It usually doesn't matter, but on policy questions there can sometimes be some friction between owner preferences & Marriott corporate preferences.
Usually this is over things like "Your food and service isn't up to Marriott quality, because you're under investing." But I imagine politics is also a sensitive point too. Regardless, Marriott corporate usually wins, as a hotel-without-the-Marriott-name prints less money.
Edit: Although in this instance, from the scarce details, it sounds like it was divergence from corporate policy by local management. Which, if you're putting management teams in ~7,900 properties, is probably a thing that happens.
Basic summary: https://marketrealist.com/2014/10/why-marriotts-hotels-have-...
Marriott Intl page for franchisees: https://hotel-development.marriott.com/
According to a recent SEC filing, they own 20 properties internationally, lease another ~40. They manage 2,149, and franchise 5,493.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001048286/0...
Also note that their apology doesn’t explicitly condemn the hotel’s behavior, it just says that they’re providing training. Definitely riding the fence.
Maybe it's due to my bad English, but I'm not able to find any sign of actual "overrule" of this decision. Is the WUC was finally accepted at this Hotel?
It's easy to give into a pessimistic spiral; I always wanted these kinds of issues to become well-known, but it seems like the response is often some kind of "yeah, figures.", foregoing the conclusion.
In a similar, but lesser vein; John Cena's apology video didn't once mention what he was apologizing for, and still got lots of flak from mainland Chinese because of that. It was plain to everyone involved what the video was aimed to do, but it's the kind of fence-walking that we miss.
Where are you seeing this?
> The Marriott spokesperson clarified in a statement to Axios that hosting the conference would not have violated any "political neutrality" policy, and said the reference to "corporate management" in the email referred to "hotel-level management."
> "We are working with the hotel team to provide additional training and education on our longstanding practices of inclusion," she said.
Marriot do have a spotty history on such issues, but I think we should commend them when they attempt to do the right thing. Yes this shouldn't have happened in the first place, but given that it did they do seem to be doing their best to make it right.
I'm not going to post this reply to every single other comment ragging on 'Marriot' here, which is all but one top level comment, but come on people. Read the article. Oh, and now that top level comment that was actually informed and provided useful context is getting downvoted into oblivion. We can do better than this.