Originally Posted by NY Times

J.W. Marriott Jr., the 81-year-old chairman of Marriott International, flew to London in September to inspect his company’s new jewel: Edition, a sumptuous boutique hotel intended to anchor a new 100-city chain — the next W, if Marriott has its way. But Mr. Marriott did not stay overnight at the London Edition, as the new property is known, with its laser-lighted nightclub and guest-room paintings of women wearing toilet-paper turbans. He bedded down at Grosvenor House, one of the company’s more traditional luxury hotels.

“This is what I know, but I’m the past,” he said, sitting in the old-fashioned floral splendor of a Grosvenor corner suite. Edition, conceived in partnership with the boutique hotelier Ian Schrager, is about the Marriott company’s future. “We’re trying to get some flash,” Mr. Marriott said. He rose wearily from his chair. “I’m off to see the flash.”

Marriott is big. The company, based in Bethesda, Md., operates 660,000 rooms under 16 brands, including Courtyard, Renaissance and Ritz-Carlton; more than 800 new Marriott-operated properties are in the works worldwide.

Marriott is dependable. When you’re stranded overnight on business in St. Louis or Denver or Chicago, the red glow of a Marriott sign is there at the airport to offer you a clean, comfortable room.

Marriott, in the words of brand experts, is boring. Nobody raves about the D.J. at a Courtyard.

So how do you recast this company as cool and current — a “brand constellation” of everything from standard-issue roadside rooms to six-star oceanfront suites? This is Arne M. Sorenson’s conundrum. Mr. Sorenson, 54, took over as chief executive in 2012, when Mr. Marriott stepped aside after 40 years on the job. Making this task trickier is the fact that Mr. Sorenson is the first C.E.O. in the company’s history who isn’t a member of the Marriott family. It’s his job to change the business while remaining reverential to J.W., who created the Marriott image and whose family still owns 25 percent of its stock.

It’s no easy puzzle, but Marriott, the world’s No. 3 hotel company by number of rooms, must quickly solve it to compete for younger hotel guests, Mr. Sorenson says....