Arne Sorenson's tenure as CEO of Marriott International was marked by deals designed to grow the company into a global powerhouse in the hotel industry.

Since his appointment of president and CEO in 2012, the company's footprint more than doubled, growing from roughly 640,000 rooms across 13 hotel brands in early 2012 to more than 1.4 million rooms across 29 hotel brands today.

In the week Sorenson started as CEO, the firm’s market capitalization was $12.39 billion, rising to $19.11 billion the week in 2015 when he announced Marriott intended to acquire Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. In January 2018, Marriott’s market capitalization rose to $53.95 billion and today it stands at $48.3 billion.

Sorenson died on Feb. 15. This timeline outlines the key deals, events and turning points that took the company from 3,700 hotels in early 2012 to more than 7,600 today across 130 countries and territories.

Sorenson became the first CEO not part of the Marriott family when he took over the reins of the company from J.W. Marriott, Jr., in March 2012. Upon the announcement, Marriott said, “Having personally recruited [Sorenson] to Marriott in 1996, I know that his success is related not only to his extraordinary talent but is also due to his commitment to hard work, team play and drive for results. … As his mentor and friend, I could not be more pleased, for him or for our company.” Sorenson’s former roles at the company included chief financial officer, senior vice president of business development, president of continental European lodging and, in 2009, president and chief operating officer. He was elected to Marriott's Board of Directors in 2011.

In May 2012, Marriott acquired the management rights and brand of Gaylord Entertainment Company for $210 million, which consisted of four assets. Some insiders thought some of Gaylord’s hotels would cannibalize those of Marriott’s, but Sorenson said the firm was experienced in such matters and it was a good problem to have.

Sorenson’s first major expansion decision was an aggressive one, as Marriott announced in June 2012 it would open a further 105,000 rooms by the end of 2014, along with investment from Marriott of more than $2 billion. This global expansion plan also called for a new hotel every month in China for the next three years for a total of 100 properties across 40 Chinese locations.

Sorenson unveiled the first new brand of his tenure, Moxy Hotels, in March 2013. The midscale brand would be developed by Inter Hospitality, a subsidiary of Ikea owner Inter Ikea Group. The brand, he said, would focus first on Europe, resulting in 150 franchised properties over the next 10 years. At that time Marriott had 52,510 rooms in 280 hotels in Europe, and the Moxy push would be part of an additional 80,000 rooms to be opened in Europe by the end of 2015. This deal brought Marriott's hotel brand portfolio to 15.

In November, Marriott agreed to spend $200 million to acquire the brands and operations of Africa's Protea Hotel Group. The deal, involving 116 hotels and 10,184 rooms across three brands, almost doubled Marriott’s rooms portfolio in Africa to more than 23,000.

Sorenson embarked on making Marriott even more asset-light, striking a deal in January 2014 with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to sell the London Edition and two further Edition-branded hotels in development in Miami Beach and Manhattan. The $816 million price tag is roughly equal to the aggregate estimated total development costs of all three hotels, and Marriott retained management of the hotels.

In early 2014, Sorenson oversaw the building of the tallest hotel in North America at the time, a 68-story tower in Manhattan, dual-branded as a 378-room Courtyard by Marriott and a 261-room Residence Inn.

When Marriott reported its 2013 earnings in early 2014, Sorenson disclosed that during his first full year as CEO, the company signed a record 67,000 rooms and had a development pipeline of approximately 195,000 rooms. The company’s total system size had grown by 20% over the last four years to more than 3,900 hotels and 676,000 rooms in 72 countries.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2015, Sorenson said Marriott would become the first hotel firm to reach 1 million hotel rooms either open or under development by the end of 2015.

Also in January 2015, Marriott bought Toronto-based hotel firm Delta Hotels & Resorts for 168 million Canadian dollars ($132.1 million) from Delta Hotels Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation. The purchase of the Canadian firm’s brand, management and franchise business covered 38 hotels and more than 10,000 rooms.

Continuing its growth trajectory, Marriott opened its 1,000th Courtyard by Marriott hotel, the 120-room Courtyard by Marriott Walla Walla in Washington state in April 2015.

In a deal he called “a transformative event for Marriott,” Sorenson in November announced Marriott would acquire Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. The $12.2 billion deal included $11.9 billion of Marriott stock and $340 million of cash. The deal was subject to closing conditions but would result in a “new” Marriott International with 30 lodging brands, approximately 1.1 million rooms in more than 5,500 properties, and a projected market capitalization of $30.9 billion.

Almost one year after the transaction was announced, Marriott executives in September 2016 closed on the acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide for $13.3 billion. The path to closing wasn’t without a few bumps along the way – Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group made several attempts to outbid Marriott for Starwood, effectively driving up the final price. And China’s antitrust regulators underwent a prolonged review of the deal. Starwood’s loyalty program, much respected throughout the industry, is a major prize in the deal, Sorenson said, but the acquisition had other “transformative” aspects, notably that the merged company vaulted past 1 million hotel rooms, with a new total of more than 1.1 million rooms, 30 brands and a new combined market capitalization of $30.9 billion.

Speaking in April, Sorenson said at the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference that perhaps 30 brands were enough for any hotel company but “that is not to say in the fullness of time we will not do new brands or acquisitions.”

Sorenson announced on the company’s fourth quarter and full-year 2016 earnings call with analysts that the company added more than 68,000 rooms and signed 880 new hotel deals. Sorenson and then-global Chief Development Officer Tony Capuano said 2016 was a record growth year for the company.

Sorenson embarked in 2017 on a major round of openings and development in Europe, growing brands such as Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, W Hotels and collection brands The Luxury Collection, Autograph Collection Hotels and Tribute Portfolio.

Throughout 2017, Sorenson spoke out against some of the policy decisions backed by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. In February, the CEO said that across the Middle East, people see Trump’s immigration ban “as a symbolically much more significant step than simply a statement about travel or immigration from those seven countries. And it causes people to wonder, ‘OK, will I be permitted to come? Do I want to go?’” He continued pressure in April when he said Marriott wanted “to communicate a welcome to the rest of the world and encourage travel. Obviously, that voice does not seem very audible yet, but we’ll continue to work on it.” In November, he said “divisive language and policies” are making international travelers consider Canada instead of the U.S. as their destination of choice, especially for conferences.

In early 2018, Marriott executives announced that 2017 had been the company’s most successful year in terms of international expansion. In 2017, the company signed more than 750 contracts for new hotels "representing nearly 125,000 rooms under long‐term management and franchise agreements. Its global pipeline grew to a record 460,000 rooms, with over half located outside of North America."

In June 2018, Sorenson outlined the company’s plans to revitalize the Sheraton brand, which it acquired as part of the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide deal, and at the time was Marriott’s third-largest brand with the highest room count outside of North America.

In November 2018, Marriott announced it was investigating a data breach of the legacy Starwood guest reservation database that compromised combinations of personal information, payment card information and passport information from guests booking reservations at Starwood hotels.

In January 2019, Marriott announced Marriott Bonvoy, the new loyalty program combining Marriott Rewards, Ritz-Carlton Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest.

Sorenson said in the company’s full-year 2018 earnings call that it incurred $28 million in expenses related to the Starwood data breach, but that it also received $25 million in insurance proceeds and saw no discernible drop in its portfolio’s revenue per available room. He also said Marriott closed out 2018 having signed a record 125,000 rooms, nearly 10% of the company’s existing portfolio.

In May 2019, Sorenson announced his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. In a message to company associates, he said, “I intend to continue working at the company I love. Let me make one request, look ahead with me. We have great work underway at Marriott. I am as excited by what we can accomplish together as I have ever been.”

In August, the company launched a new all-inclusive platform, and along with it management contracts with hotel developers to build five new all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean and Latin America. Executives explained the platform as a global endeavor, leveraging existing Marriott upper-upscale and luxury brands into an all-inclusive platform.

In more all-inclusive news, in October Marriott announced it would purchase Elegant Hotels Group in an all-cash deal. The portfolio consisted of seven hotels, primarily all-inclusive, in Barbados. ““There is a strong and growing consumer demand for premium and luxury properties in the all-inclusive category,” Sorenson said at the time the deal was announced.

As global hotel business slowed drastically in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sorenson addressed Marriott associates via YouTube in March with an update on COVID-19’s effects on the company and industry. He said, “in terms of our business, COVID-19 is like nothing we have ever seen before. For a company that is 92 years old, that’s borne witness to the Great Depression, World War II and many other economic and global crises, that’s saying something. … I can tell you I have never had a more difficult moment than this one.”

Throughout 2020, Sorenson returned to social media, primarily LinkedIn, to share his personal and professional viewpoints on the topics that defined the year and the travel industry. Posts included “Honoring George Floyd with Real Change,” “Thoughts on Leading Through a Crisis,” “A Love Letter to Travel,” and “An Open Letter to President-elect Biden.”

At the virtual America’s Lodging Investment Summit in January 2021, Sorenson said, “the bravest in the industry are planning for the future and bringing deals in for approval. … Because of the way this business works, there will be opportunities that exist and will be grabbed as that clarity comes to pass.”

That statement ended up being one of Sorenson’s last public announcements. On. Feb. 2 the company announced he would step back from day-to-day responsibilities at Marriott, and he died on Feb. 15.