Individual hotels may still call themselves Fairfield Inns. Rebranding is expensive and that’s not an expense we’d likely see Marriott push onto owners right away. After all they’re even trying to reduce owner costs for breakfast by 20%.
Yet somehow I missed that Marriott is no longer referring to the Fairfield Inn brand, instead calling it Fairfield by Marriott.
I only saw this in the news that Marriott is expanding Fairfield to Europe and the Mideast, from its existing footprint of more than 1230 hotels. So what is Fairfield, exactly?
Fairfield celebrates the beauty of simplicity with an effortless hotel experience focused on bringing value, productivity, and a great night’s sleep. Inspired by the heritage of the Marriott family farm, Fairfield pays homage to the restorative place built on the feelings of pure joy and natural ease. Fairfield properties globally offer a design aesthetic that is both calm and modern.
Those are certainly words, and someone wrote them. How will this instantiate itself in Europe? “The European design is inspired by Scandinavian style, which offers a light and bright aesthetic” but what about in the Mideast?
Middle East properties are expected to have a layout tailored for the region, including prayer rooms and Qibla directional signage.
After Marriott took over Starwood, they delivered bibles and the Book of Mormon in mass quantities to hotels.
Credit: Tommy777
This major distributor of the Book of Mormon will have properties that feature a musalla. You tailor your hotels for local conditions! At a Hyatt in Reno I found the bible placed in the bathroom. That may seem like an odd place for it, but in the bathroom you do have a rather captive audience for reading.
Hey @HyattConcierge isn't this an odd location for you to store the bible? pic.twitter.com/ZkVckfjD1m
— gary leff (@garyleff) April 5, 2018
With as many time as people call out "Good Lord" in the bathroom why not 🤣 😄. ^SB
— Hyatt Concierge (@HyattConcierge) April 5, 2018
Already Marriott’s Moxy and Edition hotels don’t get religious materials. In Moxy’s case, hotels that don’t have desks definitely don’t need to offer books.
Bibles have been in hotel rooms for over 100 years, dating back at least to 1908 at the Superior Hotel in Superior, Montana. The Gideons, which was formed by two men sharing a hotel room in 1898, give them away for free. The average life of a hotel room bible is six years. Guests take them, even though they say ‘thou shalt not steal’ inside.
I’m not sure how necessary distributing bibles is any longer. You can get the content online for free. People stopped buying in-room porn, too, with the growth of the internet and that’s when Marriott stopped offering it. Two decades ago a Provo, Utah video store successfully beat an obscenity charge by arguing that the Provo Marriott was renting nearly as much porn as the video store did. That argument wouldn’t work today.
But a company built on Mormon values, that distributed the Book of Mormon, will be putting Muslim prayer rooms in hotels in order to gain access to new markets? A huge departure from the days of J. Willard Marriott for this globalized company, but no surprise that they’ll conform to local custom considering they self-report the presence of banned books to the Chinese government.
