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MARTHA E. POLLACK: Good afternoon. It is so good to welcome all of you to this year's Hatfield Address. This is Cornell's premiere event for the exchange of ideas between the academy and our corporate communities.
The Hatfield Fund for Economic Education published in 1980 by the Continental Group Foundation to honor its retiring chair, the late Bob Hatfield, Cornell class of 1937, who served as a university trustee. The fund supports not only the Hatfield Address and associated events, but also the enhancement of the teaching of economics to Cornell undergraduates. Designation as a Hatfield Fellow is the highest honor that Cornell bestows on outstanding individuals from the corporate sector.
Today's honoree, Tony Capuano, is president and chief executive officer of Marriott International Incorporated. And in this role, he presides over the world's largest hospitality company and some of the most iconic brands in travel.
Here's something interesting I didn't know. The company was founded in 1927 as a nine-seat root beer stand. Did you know that? I didn't know that either. But now it has 8,300 properties across 138 countries and territories and 30 brands. It also has the travel industry's largest customer loyalty program, Marriott Bonvoy, which has more than 100 million members.
Tony joined Marriott in 1995 and was instrumental to its steady growth over the years, which culminated in the acquisition of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide in 2016. Before his appointment as CEO in February of 2021, Tony was group president, Global Development, Design and Operations Services. In that role, he led the strategic unit growth of all of the brands of Marriott's portfolio while [AUDIO OUT] as well as global operating standards and protocols for thousands of properties around the world.
Tony earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in hotel administration, class of 1987. He's an active member of the Cornell Hotel Society and the Cornell School of Hotel Administration Dean's Advisory Board as well as the Business Roundtable and the American Hotel and Lodging Association's IREFAC Council. Additionally, he serves on the board of directors for McDonald's Corporation and Save Venice, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the artistic history of Venice, Italy.
I would also like to welcome Isabella, class [AUDIO OUT] who is joining us in the audience today. Isabella, where are you? There you are.
[APPLAUSE]
With that, we are truly honored to welcome the president and CEO of Marriott International, Tony Capuano, class of '87, as Cornell's 40th Hatfield Fellow in Economics Education.
[APPLAUSE]
There he is. Thank you.
TONY CAPUANO: I don't want to knock it over.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: It's heavy. So, Tony, thank you so much for joining us.
TONY CAPUANO: Thanks for having me.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Oh, no. We're happy to have you here. We have students in the audience. So I really want to start with a question about educating the next generation of students. What do you think are the best things we can do to prepare students for careers in hospitality?
TONY CAPUANO: I would start with reminding them. It's interesting. All the hotelies here, every day, they walk under that sign with the quote from E. M. Statler that says, "Life is service." And I think we have a collective responsibility to celebrate the dignity and nobility of jobs in the service of others.
It is interesting. You mentioned Save Venice. I'm fortunate to spend quite a bit of time in Italy. When you're in Italy, you meet waiters, for instance, that have been working in the same restaurant for 40 years. And it is a chosen career. And they are filled with pride. And they are celebrated for their life in the service of others.
That's not true in every part of the world. And I think one of the responsibilities we have is to remind folks it is a noble pursuit to serve others. And the hospitality industry gives us a unique opportunity to do that.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: So you were telling me a really interesting story about a cookie back there. Would you tell the group this story?
TONY CAPUANO: Sure. So sorry, Isabella. Last week, I was in Abu Dhabi. And we had a meeting of all of our global luxury general managers, so about 500 general managers from around the world. And I had the privilege to close the conference. And at the end of the conference [AUDIO OUT] my dedication and passion for luxury, their dedication and passion for luxury, are critical and wonderful. But none of it matters if we're not hiring, training, and retaining our frontline associates.
And the story I told to illustrate that-- when Isabella was applying to the hotel school, she included in her essay a little story about being a little girl and going to what she referred to as the Lyon Hotel, which was a Ritz Carlton because of the logo, and remembering going and getting this big chocolate chip cookie out of the jar.
And the reason I told that story to our leaders, I said all [AUDIO OUT] the leadership that we can offer is irrelevant. What is relevant is one of the general managers in that room hired an associate, trained them, empowered them. And that associate saw this little blonde girl walk in the room and said, I'm going to do something special to create a memory and enhance her experience.
And in many ways, that's at the core of what we do every day is we have the privilege of being woven into the fabric of people's lives. They come to our establishments to celebrate weddings, and anniversaries, and birthdays. It's a privilege to try and enhance those memories.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Great. Thank you. So let's talk a little bit about the pandemic. I mean, the pandemic really hit the hospitality industry hard. How did you pivot? How did you support your employees? And how did you continue to stay connected with your customers?
TONY CAPUANO: All great questions. It was, in every sense of the word, an existential threat to our company and our sector. I've been at Marriott for 28 years. I have often thought that if we err, we err on the side of being a bit of a conservative steward of our balance sheet. But I can promise you in those 28 years, not once did somebody give me a model and say, this is what our economics look like if revenue drops 92% overnight, which is precisely what happened.
And so in the very early days of the pandemic, our focus was almost singularly on survival. And through renegotiation of the covenants on our revolver, an ability to thread the needle on the public markets and get a bond deal done, and to do some advance point sale with our two credit card partners, we raised almost 8 billion of liquidity in seven weeks.
But as soon as that was done, and we felt like maybe we had the liquidity to survive, we immediately pivoted to recovery. And from where we sat, what was most critical was inspiring confidence in the safety of travel.
And so you mentioned that in my old role, I had responsibility for global operations. Think about what we had to do. We had to rewrite our operating and cleaning protocols. Then we had to procure the materials necessary to execute those protocols in 138 countries, and then roll out the training. And we did that in about four weeks, which was pretty remarkable.
Then it was all about taking care of our people, trying to get them back to work as quickly as we could, partnering with our owners and franchisees, who were in severe financial distress, as we were. We did things like negotiating on their behalf with their lenders to let them tap into their FF&E reserve accounts to try and weather the storm as well.
But the most interesting thing I've seen as recovery has started-- if anyone in this room or listening had any doubts about the resilience of travel, I think that's been answered. And it's been answered loudly.
So you think about the desperation that was in that boardroom during those first seven weeks. A month or so ago, we reported fourth quarter earnings. The company recorded all-time record fees, all-time record-adjusted EBITDA, all-time record-adjusted EPS.
And we did that in a year where January was horrific because of the Omicron variant, and our second biggest global market, China, was locked down for a good portion of the year. And so that resilience, that need within the human condition to explore the world, came through and continues to come through as we see travel continue to recover.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: It absolutely does come through. I was on vacation just a few weeks ago. And the airports are packed. I've never seen them. I've never seen them.
TONY CAPUANO: I'm sorry for the exorbitant rate we probably charged you.
[LAUGHTER]
MARTHA E. POLLACK: I stayed in an Airbnb.
[AUDIENCE EXCLAIMING]
TONY CAPUANO: I'm glad you're still alive.
[LAUGHTER]
MARTHA E. POLLACK: So-- [LAUGHS]
TONY CAPUANO: Yeah, it's funny. Brian Chesky, that runs Airbnb, is a good friend. And in fact, when I was appointed CEO, he was literally the first person to call me and congratulate me. And he went on to say, we should be working more together. We're not competitors, which was a terrifying phone call because they are absolutely competitors.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Well, this was a house with a group of five other couples. So there were special circumstances. Pivoting a little bit here--
TONY CAPUANO: Wait--
[LAUGHTER]
--by all means.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: So congratulations on your new headquarters in Bethesda.
TONY CAPUANO: Thank you.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Six years planning a design. And I understand you now have an incredible new state of the art innovation lab--
TONY CAPUANO: We do.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: --prototypes of future hotel rooms. Give us an insider's view. What's it like?
TONY CAPUANO: Sure. So, I mean, it was a fascinating development project because we were well under construction when the pandemic started. And so, like many businesses, we had deep questions about what the future of work might look like, when and if folks would come back to the office. We stayed the course.
We did make a few physical adjustments. We took about 20% or 25% of the workstations in the building and repurposed that as more collaboration space. We had a sense that even before the pandemic, more and more of the work that we did would be multidisciplinary teams.
As the pandemic unfolded, our sense was more and more folks would say, if I'm doing independent work, I might work remotely. But I'll often be in the office for team projects. So that's been great.
It has been a great catalyst for return to the office. The old headquarters served us well since 1974. And I'm sure at the time, that was a state of the art building. But it had reached the end of its useful life.
So now we're in a much more urban environment. We are a two-block walk to the Metro. We've got 50-some-odd restaurants within walking distance. And so it's a terrific environment to pull folks back to the office. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we're about back to where we were from an occupancy perspective. Friday is quiet. But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is busy.
The Innovation lab-- in the old headquarters, we had actually repurposed some old legal storage on the second lower level of the building. Here we had the advantage of purpose building, real innovation space. So we've got about 40,000 square feet. And it is not a museum. It is a real working laboratory.
I remember when the building was under construction, the team came to see me one day. And they said, we're struggling to get a permit [AUDIO OUT] and welding. I said, what on Earth are we welding?
But the innovation lab, we're building. We're building model rooms. We're building prototypes. And so if you came and visited us once a month and stayed in a proper hotel instead of an Airbnb--
[LAUGHTER]
--every time you came, you would see something different being experimented with. So it's a great opportunity for us. And maybe most exciting for me, it gives us a chance to bring our members and our guests in.
So not long ago, we built a, quote, "standard" Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant room. And it met all the legal requirements. But we brought about 100 of our members in who had various disabilities. And we said, play around. Tell us what you think. And there were some great learnings that will influence our design going forward.
The bed height, for instance, was compliant. But if you were in a wheelchair, it was terribly difficult to make that transition. So we've lowered the bed frame.
We had a blind member that said, I struggle with the thermostat. And our folks said, but you can feel the up arrow is shaped this way, the down arrow this way. They said, the problem is there's no braille. So I don't know what the base temperature is that I'm adjusting.
And so that lab really gives us the opportunity to engage with our guests in a way that we couldn't in the old room or in the old building. And at the new headquarters hotel, well, we don't own it. We operate it. But we leased a floor in the hotel. And we're building out our model rooms as functional rooms.
So same thing. If we've got a new prototype for one of our brands, we can have a bunch of guests spend the night there and tell us what we've missed. And that's already started. We had one the other day where somebody said, I love everything about the room. But if I have a standard Apple laptop charging cord, I'm a foot away from the desk. And you don't learn those things until people really live in the space. So it's a great workshop for us.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: That's really fascinating. And I'm going to encourage you to connect with the people in our new design tech program, who are very, very interested--
TONY CAPUANO: Fabulous.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: --in how you use these kinds of--
TONY CAPUANO: Yeah, we had a conversation about that at lunch. One of our most popular brands is Residence Inn. But Residence Inn is an expensive product to build because it consumes a lot of square footage. And so we partnered with a company out of New York called Ori. And Ori got its start designing furniture solutions for tiny Manhattan apartments. And so now they have a commercial application for that.
And so you walk into a room. You think it must be one room in a suite because there's no bed. There's a living room. But with the press of a button, the bed comes down from the ceiling, covers the living room. There's what appears to be a wooden panel. You press a button. It opens up. It's a fully functional office. So that sort of creativity I think will be enabled by this innovation lab. And it's run by a former Disney Imagineer.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Perfect.
TONY CAPUANO: Which is great.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Perfect. Perfect. So you mentioned your members. The Marriott Bonvoy program is one of the biggest loyalty programs in the world. 177 million members, I understand. Tell us a little bit about it. Why does loyalty matter? How do you retain members? And also, why did Marriott change the name to Marriott Bonvoy?
TONY CAPUANO: So maybe I'll go in reverse order. I'm still not sure I buy the name. But that's the name now. But when we acquired Starwood in 2016, we had a loyalty program called Marriott Rewards. Starwood had a program called SPG, Starwood Preferred Guest. And we knew we needed to harmonize those two programs.
Members of SPG were deeply passionate, and understandably. It was a rich program, which was great for the members, less great for their owners and franchisees. And so we had to walk a tightrope where we went to those passionate SPG members and said, we are going to modify some of the benefits. And that may frustrate you. But you're now going to be able to earn and redeem, instead of 1,000 locations, in 8,000 locations.
And I would give us an A-minus probably on the integration. There are most certainly some old SPG members that are a bit frustrated that they're not getting suite upgrades with the frequency that they did before. But it was important to relaunch that new harmonized program, which is why we came up with Bonvoy.
In many ways, Bonvoy is our 31st brand and our most important brand because it's really what, to your point, allows us to connect and create this sticky relationship with our members. And that was really tested during the pandemic. So think about it. We had 177 million people around the world whose principal connection with us was staying in our hotels. Suddenly, they didn't travel anymore. So how do you stay connected to those members?
The fact that we have such a robust branded credit card program was very helpful. So if they were placing a grocery order on Amazon, they would get an alert through the Bonvoy app that they had just earned 141 points.
We also launched in the middle of the pandemic a partnership with Uber and Bonvoy. So there again, somebody that was ordering Uber Eats while they were quarantined was staying connected to the program. And I think one of the great learnings during the pandemic is we've got to continue to look for ways to stay connected with our members in the Bonvoy platform beyond when they walk through the door and leave the door of the hotel, to be much more engaged with them through the entirety of the travel cycle.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: That's interesting. Very interesting. So again, you mentioned Bonvoy as the 31st brand. You have 30 brands. That's a lot of brands. Talk to us about how you build, and particularly how you position, a marketing strategy that differentiates a brand from this broad array of brands.
TONY CAPUANO: Well, I appreciate you asking that much more politely than the analyst community does, who typically says, how on Earth can you have 30 brands? When are you going to sell some brands? When are you going to combine some brands?
I give a consistent answer to that question because I really believe it. I love the breadth of choice that that portfolio offers, not only to our guests, but to our owners and franchisees. With that said, if you're going to pursue a strategy of having that broad of a brand portfolio, what you owe your customers is a well-articulated, distinct positioning for each of those 30 brands.
And on that front, I would give us a grade of incomplete. I think the majority of the brands in the portfolio are very clearly positioned. There is a clear value proposition for both our guests and our owners. I think there are some brands in the portfolio where we still have some work to do.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Great. So, Tony, let's talk about sustainability. Cornell, like Marriott, Marriott, like Cornell, are both committed to getting to net-zero greenhouse emission--
TONY CAPUANO: Emissions.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Emissions. Thank you. Emissions. But there's more to sustainability than just climate change. Talk to us about how you as the leader of Marriott think about sustainability and how Marriott can contribute to being a more sustainable world.
TONY CAPUANO: And so as I took on this role, one of the things that I appreciated most deeply-- the company is celebrating its 96th anniversary this year. We have an extraordinary nearly century-long legacy of engagement in the communities where we do business.
We had our board meeting in February. And one of the things we celebrated was the 20-year anniversary of a board-level committee focused on inclusion and social impact. And so you have deep roots. It's embedded in our DNA to serve our world and be contributing members in the markets where we do business.
Beyond for my personal passion and recognition that I'm a temporary resident on this beautiful planet, and I have a personal responsibility to try and care for the planet, for travel and tourism in particular, it's a business imperative. I look at a bunch of prospective future Marriott associates here among the hotelies. And I know they have a wide range of choices. And as they evaluate those choices, they will look to align themselves with companies whose values match theirs. And one of the things that I'm sure for you and me gives us optimism about the future is how passionate this generation is about the health of the planet.
Even if you don't have those moral feelings about sustainability, it is without question a business imperative. And when I think about the four constituents that we serve-- our associates, our guests, our owners, and our investors-- each of them is for their own reasons deeply passionate. And they hold us accountable, not just for flowery language that would appear in an annual report, but for setting real, measurable stretch goals, and then reporting on our progress against those goals.
I think about our group business, which is one of the segments that has recovered most rapidly. 95% of the group contracts that we write require an addendum that reports on our efforts and our progress on all sustainability fronts. And I probably meet with 75 to 100 institutional investors a year. Every one of them asks for us to talk about our efforts. And so it is a clear imperative.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: That's great. One of the things that's really I think impressive about Marriott is that you're also committed to addressing some other major social problems-- stopping human trafficking, helping provide opportunities to disadvantaged communities among them. Can you talk a little bit about what that? Why are you committed to that? And what are you doing about that?
TONY CAPUANO: Yeah, of course. Maybe I'll go in reverse order.
There is a long list of attributes to admire Bill Marriott for. But maybe the one I admire the most, when you ask him-- I mean, he is as iconic a leader and innovator as the industry has ever seen. Yet when you ask him, what is his proudest achievement, without hesitation, he says, the opportunities that we've created for our associates and their families. And so again, embedded in our DNA is this desire to create opportunities through the power of travel.
Human trafficking is a passion personally for me and my family and also for the corporation. And I talked earlier about all the wonderful things that happen in hotels-- weddings, anniversaries, birthdays. One of the not-so-wonderful things that can happen in hotels is activity related to human trafficking.
We recognized that years ago. And we said one of the ways we can help eliminate that problem is to train our associates. And so we developed an online training. I am proud to tell you we've trained a million Marriott associates worldwide.
And then as we were working our way through that training, we said, this is not a competitive issue. This is a human issue. And so we partnered with our friends at the American Hotel and Lodging Association. And we made that training available to the industry at large. And so now, among our friends at Hilton, and Hyatt, and IHG, they've trained another 800,000 of their frontline employees.
And if we had more time, I could tell you dozens and dozens of simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming stories about empowered, trained associates who have noticed something, knew what to look for, knew how to react if they saw something. And we've saved dozens and dozens of potential victims of trafficking.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: That's amazing. Congratulations on that.
TONY CAPUANO: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
MARTHA E. POLLACK: So you told me backstage that you don't like to talk about yourself. And I've tried to avoid questions about yourself. But I have to ask this. And this is something that I as a leader like to ask other leaders.
What advice would you give? If we were off having a cup of coffee, and I was saying, Tony, just tell me what you've learned about leadership. What should I know? What lessons have you learned that I might take? What would you tell me?
TONY CAPUANO: I would tell you to stay in safe, well-recognized, branded hotels.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
And then if you didn't throw me out, I would tell you that humility is critical. A number of folks in the audience know this story. But on the long list of things I admire about the School of Hotel Administration, the Career Services team is amazing. And our hotelies get dozens and dozens of interviews and lots of job offers.
When I was here as a senior in 1987, I was lucky enough to have eight job interviews and got seven job offers. And for 35 years, I carried around that one rejection letter because that rejection letter was from Marriott. And some people joke. And they say, oh, that drove you to someday be CEO.
But as I reflected on that, they were right. I was a brash 21-year-old coming out of the best hotel school on planet Earth. I knew everything. And I think the Marriott recruiter at the time said there is a cultural mismatch. He has not yet learned the humility that will allow him to be successful.
And Kate knows this. Right around the time we were doing the Starwood deal, she came to Washington. And she called and said, I've never met Bill Marriott. Do you think he would meet with me? And I said, of course he would. So they had a delightful hour meeting.
And at the end of the meeting, she said, all my students know that I'm with you. The minute I get back to Ithaca, they're going to say, what advice did he have? And she said, so is there any advice that I should take back? And he got a big smile on his face, and he said tell, them to be humble.
And so I think humility is really important. Intellectual curiosity is equally important. And I am concerned that in the business world generally, the art of deliberate, engaged listening is evaporating.
We live in a world of soundbites. We get our news in 140 characters. We don't sit and watch the news. We just read the crawl at the bottom of the screen.
The most effective leaders that I've met across industries are those that have the discipline and the desire to put their phone down, to stop thinking about what their next meeting is or what they're having for dinner that night, to look the counterparty in the eye and actually listen to what they have to say. And I think those that unlock the power of engaged listening have a tremendous advantage.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: That's great. Thank you. Well, last question for me, and then we may have some time from the audience. What keeps you going? How do you stay inspired?
TONY CAPUANO: Sugar-free Red Bull.
[LAUGHTER]
That's the real answer. No. Somebody asked me the other day what has been the most pleasant surprise in my new role. And without question, it is the privilege-- I probably tour 400 or 500 of our hotels a year. I shake hands with every associate in those hotels. I go into the kitchen. I participate in the housekeeping lineup at 6 o'clock in the morning.
And the genuine passion and love that those folks have for taking care of each other, servicing our guests. It is hard not to be optimistic about the future of our company and about the future of travel when you see people that love what they do so much. So that's been probably the best learning for me and the most motivating part of my role.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: That's great. We have some time. There are microphones there and there. And if people would like to come up and ask questions.
SPEAKER: I'll start.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: OK.
SPEAKER: Hi.
TONY CAPUANO: Hi.
SPEAKER: I loved how you talked about the culture of humility. Would you talk a little bit about the culture of volunteerism? It seems like on your website, there's a lot dedicated to the hours and hours of volunteerism that are promoted by leaders.
TONY CAPUANO: It's a great question. One of the phrases that Bill Marriott uses often that guides how we think about service is this notion of the spirit to serve. So we have a spirit to serve week. We have spirit to serve days.
When I became CEO, we were still early in the recovery from the pandemic. And I thought, it feels almost unseemly to have a corporate Christmas party or holiday party. So I said instead, let's find a spirit to serve activity.
And so the first year we did it, we went down to the capital area food bank, packed a few thousand boxes of food for those in need. At the end of the event, my team said, can this be our holiday party forever? So last year, we were down at DC Central Kitchen. And we'll do that forever.
The way we expand that on a global basis is we have something that Debbie Marriott Harrison, Mr. Marriott's daughter, calls our army of goodness. And that is our business councils. So we have about 100 business councils globally. They are staffed by general managers. They're not paid. It's all volunteer work. But it's the platform we use to engage in volunteerism and philanthropy in individual markets.
So the horrific earthquake hits in Turkey. All 100 business councils globally pulled together cash donations, supplies that were needed, rallied our Bonvoy members to contribute points that could be turned into travel. I talked to my friend José Andrés an hour after the earthquake hit, sent him money to get him on his way with World Central Kitchen to provide support.
So this idea of supporting those in need and volunteering our efforts, particularly in the communities that we do business, is really embedded in the company's DNA. You're welcome. Hi.
MOMO BI JOHNSON: Hi. I'm Momo Bi Johnson, class of 2015. I'm a venture capitalist. So what are the biggest areas of innovation challenges you think the industry has? To all the founders out there, what do you wish they were building to solve your innovation challenges?
TONY CAPUANO: Yeah, it's a great question. I would say for our industry, one of the most fundamental challenges today is the relative financial health of the owner community has been devastated by the impact of the pandemic.
And while I with great pride tell you that we had a record financial performance year in 2022, my celebratory mood is muted by the fact that our owners and franchisees, which are the lifeblood of our growth, they are still much earlier in that recovery curve than we are because so much of our fee volume comes from the top line. And obviously, the expense side of the ledger did not stop growing during the pandemic. So as a result, capital, which in many ways is what fuels innovation, is not as plentiful as I might like.
Similarly, for the hospitality industry, much of the innovation comes from new product innovation. And right now you've got heavy constriction in the debt markets for new construction. And so that inhibits the sheer volume of new product in which we can innovate. Those would probably be the biggest challenges.
The third I would say is less of a challenge and more of a caution for our industry. I get lots and lots of questions about the extraordinary pace of technology innovation and AI. And I got a question the other day. Somebody said, with all of this innovation in technology, can you envision a time where you'll have a hotel with no employees?
And I said, god, I hope not because at its core, we are in the hospitality industry. And most certainly, technology innovation will enhance our efficiency. It will likely enhance the operating margins of our hotels.
But candidly, I'm more excited about the manner in which technology will create capacity for our associates to actually engage with our customers, to go fill that cookie jar for that little girl, to recognize there is a guest who's had a heck of a travel day. And instead of that associate staring at the screen for the entirety of the interaction, to use the strength and the improvement in that technology to quickly finish the transactional part of the engagement and spend more time on the personal part of the engagement.
MOMO BI JOHNSON: Thank you.
TONY CAPUANO: You're welcome. Hi.
JENNA CERASO: Hi. My name is Jenna Ceraso. I'm actually class of 2025 in the engineering school. But I love this. This was very, very interesting. And you were very insightful.
TONY CAPUANO: Thank you.
JENNA CERASO: I was wondering how you navigated the cultures and values of all of your local staff of so many locations and so much diversity globally.
TONY CAPUANO: Thank you. It's a great question. As I mentioned, or as President Pollack mentioned, we're in 138 countries. Got another new 20 countries in the pipeline behind that. And so the business practices and the cultural norms across what will be 158-country portfolio are wildly different.
We use our core values to guide us as a bit of a true north. You may know that we made the difficult, but I think appropriate, decision to cease operations in Russia. That was a decision driven by our core values. And it is those core values that continue to drive us even if it creates in the short term some measure of friction.
I told a story earlier today. The first time I-- right now, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a very vibrant development community. There are these what they call giga projects. There'll be 150 hotels built in Saudi over the next few years.
When I went to Riyadh for the first time a decade ago, I went to the Ritz-Carlton Riyadh, which I believe to be the finest hotel in the country. And there was not a single female associate in the hotel. So what did we do? We used our core values as a guide. We partnered with Cornell. And we created a program called Tahseen. And Tahseen is in effect an apprenticeship program for students that have expressed an interest in hospitality.
I was lucky enough. I was in Riyadh again just a few months ago for the WTTC meeting. And I was able to attend the graduation ceremony for our fifth cohort of Tahseen students. And if you look at those five cohorts in aggregate, 58% are female. 35% of the associates at the Ritz-Carlton Riyadh today are female. And we just appointed our first female general manager in Riyadh.
Now, that was not without some challenges, but it was the right thing to do. One of our core values is to put our people first. And that's about creating opportunity for them. So it's really those values that guide our navigation of the complexities in our existing 138 countries and the countries where we'll continue to grow.
JENNA CERASO: Thank you so much.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: And we have time for one more question.
DAVID KASSIANE: My name is David Kassiane. I'm a Cornell graduated 2015. We came up with the technology. This is called Utalii, which is a peer-to-peer tourism platform. We believe that in the future of traveling, the future of engagement is to have customized, personalized experiences.
So as a former Marriott employee, I worked for Marriott for over 12 years. So is there any room for collaboration with the future technology, like Utalii? And if there is, what approach can Marriott-- or how should we engage?
TONY CAPUANO: Well, I think a couple areas, most notably. You hit on one, which is personalization. I get questions around what I believe the future travel trends will be. Without question, personalization. People were locked down for a period of time. They have rediscovered their passion for exploring the world. They do not want generic experiences. They want local. They want authentic. And they want it to be personalized. And I think technology is a great enabler of personalization.
I would say second, it's about removing friction from travel. As we've watched the recovery move around the world, as soon as friction is removed, as borders open, as vaccination requirements or testing requirements are eliminated, you see immediate spikes. And as we think about future trends in travel, technology will allow us to eliminate some of those frustrating friction points. And so those are two areas that we're quite focused on.
DAVID KASSIANE: OK. Thank you.
TONY CAPUANO: Thank you.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Well, Tony, this was wonderful. It is just so encouraging to see-- always to see what our Cornell alumni have done. You certainly had an amazing career.
TONY CAPUANO: Thank you.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: You've got a lot more of an amazing career in front of you. Please join me in congratulating our Hatfield Fellows. Let me clap you on.
[APPLAUSE]
Marriott President and CEO Anthony Capuano ’87 and Cornell University President Martha E. Pollack discuss how the future of hospitality will be shaped by empowering associates, accelerating innovation, and creating a positive and sustainable impact wherever we do business.
