Regional challenges
While it is easier to create values when things are going your way, what happens when a crisis arises?
No matter how much experience you have, an unexpected event, whether a natural disaster or an uprising, can rock the boat, as recent turmoil in the region has proven.
“This year was really a surprise to me as to what we would face,” Fuller says while discussing the unrest.
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“You never know what will happen, so that is why we have crisis management as part of leadership.”
Fuller describes having to charter planes to fly into Egypt in February, while employees defended one hotel with knives and brooms.
In Libya, a plane was chartered to fly out employees, and despite taking seven and a half hours to get the evacuees boarded due to the crush at the airport, Marriott managed to repatriate all the staff and guests.
“We got all 185 staff out and the last two guests on the plane to Jordan and redistributed them to their home countries,” Fuller explains.
“Eighty five percent of those people have been reassigned to other Marriotts and we are working on the last 15% right now. The hotel is not closed, it’s suspended and we have security around the hotel, with the hotel maintenance team in there keeping the engines running, but it’s closed to guests.
I hope it will reopen, but right now there are a lot of issues that I can’t anticipate. American law constrains us from doing anything during this time.”
Fuller certainly likes to lead from the front and he stresses the importance of showing employees, guests and owners that you are with them in a crisis and supporting them.
“I was in Cairo last weekend [April] to spend time with owners and it was important for them to see us on the ground, so they say ‘you see Marriott’s here’ — I’m not Bill Marriott, but I am Marriott to them,” he says.
And while the symbolic importance of walking with the security detail shows that the management regards it as important, upper management showing their faces goes beyond responding in times of crisis.
“For the hotel side, when I inspect freezers for the dates on food, I’m not there to catch them, I’m there to show that someone is looking,” he says.
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