The Effects of Marriott’s Ethical Changes

According to an article published by AP News correspondent Dee-Ann Durbin in August of this year, Marriott International, a multinational hospitality company with over 7000 hotels across the world, plans to ban the supply of small shampoo and shower bottles in their hotels by December 2020. 

Marriott, like other rival hotels such as InterContinental Hotels Group and Walt Disney Resorts, are seeking to eliminate about 1.7 million tonnes of plastic every year by replacing the tiny toiletries with bigger bottles that will reduce the excessive use of shampoo and other toiletries, and produce less plastic than the smaller bottles. Marriott is not the only hotel company planning to reduce the consumption of small toiletries — other companies are going to be affected by a combination of legal and environmental factors. Lawmakers in the US and the European Union are planning to ban small shampoo bottles by 2023, and plastic cutlery by 2021. 

This news relates to the business concepts of change and ethics and impacts many stakeholders. The company’s change in toiletries may seem like a small step towards environmentalism, however, considering the company’s scale and the number of customers that they have, it will lead to a large change in the plastic consumption worldwide. This is related to the concept of ethics since Marriott’s reduction of plastic by over 200 million tiny bottles would be a huge change to the environment as they are both difficult to recycle due to issues of cleaning them out, and also being consumed carelessly. The new bigger containers are also equivalent to about 10 to 12 tiny bottles and are tamper-resistant.

The change in toiletries will serve as a direct change to many of Marriott’s internal stakeholders, such as employees and shareholders. The employees of Marriott, such as cleaners, have an easier task to replace larger toiletries weekly, rather than smaller toiletries daily. Additionally, the shareholders of Marriott will also be affected, since the company may boost in the stock market as an ethical environmental change that is beneficial to society will make the company more attractive for investors. 

The change in toiletries would also influence a lot of external shareholders, such as competitors, suppliers, customers, and the government. The change in toiletry distribution will mean that Marriott might change its supplier for the small bottle toiletries for another product or another supplier at all. This might be an issue for Marriott’s toiletry suppliers as they might suffer a loss from the change in investors while giving another supplier for bigger toiletries a large opportunity for investment. The customers of Marriott would be affected in a positive way, and might be more willing to stay in Marriott hotels rather than other hotels who don’t take environmental approaches and take CSR seriously, since they would no longer have the stress of having to “finish the bottle” by using more product than necessary, by seeing that the little bottle is half full or still has product inside. While there are some consumers who like collecting these bottles and taking them back home, the overall cause is for the greater good of the consumer. 

On the other hand, the competitors of Marriott would be faced at a disadvantage by not hopping on the bandwagon and also limiting their use of small toiletries. Marriott approaching sustainable goals might reduce the use of service of other hotels, as the hotel would look more attractive to the customers. Other hotels might also be affected by external factors such as legal changes and policies that may ban the use of plastic in such containers, that would be a strong blow to those companies by being a problem with facing suppliers, etc. by not taking the initiative first like Marriott did — before it is made a legal requirement.  

To conclude, Marriott making an ethical change in it’s consumption of plastic not only is profitable for itself by reducing the amount of plastic released and by making the company more marketable, but also helps the environment and influences many external stakeholders mostly positively, while also setting an example for other competitive hotel and hospitality companies to take the same actions, which creates a positive ripple effect on the market, and the general economy.

Works Cited:

Durbin, Dee-ann. “Marriott Banning Little Shampoo Bottles by 2020.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 28 Aug. 2019, https://apnews.com/815db125e6904e1a835a612c6bc3c23a