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The purpose of this paper is to measure and observe stock market and investor reactions (benchmark adjusted cumulative abnormal returns (CARs)) to the announcement of Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood and related merger and acquisition (M&A) news and related activities over a two-year period.

Empirical models and quantifications were developed and tested through event study analysis to test the Marriot-Starwood M&A news and related activities and to observe the abnormal stock return patterns. Several data sources were employed including Factiva by Dow Jones, Wall Street Newspaper, CRSP/COMPUSTAT merged files, and ValueLine Research.

This paper provides financial insights and outcomes of pre-, during, and post-Marriot-Starwood merger. While equity returns to Starwood were mostly flat, Marriott experienced negative returns around the acquisition announcement and anytime a news article appears following the announcement. However, performance proxies showed that Marriott’s shareholders gained superior buy and hold returns following the acquisition in the long run.

Short-term event study methodology might be less than perfect in examining the stock returns to acquisitions. Therefore, future research is encouraged to test and observe Marriot-Starwood merger using longer time periods with predictive analysis to check the further usability of the results.

The study’s findings practically signal that overreaction in the short term is followed by a correction with an improvement in returns and sales performance of Marriot. In the majority of the acquisitions, integration process is not planned until after the acquisition announcement or the deal completion.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by demonstrating the financial issues, challenges, and outcomes of the biggest merger in the history of the global lodging industry.

As part of an ongoing employer brand initiative, Evviva Brands developed My Marriott Hotel, a culinary social media game, for Marriott International that launched on Facebook in June 2011. This article seeks to focus on this initiative.

Global research insights identified social media and gaming as primary in‐home activities and a path for repositioning the Marriott brand with internal and external target audiences. Focus groups, interviews and ethnographic observations led to key game‐play and design components that would ensure the game delivered operations realities as well as entertainment value.

The game was designed as a tool for reaching employment candidates in countries like China and India where the service industry is growing but hospitality is not a highly sought career. By managing a virtual hotel kitchen including staff, supplies and ingredients, players are given insights into the world of hospitality and a culinary career at Marriott.

By relying on target audience insights to build a business case, the project received support from key executive leaders throughout the process and their involvement generated over $500,000 in media exposure during the first few weeks of game launch.

As first to market with a hospitality simulation game, numerous observations can be made about the processes that lead to successful game development and global deployment on Facebook's API.

The aim is to describe an employee‐engagement social‐media game that is helping to make Marriott Group a less forbidding place for local people from developing countries to apply to work.

The article explains the background to the development of the game, the form the game takes and the results it is designed to achieve.

It is found that that players of the My Marriott Hotel game run a successful kitchen that services an invisible but implied dining room. This entails balancing such elements as hiring staff, equipment acquisition, ingredient sourcing, customer satisfaction and quality control.

The article explains how the tool is helping Marriott to attract more millennials – those between the ages 18 and 27 – to its workforce, by showcasing the opportunities and growth potential attainable in hospitality careers, especially in cultures where the service industry might be less established or prestigious. It highlights a tool that could help to make multinational companies a less forbidding place for people from developing countries to apply to work in.

The article describes what is believed to be the first branded game on a social medium.

The market for luxury products and services plays a significant role in the world economy. The luxury hotel market is a crucial segment within the global market for luxury products and services. Luxury hospitality recorded a 5% growth rate along with demand for luxury cruises recording the growth of 7%, the highest among all luxury segments. The remarkable performance of luxury products and services over a period is attributed to the laudable marketing communication strategies of luxury marketers. In this research, we aimed to analyse how a multi-brand hospitality firm differentiates its luxury brand with other luxury brands in the portfolio, using textual messages aimed to communicate the uniqueness of the brands in its official websites. The case study method and content analysis are adapted to achieve the research objective. The study results show that different luxury brands under the brand portfolio of Marriott International can communicate the differences through the textual contents. Most of the differentiation relies on brand-specific features, traditions, services, location of the hotel and metadata on the Internet, followed by branded differentiators. It may be concluded that Marriott has been successful to an extent in using text contents in the website to differentiate its luxury brands.

Examines three different hotel chains in an attempt to determine the characteristics of excellent hotel companies. Presents information gathered through readings, interviews and individual hotel publications, in order to draw accurate and meaningful conclusions as to the necessary elements in managing and running a successful hotel. The hotels evaluated are Sheraton‐ITT; Marriott; and Hilton. Focuses on service to customers in a clearly service‐oriented industry. Makes recommendations and suggestions as to the successful management and operation of a hotel outfit.

Compares two of the largest and most recent examples of international franchising with Europe. Data collected from UK master franchisee personnel are used to illustrate how Friendly Hotels became the European master franchisee for Choice Hotels International and how Scotts Hotels became a major provider of Marriott International hotels in the UK. Focuses particularly on a comparison of the two relationships and on levels of product‐system transfer. Concludes by drawing out the issues relating to the introduction and marketing of international franchise brands.

Managers at Marriott Hotels typically worked more than 50 hours a week. The prevailing idea was that the more hours one put in, the better. “See and be seen” were the watchwords. But by the mid‐1990s, the company was having increasing difficulty recruiting talented people. Some of its best managers were leaving, often because they wanted to spend more time with their families. Munck describes how Marriott therefore introduced a six‐month pilot scheme at three of its hotels in north‐eastern USA, to help managers to strike a better balance between their home and working lives.

This case describes management's sequential reevaluation of Marriott's debt capacity and the decision about how to invest this unused debt. Videotape #5556, “Strategic Leadership,” is designed for use with this case (see Videotape Bibliography).

Accounting academics in South Africa (SA) have been criticised for their lack of focus on research, stating that their primary responsibility is the teaching of prospective professional accountants. The purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate the relationship between research and teaching and to consider why accounting academics in SA prioritise teaching over research.

The paper uses a questionnaire developed in the UK to assess SA accounting academics’ views of the teaching-research nexus. Cluster analysis is undertaken to identify and describe the patterns of responses of respondents.

The findings identify three clusters. The largest subgroup indicates an equal awareness of both the potential benefits and pitfalls of integrating teaching and research. A second subgroup views teaching and research as symbiotic, while the third subgroup sees the two activities as working against each other and competing for scarce resources. This study finds that conflict exists between professional membership and academic research, and a focus on teaching a professionally orientated accounting curriculum remains dominant in SA.

The attitudes to teaching and research within SA are likely to be dynamic and subject to change. The findings have implications for the development of accounting academics and potentially, for addressing the gap between accounting research, practice and education.

This research contributes to a significant corpus of work considering the teaching-research nexus and a nascent body of work considering the relationship of research to teaching in accounting. The findings may be of interest to policymakers, practitioners and academics.

This article aims to advise leaders of global enterprises who are increasingly concerned about the effects of international expansion on their corporate culture. It seeks to explain that companies that nurture a set of enterprise‐wide mindsets can maintain a unity of purpose while at the same time successfully adapting practices to diverse local economic and cultural conditions.

An Accenture survey of more than 900 senior executives on the challenges of building a global organization revealed that they are increasingly concerned with the problem of maintaining a common corporate culture and identity. The firm then studied the best practices of successful firms.

When performance mindsets are widely shared, they translate established company values into practices by means of commonly understood guidelines on how to recognize and solve problems – which, in turn, guide the organization in making decisions when faced with many possibilities.

Country managers must ensure that the company's values and mindsets are used to overcome the national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries that can block success.

With the participation of leaders at all levels of an organization a company's management of its performance mindsets can become a distinctive capability and thereby a source of international competitive advantage. By successfully following these steps for managing and propagating shared values and mindsets across diverse organizations corporations can produce winning performance in the competitive international arena.