Leisure travel is ‘four times the size' of business travel: Marriott International President
Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. Obviously, the pandemic has created some problems for a lot of travel plans out there. But as we move forward, a lot of the travel names are looking to entice travelers to come back and stay with them. And Marriott is certainly one of those names putting their efforts behind unveiling new technology as the company unveils at CES a new design lab to shape the future of hotels.
And for more on that, I want to bring on the president of Marriott International, Stephanie Linnartz here with us today. Stephanie, happy new year. Thanks for joining us today to discuss some of those things, because, you know, I feel like a lot of people are desperate to get back out and travel if they already haven't. So what is kind of this new initiative to really, I guess, invest in some of those new technologies going to do for maybe that decision?
STEPHANIE LINNARTZ: Well, good morning, Zack, and happy new year. Great to be with you. Yes, I am live from the Consumer Electronics Show here in Las Vegas where we announced the launch of our Marriott Design Lab, which is really the next evolution in our innovation efforts here at Marriott International.
The way I think about it is a research and development lab for the hotel industry-- certainly innovations for our company, but for the industry overall. And it starts with we have approximately 10,000-square feet of flexible, state-of-the-art lab space at our corporate headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland that we use to build, test, and explore new innovations in the hotel space with partners.
And some of the partners that we're kicking off with, which we're really excited about, include LG Electronics, Carrier, we were even working with some startups in this space to just really think about how we can continue to enhance the guest experience in our hotels. And in a very big way, technology is part of that solution.
AKIKO FUJITA: Stephanie, let's talk about how those hotels are looking. Marriott, obviously, international footprint, and you've got a pretty good pulse on how much of that recovery has happened. We've been trying to gauge how much this recent variant is disrupting travel plans. And I wonder what your sense is right now-- whether this is kind of a brief disruption or you think that this is maybe causing a lot of people to rethink their plans.
STEPHANIE LINNARTZ: Well, Akiko, you're right-- we're quite large and broad geographically. We have 30 brands, close to 8,000 hotels, and we're in 140 different countries. So the situation does vary around the world in terms of the recovery and how travel trends are going.
