Marriott share values plunge as profits decline. Future earnings are forecast to remain below Wall Street expectations.
Well, it’s been a year since Marriott hotels announced their full allegiance to the cause of the smoker pogrom (links: original – stored). Note all Marriott brand names: Marriott, JW Marriott, ExecuStay, Renaissance, Courtyard, Residence Inn, Spring Hill Suites, Towne Plaza, Fairfield Inn, and Ritz-Carlton: stay away as instructed by the firm. Keep following their advice: plan all travel, your own, for groups, for smokers and non-smokers, for everyone apart from priggish busybodies, apart and away from Marriott, exactly as Marriott has so strongly suggested, quite effectively for a year now.
Over the past year, according to figures released Wednesday by the Travel Industry of America (links: original – stored), the hotel industry has grown by every measured index: room demand, occupancy, revenue, and employment have all increased. So how is mammoth Marriott sharing in the boom? Oh, it isn’t. Investors took flight when the news of Marriott’s condition hit Wall Street on Thursday (links at bottom of this page). Earnings are down and forecast earnings are being downgraded. Further reaction, more bad news for Marriott, came on Friday (links: original – stored). In light of Marriott’s increasing debt burden Standard and Poor’s has downgraded their corporate credit rating.
Keep doing your bit to hit Marriott. Follow their advice and follow their lead. Do as they do and kick ’em harder when they are besieged. It’s nice to be reminded of the hateful brand names, as above, but really all you have to do is avoid any hotel which does not respect you. Apart from blanket ban chains, owner-operated hotels and individual franchise outlets of other chains may have their own bans, so always check and always stay away from Big Brother’s brand of hospitality. Many of our correspondents report having smoked happily away in smoke-free hotel rooms, when occasionally they get stuck with one (it’s easy to be tidy and open a window), but if this may be archly satisfying in its own way, avoid getting stuck, and enjoy the far greater satisfaction of sticking it to Big Brother, where it hurts, in the wallet.
Please enjoy Marriott’s financial decline and S&P degradation as much as we do. Smokers, you are a quarter of the adult population and have played your large part, together with your many friends. Marriott, reap, as you have sown. You know, folks, it really shouldn’t take an MBA to foresee a negative profit potential in telling a significant portion of the population to take a hike (or does it require an MBA to miss this?) but Marriott swallowed business advice from anti-smoking activists. Now it wells in their guts.
Marriott bought the party line. Anti-smokers always tout that a prohibitionistically appreciative influx of their kind will make up for lost smoker clientèle but their kind are an infinitesimal minority of misfits; in actuality, non-smokers, as opposed to anti-smokers, are largely normal persons who would be more than happy to see their smoking friends accommodated adequately, and who, when booking for groups, will often inquire and insist on adequate accommodation: you see, MBAs, that is what "hospitality" is supposed to provide.
Having recalibrated their business approach into lock-step with the petty scolds and rank ideologues of anti-smoking — who rely on grants because they could never get along in a real job — Marriott is now accepting the just reward of self-righteous idiocy. As an example of cretinism a quote from Marriott’s website is irresistible:
Question: How will smokers be accommodated? Will they be able to smoke within the building?
Answer: While there will be no smoking areas within the building, smoking will be allowed outside in special designated areas. We will seek to accommodate guests as best as possible.
Keep doing your comically pompous best, Marriott, and see ya later maybe.
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