Marriott

In nineteen twenty-seven, John Williard Marriott opened a root beer stand in Washington, DC with his wife Alice. They worked eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. Travellers were hungry. Marriott added eight rooms upstairs. The hotel business was not his plan—it was an accident that became a template scaling to eight thousand five hundred locations worldwide. Travellers wanted consistency. The same clean room, procedures, breakfast offered the same way every time, in every city. They began opening new properties, but instead of owning them outright, Marriott licensed the name and systems. A local entrepreneur could build a hotel, and Marriott would train them to operate according to Marriott standards. The franchise model meant Marriott didn't need to raise capital for buildings. Franchisees built properties, carried mortgages, covered operations. Marriott collected fees: an initial application fee ranging from sixty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars depending on brand tier.