Bill Marriott to Step Down as Chairman in 2022

Bill Marriott will retire as Marriott International’s executive chairman from the board of directors in 2022.

During the company’s first quarter earnings call on Monday, CEO Arne Sorenson announced the news, saying Marriott will transition from the Board of Directors to the role of Chair Emeritus in two years.

Chair Emeritus, someone who has retired from the Chairman’s position in good standing, has no official position on a board of directors; however, they may be called upon for special purposes.

Marriott is credited with taking the company from a family restaurant business to a global lodging company with more than 6,700 properties across 129 countries and territories.

He joined the company full-time in 1956 and soon afterward, took over management of Marriott’s first hotel. Marriott became executive vice president of the company, then its president, in 1964. He was elected chief executive officer in 1972 and chairman of the board in 1985.

Marriott began shifting the company’s business model in the late 1970s from hotel ownership to property management and franchising, allowing the company to accelerate its growth.

He has served as the company’s chief executive and chairman of the board for 40 years, before stepping down on March 31, 2012.

“Bill has been fully engaged in Marriott’s work for as long as I have been alive and he remains a daily source of contact and inspiration to me,” Sorenson said. “While our conversations today are focused on the crisis we are fighting, they are of a piece with the ongoing conversations that we have had day-in and day-out ever since the summer of 1992 when we first met at the tail end of another crisis, the Gulf — first Gulf war and the recession that followed.”

In anticipation of Bill’s transition to the Chair Emeritus role, his son David Marriott will join the board of directors next year.

Sorenson said, “For now, Bill, let me say thank you. To me, you’re a boss, a mentor, a friend and truly family. I cannot imagine the time without your partnership and friendship and I pray that there are many more years ahead for us.”