Marriott’s CEO spoke out about DEI. The next day, he had 40,000 emails from his associates

Fortune

Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano spoke out about President Trump’s sweeping changes to DEI at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit, stating “We welcome all to our hotels and we create opportunities for all.”

Transcript

00:00So I said it and then I went back to my room and said, gosh, I hope I said the right thing.

00:04I got, in the next 24 hours, I got 40,000 emails from Marriott Associates around the world just

00:10saying thank you. It was interesting. The day the executive order came out, I sat with our

00:15senior leadership team and I said, given the industry leading position we have,

00:23we ought to make sure we're all aligned on not only philosophically how we think about this,

00:28which was the easy part, but what words we use, what language we use, we should talk with the board

00:33a little bit about it. So I said to the team, take this week and let's get together in a week.

00:38I'm off to Los Angeles. And I flew to Los Angeles that day and there's a very big hotel industry

00:44investment conference called the Alice Conference. And so the next morning, I did a media breakfast,

00:51I did six one-on-one media interviews, and then with Chris and some of my other peers,

00:56we did the CEO panel. This was the first question in all eight of those interactions.

01:03And obviously, I didn't have the benefit of the team having done the work. And I sort of joked and I

01:08said, well, I mentally phoned a friend. And I thought about what I'd heard from Bill Marriott all

01:13these decades. And what I said in response to those questions, we've been around for almost a

01:19century. Political winds blow all different directions, particularly when you operate in

01:25almost 150 countries. I said, but there are some fundamental truths about this company that have

01:31guided us for those 98 years. We welcome all to our hotels and we create opportunity for all.

01:38And fundamentally, those will never change. Right? The words might change, but that's who we are as a

01:44company.

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