Marriott Opens New HQ, Turns Workstations Into Collab Spaces

USA – After over 2 years mostly working from home (WFH), hotelier Marriott International thinks that its US$600 million headquarters will lure employees back to the office, reported Reuters on Tuesday morning (20 September, SGT).

On Monday, the American firm that owns and licenses around 8,100 hotels across 139 countries officially opened its new headquarters close to Washington, D.C.

Marriott International’s boss Anthony Capuano believes that staff would want to return to their workplace.

“People crave that interaction. I’m not sure we have to pull that hard.”

Notably, the hotel giant transformed one-fifth of the fixed workstations at its 21-storey headquarters into “collaboration spaces” during the construction of the commercial property.

“We find that more and more of the work we’re doing is projects across disciplines… sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week, maybe for a year or longer,” he shared.

Aside from that, the new office building comes with a design lab, high-end cafeteria, 180 conference rooms, and a 11,000 sq ft child care centre.

Marriott International’s CEO said that while they don’t mandate staff to do their work in the office, the hotelier is “encouraging folks to be here several days a week, and not just for meetings.”

Overall, the high-rise headquarters can accommodate roughly 3,500 employees.

Capuano revealed that more than 1,000 staff are in the office during a usual workday. Most workstations are shared and workers utilise an application to book a desk in a “neighbourhood”
near other staff with similar jobs and they can use a locker for storage.