Hilton vs. Marriott: Things We Learned From the Business Wars Podcast
Photo Caption: The swimming pool at the Twin Bridges Marriott, in Arlington, Virginia in the 1950s. John Willard Marriott and Alice Sheets Marriott opened their first hotel _ the Twin Bridges Motor Hotel in Arlington, Va. But it was their son Bill who transformed the company into a global hotel giant.
Skift Take
At heart, the hotel business is an old-fashioned affair. That's precisely why histories of titans like Hilton and Marriott can be so valuable. Lessons from past crises can shed light on today's dynamics.
We learned a lot about hotel sector history by listening to Hilton vs. Marriott — the latest season from Business Wars, a show from Wondery, Amazon's podcast studio.
The five-episode series dramatizes pivotal moments in the companies' trajectories. The scripts are well-researched, and the production values are high. Perhaps that shouldn't have been a surprise, considering that Business Wars won the "best business podcast" award in this year's Ambies.
Accidental HoteliersHost David Brown uses the opening episode to lay out the origin stories of the Hilton and Marriott empires.
It turns out that J. Willard ("JW") Marriott, founder of the world's largest hotel company, didn't have his sights set on the hotel business. A colleague suggested the idea of entering the hotel sector as a way to expand beyond the company's core of fast-food restaurants and catering. In 1957, Marriott opened its first hotel, three decades after the company's founding.
