BETHESDA, Md.
Marriott International, Inc. announced it will continue to expand its offerings to business travel professionals.
Brian King, global officer, brand management & global sales, Marriott International, spoke at the Global Business Travel Association's annual convention in Denver on July 18.
"Marriott International is in the midst of one of its most exciting periods ever for business travel professionals," King said. "In the coming year, we'll be unveiling scores of new luxury and lifestyle properties and significant new ballrooms worldwide, but also new guest experiences for valued, tech-savvy road warriors."
Currently, Marriott is innovating across its system with mobile check-in and check-out across 4,200 hotels globally, Netflix in-room entertainments and MeetingsImagined.com, the visual, social and collaborative website that connects meeting planners with more than 750 of its hotels, along with more than 4,000 images to spark the imagination, tips, quizzes and trend-related articles about everything from the hottest new cocktails to the latest technology trends. Next month, when Marriott unveils a hotel designed to test new ideas and technology, planners will be able to see Marriott's vision for next-generation meeting space and experiences.
Among the concepts to be tested are an interactive pre-function space that resembles a high-end residential kitchen and a next-generation boardroom with natural light and cutting-edge touchscreen monitors.
There have also been meeting space expansions, with several high-profile projects underway worldwide. Construction began on the new Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Aurora, Colo. Once completed in late 2018, Gaylord Rockies will be the largest combined hotel and convention center in Colorado.
At the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center near Washington D.C., construction started on a freestanding, 23,000-square-foot ballroom overlooking the Potomac River, set to open in July 2017. At the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center near Dallas, work began on a $120 million expansion that will add 86,000 square feet of meeting space including a new ballroom in 2019.
Marriott plans to open more than 100 luxury and lifestyle hotels in the next 12 months, with the Ritz-Carlton brand debuting in new locations such as Langkawi, Malaysia. In the next year, customers will also see the global expansion of AC by Marriott in countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Germany, the arrival of three new JW Marriott locations in China and new locations for the Moxy brand across Europe.
