Arne Sorenson, president and CEO of Marriott International, has been named the 2018 Hospitality Executive of the Year. The Penn State School of Hospitality Management and the Penn State Hotel & Restaurant Society made the announcement from University Park, Pennsylvania, on November 8, 2017.
The award will be handed out at a gala reception at the Nittany Lion Inn on April 12, 2018. The evening comes just before the university’s Blue-White Weekend events and football game.
According to the school, students will get a rare chance to learn directly from the head of the world’s largest hotel company.
Donna Quadri-Felitti directs the school. She pointed to the way Sorenson guided the integration of Starwood into Marriott, which she called transformative for global travel.
The society has presented this honor since 1960. Its president, Jason Bayona, said Sorenson is a worthy recipient. Only one person has won it twice so far: Bill Marriott Jr., in 1967 and again in 1987.
Sorenson joined Marriott in 1996. He became CEO in 2012, after taking a board seat in 2011. He is the company’s third CEO and the first without the Marriott last name. Before that, he was president and chief operating officer and held other senior posts, including chief financial officer.
Earlier still, he was a partner at a Washington, D.C., law firm, where he focused on mergers and acquisitions litigation.
His outside roles are wide-ranging. He chairs the U.S. Travel Association CEO Roundtable and sits on the Luther College Board of Regents. He is also a trustee of The Brookings Institution and serves on a World Economic Forum stewardship board on the future of mobility.
The school and Marriott go back a long way. The company has recruited there for five decades, while Penn State has been the top source of graduates for its undergraduate management program, now called the Voyage Global Leadership Development Program.
