This story has everything the Bloggernacle could ever want: Romney, the Marriotts and sex! Unfortunately, in my opinion, it’s mostly hot air.
To summarize: some people are saying Romney as a member of the board of the Marriott chain should have done more to prevent the hotels from making money on X-rated movies. Or R-rated movies. Or something.
OK, Economics 101: most public company board members deal with only the biggest issues. Operational issues like what kind of movies are seen in hotel rooms would not be appropriate to even bring up in a board meeting.
If you want to find a Mormon villain in this story, aim your wrath at the Marriotts themselves, who have indeed allowed pornography to be a significant part of Marriott hotel revenue streams. But keep in mind that some of the Marriott hotels have separate ownership and are franchisees.
I agree on most points, but the days of the corporate board not knowing about operational-level decisions have been dead for a few years (since SaOX and Enron, if not sooner). Now, it’s entirely fair to say, “OK, but in those days, we were a do-nothing, rubber-stamp board”, but you have to expect the question to be asked. I’m surprised the response from the Romney camp seemed kind of tepid.
These questions have dogged the Marriotts for years — even inside the Church. It shouldn’t catch anyone by surprise that a Christianist news outfit is raising the question about a Mormon candidate.
Fair? Not really. Expected? Sure.
And, don’t forget, the Marriott Corporation is the nation’s largest distributor of booze! Porn and booze for all, wherever your travels may take you.
I believe these issues go to the heart of the corporation. A corporation doesn’t accidentally end up in the porn and booze biz. They make a conscious choice to sell things that will make them money.
You’d probably look at your LDS neighbor a bit differently if you found out the guy in the pew ahead of you made his living by owning and tending a bar. Likewise, some of us faithful LDS find it offensive that the Romneys and Marriotts are in the booze and porn business. If it’s okay to sell porn and booze, what next?
Ben There, could you explain to me exactly by what logic is Romney in the booze and porn business?
Queuno, I have served on the board of a large public company fairly recently, and you are simply not correct that board members get involved in operational details, Sarbannes-Oxley or no Sarbannes-Oxley. It is not part of their charter.
Geoff B, you were on the board of a “large public company”? How old are you? If you are really that illustrious, how do you find time to blog? (Oh, and what company was it?)
Perhaps I should be more outraged, but I’ve never been particularly bothered by the fact that you can buy alcohol or order adult movies in Marriott hotels.
I worked for an LDS grocer in high school. His store did business on Sundays and also had a pretty decent selection of wine. I believe he was in the bishopric at the time. But, even more than that, he was a fine person and devoted member of the Church.
That story is totally anecdotal, of course. There may be expectations in certain businesses that Mormons don’t find ideal (e.g., that alcohol be available at a major hotel), and I’m not sure that expecting Mormons to not abide by those or to stay out of the business altogether is an ideal solution.
So I’m not about to jump on the Marriotts (or Romney, for that matter).
John, I was once a corporate titan, but now I am a low-level worker bee (by choice). You are incorrect that all people who serve on corporate boards are “illustrious.” And you would be surprised how many high-level corporate executives spend their time. I once spent an entire afternoon with the president of a large company ($4 billion in sales) in which he did nothing but check his stock quotes and shop for a new boat over the internet and chat about his family. For six hours.
Blogging, especially if you can occasionally bear your testimony and do your small part to build up the Church, is a relatively useful activity, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of family time.
Geoff B: (#6 re blogging),
Yes. It’s cool to see in your access log that someone came to your blog on a non-gospel-related topic from a search engine, then spent half an hour reading a dozen or more different pages.
Owning a large chain corporation like the Marriots, it is part of the business to offer the Clientele what they want if they so which to. I do see and understand the view that avoiding the sell of booze and the prevention of porn, but in reality in a chain that big would that really work ? Don’t they operate by what the consumer wants? I might be wrong.
I know that Disney hotels don’t offer porn, but that’s for obvious reasons.
Look at the Marriot’s target market.. it all falls on who they are targeting and who frequents their hotels.
It has been explained on various blogs before that the Marriot family/corporation does not own the Marriot hotel chain. The The Marriot family (or corporation) is a management firm that is hired by the owners of the hotels to run them. Those owners also license the Marriot name to be used on the hotels.
I don’t know how accurate that is, or if it is true of all hotels that bear the Marriot name.
But if it is true, then in their defense, Marriot may not be the final decision makers.
Ben,
Why on earth would it bother me that the guy in the pew in front of me owns a bar? or works at Starbucks? or is general counsel for Altria? I assume that he has made his career choice with the proper input from the Lord.
For that matter, why would it bother me that he drinks at a bar, or drinks coffee, or smokes Phillip Morris cigarettes? He’s at Church in the pew in front of me, doing the best he can. I do things I shouldn’t, and I assume you do too. Whether the Marriotts’ business model is optimal, it is between them and the Lord. I haven’t gained the right to judge them just by being their coreligionist.
In Nauvoo, only the mayor was allowed to sell liquor. Joseph Smith was the mayor when this ordinance was put in effect, and he had a “bar” in the Mansion House. Emma was not thrilled (cough).
In Utah, the LDS church owned the Saltair resort, which sold liquor.
Geoff, you’re simply mistaken if you don’t think corporate boards shouldn’t know how the money is coming in and how it’s collected. There is a level of operational knowledge that they should know. How HR is managing the people? Probably not. Where the money comes from? Yes.
Anyone part of the Marriott board would be irresponsible if they didn’t know about porn on the TVs. For heaven’s sake, did they ever *stay* at a Marriott?
Boards who don’t get involved in details — at a certain level, obviously — are part of the problem.
The management/ownership distinction doesn’t matter. If Marriott didn’t feel it could stand behind what happens inside the walls of a hotel it manages, then it wouldn’t put its name on the building. Let’s just be glad prostitution’s illegality gives Marriott an excuse not to provide that service for its customers who desire it.
[quote]In Utah, the LDS church owned the Saltair resort, which sold liquor.[/quote]
Nick- you neglect to mention that the Church didn’t feel right about selling alchohol at Saltair, and that was the main reason they sold it. The church owned the resort from 1893 to 1906. The decision to sell alchohol was made specifically to be an olive branch to the non-mormons in the state (tensions were very high at the time, much higher than now).
The church-owned company stopped selling alchohol at the resort a few times, but it backfired. More alchohol was smuggled in than was ever sold. Finally, the decision was made to sell the resort to a private party for that very reason. In the end, the brethren were not ok with a church-owned company selling alchohol and they got out of the business.
Funny how people are so quick to defend someone providing services to people which totally go against church teaching. I own a brothel. Who would in the ward would care if I owned a brothel? Don’t you think the Lord approves? I’ve been bothered by the porn at Marriots. I’ve stayed there. I’ve looked at movies to watch and have to ignore the “Adult” selection. Quite ironic that there’s a Book of Mormon in the drawer. But that makes up for it, right guys? And for all the alcohol, right? That’s how the Lord rewards his righteous saints: by letting them make money from booze and naked chicks.
Every hotel that has the name Marriott on it has a management contract that gives the Marriott company huge rights in how the property is run. The property owners just collect a rental stream (effectively) that has some upside potential for higher occupancy. The notion that they don’t own the hotel is a fiction to keep their ROI high.
Georged: In many cases they (Marriott) really don’t own the hotel. Many are franchises. The franchisee owns the property and buildings, and pays Marriott a fee for the right to use the name, business plan, and be taught the “secrets” of their operating methods. And other things, such as relate to advertising.
For Marriott to change the rules with franchisees in the middle of the ball-game, they’d have to wait until the franchise contracts are up for renewal, and change the terms at that time, with ample notice etc. The franchisee would then be losing a big chunk of the movie revenue, and would have to decide whether the loss of the movie revenue would be more or less than the financial loss they’d experience from losing the right to use the Marriott name.
There are likely terms in the current franchise contracts that protect the franchisee from big changes at the whim of the franchiser. Depending on the terms, Marriott might even have to pay for sign changes, and all logo changes throughout the property.
It may come down to a societal pressure, like smoking.
I remember a time when there were not smoking versus non-smoking rooms. No choice was given. Or few places had that choice.
Maybe there will be “p*rn verus non-p*rn” rooms. And that will solve it, because very few will want to admit at the check-in desk that they want a p*orn-enabled room.
If there were that choice, many families would chose the non-p*rn room so that their kids would not even be exposed to the PPV advertising, and would not be tempted to select those channels when the parents are out of the room.
Bookslinger, the news articles indicate that Marriott licenses their in-room entertainment contract as a single entity, suggesting that Marriott HQ determines the terms of the deal and that franchisees are contractually bound to accept it. (Or maybe franchisees can opt out?)
Matt E:, I think it would be risky to take at face value a reporter’s summary of the details of the franchising contracts and video entertainment arrangements. That’s a technical level probably above the head of most reporters.
So I’m still wondering who “drives” the video entertainment deal, the franchisees or Marriott. And, it’s also possible that there are other non-franchise type arrangements with investors who own some hotels, and contract with Marriott to staff and manage them. Kind of like how a management company runs an apartment complex, and that management company is different than the investors who own the apartments.
Hopefully, there will be some societal evolution in regards to p*rnography, as there has been with smoking, that will reduce it, and provide some degree of insulation between it those who wish to avoid it.
At this point, I’m willing to focus less on who is at fault, and to encourage both the general public and regular hotel customers to put pressure on all parties (franchisees, Marriot, investors, operators, etc, whoever they are) to reduce the availability of p*rn.
Also, like the smoking issue, I admit that there may be a need to do it incrementally, control it and limit it, then creating p*rn-free zones, and then totally eliminating it from Marriott hotels, then maybe from other hotels too.
It took a while, but we went from smoking areas on airplanes, to totally smoke-free airplances.
Employers (corporations) have also been realizing that p*rn addiction at work robs them of employee productivity, and may therefore have incentive to not pay for in-room adult movies for their employees when they travel on company business. Again, I could see this as an incremental thing, first not paying for it, second, requiring employees to stay in a p*rn-free room at a hotel, third, requiring employees to stay in a p*rn-free hotel. When you travel on your employer’s dime, your employer has a right, to a degree, to determine the terms of what is reimbursed, and where you can stay, etc.
As I understand it, most of a hotel’s business comes from business travellers and various conventions. I think if organizations start having their conventions at p*rn-free hotels, and businesses (and families on vacation) start requiring p*rn-free rooms, then progress could be made in this area.
Wow, judgemental people. Or maybe you’re just brave enough to call “a sin” a sin, so long as it someone elses. [I’ve even heard people at church say Mormon’s shouldn’t become doctors because it requires them to work on Sunday and no Mormon should choose a job that requires work on Sunday.] Thank you for detecting and commenting on the mote in someone’s eye, can you help me with this beam?
As for Board members, they’re essential job is to ensure that good “business” decisions are made and that the management and the accounting are well run. True, SOX has required boards to be more active, putting their necks on the line, but they’re still essentially there to approve of big business decisions, (i.e. management says we’re opening hotels in these 3 places and here are the agreements and the business models. Please sign here).
So Mormon’s can’t own grocery stores unless they don’t carry a list of products every other grocer carries? And I suppose 7-11s are out of the question. Working in those stores is also inappropriate, isn’t that right John? Course you also can’t own or work in a restaraunt that serves alcohol (luckily I was too dumb to realize I was sinning all those years). You certainly can’t own or work at an internet service provider unless it only serves the “famly market.” And as for bookstores, hmm, well I guess its ok to sell books that describe sin, like all books do, including scriptures. Now I’m confused, can I work for the government? They’re involved in so much sin, and as a tax payer do I have some culpability? I know I can’t own/work for a newspaper, magazine or in television with all they advertise. And I better not work with wireless because they all offer platforms for sin. Can’t work for contractors who make buildings that will be malls, stores, or any of the above.
Wow, when you think about it there are so many companies I can’t invest in or work at. Walmart, Costco, target, Smiths, Safeway, I don’t think I could even name them all. Maybe I should stop shopping at all those places too. I’ll only buy items from stores that only sell appropriate items.
Heli, we all have to draw our lines and boundaries somewhere.
As a society, we tried banning liquor 80 years ago, and that didn’t work, so as a society we control it to a degree. The tightness of those controls has fluctuated, and we now seem to be tightening them in terms of enforcement, as in stricter checking of proof of age, and lowering legal limits of alcohol in the blood while driving. MADD and other “don’t drive impaired” campaigns fight this battle.
As a society we’ve put printed p*rn into certain districts, or at least behind certain doors, or behind things that hide the covers on the newsstands. As a society, we’ve tolerated magazines such as Playboy, etc., but controlled it.
But it has now gone farther than that. Instead of having to make efforts to go out and buy it and physically bring it into our homes, it is now in our homes and hotel rooms with the mere click of a button or mouse. The threshold or barrier that someone needs to cross has been drastically lowered. In fact the barrier is gone, because if you don’t have a spam filter on your email, they send it to you unsolicited.
The p*rn genie is out of the bottle, and the country is starting to see the staggering emotional, family, and social costs it entails.
We are now in a societal debate on how we as a society are going to control it.
Similarly, as a society we have realized the huge toll that smoking has taken on the health, lives, and quality of life. And over the last 35 years or so have slowly instituted controls there, as in the creation of smoking sections, then evolving into totally smoke-free buildings and spaces.
I believe the most effective tool to bring about changes in corporations is pressure from customers. And to get customers to pressure a corporation, it may take societal pressure. And to get societal pressure, the proponents of the cause need to exercise their freedom of speech to win the minds and hearts of members of society in general as well as the specific corporation’s customers.
You’re right that the lines get blurry. Is there a line, and if so, where is it, between working at a restaurant that serves alcohol, and working at a bar? A grocery/convenience store that sells Playboy, and a p*rn store that sells all kinds of p*rn ? Working as a doctor/nurse/fireman/policeman to save lives on Sunday, versus working as a ticket-taker at the movie theater on Sunday? Working for state government as an office worker, versus working for the state government’s lottery department? Driving a truck from Wal-mart’s regional distribution center to the store, wherein the truck might have some wine/liquor on board, versus driving a truck full-time for Anheuser-Busch?
We, as conscientous members of soceity, do have to promote the values that support society in order to keep our society from disintegrating. History teaches that abandonment of certain values leads to the downfall of the society.
And we have to pick our battles.
I chose to write the local grocery stores when they moved alcoholic beverages out of the liquor aisle into the area between the produce section and the meat section. It used to be easy for me to avoid seeing liquor. Now they put it in my face. I choose to engage in that issue with letter-writing, and encouraging others to get involved.
There are people, many not of our church, who are choosing to battle p*rnography in hotel rooms. Every general conference, for a while now, has mentioned the evil of p*rnography and the importance of avoiding it. Church leaders are literally encouraging us to fight this battle.
It then behooves those who feel they should fight this battle to lobby the hotel corporations, their stock-holders, their investors, their franchisees, their operators, and especially their customers, to request, suggest, or even demand the removal of this thing that is considered evil.
I forgot to add…
And if it can’t be removed, then to at least control it (as we have done with other things bad for society) so that there are sufficient barriers or insulation around it.
Thanks Bookslinger, I was taking my position to the extreme. I agree that p*rn in hotels is not a good thing, I was just bothered by the ease with which some people appear to judge another. Though I don’t think there is this move toward p*rn free hotels outside Disney or family related hotels. I do think we as consumers should make our preference known.
I also agree that there is a significant difference between owning a brothel and a grocery store or hotel. I guess I’m bothered by all the extremely weak attacks on Governor Romney that have so much traction because people are looking for a reason not to vote for a Mormon. A lady at work said she won’t vote for Romney because he had his dog on the roof of his car. (Romney assures us his dog loved it). While you may or may not like that he did this, its clearly not central to whether he should be elected president.
If you feel that another politician has a more appealing stance on the war or economic policy or some other important issue, fine, vote that way, but don’t tell me you’re not going to vote for Romney because he was on the board of Marriott, or you don’t like that he said he’s a lifetime hunter but only hunted big game twice.
“Though I don’t think there is this move toward p*rn free hotels outside Disney or family related hotels. I do think we as consumers should make our preference known.”
There are movements to attract consumers to hotels without “adult” movies. http://www.cleanhotels.com, for example, provides listings of such hotels in cities in the US.
The Deseret News takes Romney and Marriott to task on this in this morning’s editorial:
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,680197653,00.html
The Marriotts only outright own a few of the hotels that carry their name, but they still carry a lot of weight. I’d like to see the Bill Marriott letter the editorial references, about the “economic importance” of in-room p*rn.
D&C seems to have a stronger condemnation of whoremongers than it does of whores. Any purveyor of filth is a whoremonger and will reap a whoremonger’s rewards.
The editorial says that “The corporation controls only a few of the hotels with its name on them.” This is hogwash. The management contracts that Marriott has on its “franchised” hotels are so tight that they provoked lawsuits from owners. In fact they are so tight that they have been challnged as long term leases and claims have been made that they should be booked as Marriott assets for a proper calculation of ROI.
I am sorry but it looks to me like Bill Marriott and the management of Marriott are whoremongers.
Make a suggestion to Marriott Corp:
https://www.marriott.com/suggest/suggest.mi
Customer Support: 1-801-468-4000
Group & Event Planning, USA & Canada: 1-800-831-4004
Marriott Reservations, USA & Canada: 1-888-236-2427
At http://WWW.CLEANHOTELS.COM, I did a search for hotels in Indianpaolis, and these came up:
Best Western.
Clarion Inn and Suites.
Comfort Inn.
Comfort Suites.
Days Inn.
Drury Inn.
Super 8.
Quality Inn.
Ramada.
Signature Inn.
Knights Inn.
Omni Severin.
Ramada Limited.
Radisson.
And even some with the Marriott name:
Courtyard by Marriott.
Residence Inn by Marriott.
Fairfield Inn by Marriott.
Towneplace Suites by Marriott.
Bill Marriott has what looks like a personal blog here:
http://www.blogs.marriott.com/
It looks like its open to public comments. 😉
Those of you who are not afraid of making your opinions known, have at it.
I posted a very carefully worded question on a recent blog post where Bill marriott described his service as a Bishop to Hispanic’s. I figured since he brought up the church I might as well bring it up to. All comments are screened and my comment was not posted. Go figure.
I hereby invite some constructive criticism from my fellow bloggers about a new post at “OLMIP.blogspot.com” before I send it to Marriott via the online comment form and blog as suggested by Bookslinger in #27 and #28. I’ve always benefitted in one way or another from all of your comments. Marriott may screen comments, but this post will be on a public blog which they can’t screen.