Marriott International Aims to Draw a Younger Crowd

“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. One indication of the urgency: Marriott expects more globally minded millennial consumers, also referred to as Generation Y or people born roughly between 1980 and 2000, to account for a third of business-room nights in the United States by 2020.

“We have to be as strong with the X’s and Y’s as we are with the boomers,” Mr. Sorenson said in November. “I don’t think any of the big brands in the hotel space have really won them over.”

Lodging analysts agree. But everyone is certainly giving it their best, from the sprawling InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, the No. 1 company and the owner of Holiday Inn and others, to Hilton Hotels & Resorts, the No. 2 company, which in mid-December executed a $2.35 billion initial public offering. To win over younger business travelers — and, even more important, to keep them in the Marriott fold when they travel for leisure, particularly overseas — the energetic Mr. Sorenson is relying on a range of strategies.

Core hotels are getting gussied up. In September, the Chicago Marriott O’Hare unveiled $40 million worth of improvements, including a better bar, historically a Marriott weakness. (Some analysts trace that to the company’s Mormon roots.) The Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center begins a similar $30 million upgrade in February. The company has been trying to improve what it calls the “guest-room beauty experience” at Marriott-brand hotels — stocking bathrooms, for instance, with a Thai skin care line.

A new ad push, “Travel Brilliantly,” estimated to cost roughly $90 million over three years, reflects Mr. Sorenson’s focus on younger consumers. TV and web ads, taped at international resorts like the Bangkok Marriott Hotel Sukhumvit, intone: “This is not a hotel. It’s an idea that travel should be brilliant. The promise of spaces as expansive as your imagination.” Marriott also offers Xplor, a free smartphone app combining reservations with games; players win loyalty club points by completing challenges at virtual hotels.

“We want people to be saying, ‘Hey, do you see what Marriott just did?’ ” Mr. Sorenson said.

Tina Edmundson, Marriott’s global brand officer for luxury and lifestyle hotels, added: “This company can be very humble, almost to its detriment. It hasn’t been important to say, ‘Hey, look at me.’ Some competitors are very good at that.”

Mr. Sorenson is also leaning harder on a part of the company that many consumers may not realize is owned by Marriott: Ritz-Carlton. Marriott bought 49 percent of that luxury hotel chain in 1995 and the balance in 1998. But Marriott — agreeing with Ritz-Carlton that the luxury brand would be hurt by association with Marriott’s middle-market brand — kept the connection quiet.

Now, with Ritz-Carlton delivering some of Marriott’s biggest growth — 30 new Ritz-Carlton hotels will open worldwide in the next five years, expanding the chain by 40 percent — Mr. Sorenson says he thinks it’s time to tear down the wall. “In 10 years of talking to Ritz-Carlton customers, never once has someone said, ‘Oh, yuck — Marriott,’ ” he said. “We now think all of our brands get stronger, including Ritz-Carlton, when people understand the breadth of our portfolio.”

Herald Tribune to Be Renamed The International New York Times

The New York Times Company said on Monday that it was planning to rename The International Herald Tribune, its 125-year-old newspaper based in Paris, and would also unveil a new Web site for international audiences.

Starting this fall, under the plan, the paper will be rechristened The International New York Times, reflecting the company’s intention to focus on its core New York Times newspaper and to build its international presence.

”This recognizes our global reach and is an exciting and logical move,” said Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The New York Times.

Mark Thompson, president and chief executive of The New York Times Company, said in a statement that the company recently explored its prospects with international audiences, and noted there was “significant potential to grow the number of New York Times subscribers outside of the United States.”

He added: “The digital revolution has turned The New York Times from being a great American newspaper to becoming one of the world’s best-known news providers. We want to exploit that opportunity.”

A Times Company spokeswoman would not provide details on how the name change would affect The International Herald Tribune’s employees. Currently, half of the staff members who work in Paris are subject to French labor law, while Herald Tribune employees spread throughout the rest of the world are governed by local labor laws.

The masthead of the paper will also change, the spokeswoman said, but she declined to elaborate.

Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, publisher of The International Herald Tribune, said in an interview that the name change was driven by “extensive research” showing that there was substantial potential, under the new name, to increase the number of international subscribers to the digital editions of The New York Times.

Mr. Dunbar-Johnson said the name change would be accompanied by new investments aimed at enhancing the paper’s international appeal. New employees will be hired to work on nytimes.com — currently the combined Web site of The New York Times and The Herald Tribune — in Europe and Asia, he said.

The renamed paper will remain based in Paris, where it was founded 125 years ago as the European edition of The New York Herald, Mr. Dunbar-Johnson. It will also keep its sizable office in Hong Kong where the Asian edition is edited. Mr. Dunbar-Johnson said there also would be investments in other locations. Until the fall it will continue to be published as The International Herald Tribune.

“Everyone at The New York Times thinks fundamentally that for this to be successful, the paper needs to be edited and curated for an international sensibility,” Mr. Dunbar-Johnson said. “The core attributes of The International Herald Tribune will be retained and refined.”

Through a series of ownership changes, the paper became The New York Herald Tribune, European Edition, in 1935. In 1967 it became The International Herald Tribune when The Times and the Washington Post Company invested in the paper to keep it afloat after The New York Herald Tribune folded. In 1991, the Post and Times companies became co-owners of the paper, and in 2003 The Times bought out The Post’s share and became its sole owner. The announcement is part of the company’s larger plan to focus on its core brand and build its international presence, the Times spokeswoman said. Last week, the Times Company said it was exploring offers to sell The Boston Globe and its other New England media properties. Last year, the company sold its stake in Indeed.com, a jobs search engine, and the About Group, the online resource company.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article published online misstated the year when a predecessor to The International Herald Tribune first bore the name of The New York Herald Tribune for its European edition. It was 1935, not 1959.

DealBook: Discovery Strikes 2 Deals in Bid for International Growth

Suzy Allman for The New York TimesDiscovery Communications, the owner of Animal Planet, has struck two deals aimed at international expansion.

Discovery Communications struck two deals on Friday aimed at expanding its reach in Europe, including buying the Nordic arm of the German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1.

The deal for SBS Nordic, which has an enterprise value of $1.7 billion, will give Discovery 12 television networks and several radio stations, expanding the company’s reach in a fast-growing market. Discovery, known for documentary shows, will also acquire its first-ever portfolio of scripted and sports programs.

Discovery, based in Silver Spring, Md., also agreed to pay about $221.6 million to take a 20 percent stake in Eurosport, the pan-European sports network owned by France’s TF1. The American company has the right to raise its stake up to 51 percent after two years, and eventually has the chance to buy all of Eurosport from its French partner.

Discovery also agreed to increase its existing stock buyback program by $1 billion.

The deals are aimed at furthering Discovery’s reach into international markets, which have been the company’s fastest-growing business. International networks generated about $1.5 billion in revenue last year, up 16 percent over the prior year. That was faster than the company’s core domestic operations, which reported an 11 percent rise in revenue during the same period.

“It’s serendipitous to have two important deals come together at the same time,” David Zaslav, Discovery’s chief executive, said on a conference call with analysts on Friday.

Citigroup and the law firm DLA Piper advised Discovery on the SBS Nordic transaction.