in revenues. If Marriott could penetrate this gap between business and leisure travelers, it could generate large amounts of revenues.
According to the U.S. Travel Association, there were 1.6 billion leisure travelers in 2012. Using the comparative numbers from the total Marriott revenues compared to the travel industry, there are about 128 million people using Marriott