Skift Take
Marriott may be encouraged by recovery signs around the world, but it also can't afford for corporate clients to keep in place stay-at-home work policies and meeting bans until the middle of 2021.
The leader of the world’s largest hotel company said the worst of the financial fallout from coronavirus is in the rearview mirror. But business meeting bans and corporate work-from-home policies aren’t helping the travel industry accelerate any faster into a recovery.
Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson on Monday said demand and occupancy rates across the company’s portfolio have increased every month in every region of the world since bottoming out in April. While drive-to and leisure travel led the hotel industry’s recovery around the world, China — the country furthest ahead in a rebound — is even seeing the return of business transient and group business travel.
But some of the world’s largest companies enacted worker policies through the summer of 2021 in response to coronavirus fears, and that could hinder how far hotels can bounce back financially in the next few months.
“While we all need to make decisions to protect our people and make sure that we’re not putting people out in risky environments, there’s absolutely no reason for us to be making decisions about what offices look like or what travel looks like in the second quarter of 2021,” Sorenson said during an investor call.
Sorenson did not mention specific companies by name. But Google last month extended a co
