Marriott CEO Sees the Line Between Leisure and Business Travel Blurring

Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of video interviews from the Skift Take Studio, presented by KDS, that were filmed at this year’s Skift Global Forum.

During the 2017 Skift Global Forum in September in New York City, we heard from a host of the travel industry’s top leaders from across every sector.

And after first speaking to them on stage in front of an audience of more than 1,100, we took another few minutes with them to get more insight in our backstage Skift Take Studio.

In our behind-the-scenes conversation, Marriott president and CEO Arne Sorenson shared his thoughts about the continued importance of loyalty, the need for local influences in design and dining, and the fuzzy-to-disappearing line between business and leisure travel.

“Increasingly, what we see is people are combining those trips, and when they are on business travel, they want to have personal experiences. Or they’re taking trips that have dual purposes associated with it,” he said. “What that means is we’ve got to be on our toes more. We’ve got to make sure that the hotels are delivering not just what a business traveler wants in terms of consistency and wireless connectivity and ease of doing business, but that we’re delivering the kind of special emotional experiences that leisure travelers often want to have, and we do that for both kinds of customers.”

Watch all the Skift Take Studio videos here