Marriott Chief Executive Arne Sorenson, who grew the company into the world’s largest hotel chain and steered it through a global pandemic that has been catastrophic in the travel industry in the past year, has died.
He was 62. Sorenson reduced his schedule at Marriott this month to pursue a more aggressive cancer treatment. He was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019.
J.W. Marriott Jr., the company’s executive chairman, said Sorenson loved every aspect of the hotel business and relished traveling and meeting employees around the world. “Arne was an exceptional executive – but more than that – he was an exceptional human being,” said Marriott said in a prepared statement Tuesday.