Marriott

Marriott and Enterprise took two of the top honors in an annual poll of travel agents on suppliers and destinations they prefer. Marriott won for best hotel and resort chain and Enterprise for best domestic car rental company. Royal Caribbean was the top pick for best overall cruise line and Southwest was chosen best domestic airline. The poll of 113,000 agents was done for the trade magazine, Vacation Agent  . . . . Thinking of hiking Half Dome this summer? Note that permits will be required to ascend using the safety cables, the most popular route.

BOSTON--Boston University students Jackie Mahedy and Lily Rowland waited in line with so many others to get into the memorial service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. But like so many others, they were told the service was full. Even so, hundreds continued to fill the streets surrounding the cathedral to show support and solidarity after Monday's bombings near the marathon's finish line. Others streamed into the area's bars and restaurants to watch on TV. PHOTOS: Explosions at Boston Marathon Mahedy and Rowland, both 19, went to a restaurant inside the nearby Marriott hotel.

Ikea is heading deeper into the hospitality industry, partnering with Marriott International Inc. to open 150 budget hotels in Europe over the next decade. Ikea's Inter Hospitality Holding, part of the Swedish furniture giant's property division, and Marriott plan to launch the first Moxy Hotel in Milan early next year. The hope is to have 50 sites in development within five years, owned initially by Inter and operated by franchisees. With 150 to 300 rooms each, the hotels are expected to open in major cities in Germany, Britain, Italy, Denmark and more and will fall into the economy-tier, three-star hospitality segment, the companies said.

As demand for downtown Los Angeles hotel rooms grows, plans have emerged for yet another high-rise inn near Staples Center. The announcement comes as hoteliers are scrambling to cash in on downtown's revival as a tourist destination and convention hub. Three large hotel projects are already underway and developers are prospecting for other potential sites in the neighborhood. Next on the horizon is the Renaissance Hotel, which will be more than 20 stories tall with 450 rooms and is slated to open in 2016 across the street from the L.A. Live entertainment complex.

The Courtyard Maui Kahului Airport opened last week with a splashy outdoor party and an introductory offer of $179 a night for a limited time. The four-story Marriott property on Maui has 138 rooms and is the first Courtyard-style hotel on the island. The deal: The hotel is close to Kahului Airport and offers free shuttle service to and from. Guests also receive free Wi-Fi, business center access and access to the pool and gym. When: The offer is good through Oct. 31. Tested: I checked availability at the hotel for Labor Day weekend (Aug.

Broken surfboards? Oversized sofas in the lobby? Outdoor movie theater? Relax (and really, that’s the point). These cool design elements and amenities come together at Waikiki Edition , the first boutique hotel in a new Marriott brand that’s scheduled for an official opening Friday in Honolulu . The hotel, a few minutes from the beach, actually has been open to guests for the last few weeks. It occupies a tower of the Ilikai building, one of the city's landmarks that some TV viewers may remember from the opening sequence of the original "Hawaii Five-0" series.

Marriott Corp. would score something of a coup should it be able to take over management of the troubled Hotel Inter-Continental in San Diego, according to hotel industry observers. With that management contract in hand when San Diego's convention center opens in 1989, Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott would become the only hotel chain with major hotels at or near convention centers in San Diego, Anaheim and San Francisco.

Hotel and restaurant giant Marriott, the owner and franchiser of Big Boy restaurants, said Thursday it has proposed to buy out rival Denny's, the nation's largest coffee shop chain. An acquisition would accomplish Marriott's goal of overtaking La Mirada-based Denny's as the largest player in the coffee shop business--considered a mainstay in the sluggish restaurant industry. The merger would also bring under the same corporate roof two chains that trace their roots to Southern California.

Marriott International Inc., the No. 1 U.S. hotel chain, reported an unexpected fourth-quarter loss and forecast more weakness for the travel industry in 2009. The Bethesda, Md., company lost $10 million, or 3 cents a share, compared with net income of $176 million, or 46 cents, a year earlier, Marriott said. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected net income of 41 cents a share. Marriott, which runs more than 3,000 hotels in 67 countries, said it would reduce spending by $400 million and cut costs further "to reflect the realities of the marketplace."

Now that Big Boy is here to stay, he is growing bigger than ever. The chubby cherub in the checkerboard pants, who survived a company-sponsored ballot last year on whether he should stay or go, will move to more than 200 new locations nationwide over the next two years, according to Big Boy's parent, Marriott Corp. Since acquiring Howard Johnson Co.

Ikea is heading deeper into the hospitality industry, partnering with Marriott International Inc. to open 150 budget hotels in Europe over the next decade. Ikea's Inter Hospitality Holding, part of the Swedish furniture giant's property division, and Marriott plan to launch the first Moxy Hotel in Milan early next year. The hope is to have 50 sites in development within five years, owned initially by Inter and operated by franchisees. With 150 to 300 rooms each, the hotels are expected to open in major cities in Germany, Britain, Italy, Denmark and more and will fall into the economy-tier, three-star hospitality segment, the companies said.

The Hyatt Regency brand is coming back to downtown L.A. The Marriott at 3rd and Figueroa streets will be renamed the Hyatt Regency Los Angeles Downtown in May. The hotel at 333 S. Figueroa St. started life in 1983 as a luxury Sheraton Grande and later became the Los Angeles Marriott Downtown. The Marriott was foreclosed , and China-based Shenzhen New World Group Co. bought it in 2010. It ceased carrying the Marriott name in August and has been operating as the independent LA Hotel Downtown . The aging hotel has been undergoing a $20-million renovation for more than a year to bring it up to Hyatt standards, a spokeswoman said.

One of the nation's leading gay-rights advocacy groups, the Human Rights Campaign, has formed a coalition of major companies calling for the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. It's no surprise, of course, that the HRC in Washington would use its considerable clout to organize big businesses to fight DOMA, the law that excludes recognition of same-sex marriages. What will be a surprise to many is that one of the first companies to join the effort was Marriott International Inc., which was founded by a devout Mormon, John Willard Marriott.

JW Marriott Resorts have a little something extra for holiday visitors: a $100 credit to spend during their stay. The deal is good at resorts in Tucson, Orlando, Fla., San Antonio and other venues and lasts until the end of January. The deal: The offer, called the Holiday $100 Resort Credit, doesn't go live until Nov. 1 and requires a two-night minimum stay. Extra days score an additional $50 resort credit that can be used for dining, a round of golf or on spa treatments. I like this deal because it's good at resorts in the West, including three in Arizona, one in Las Vegas and another in Palm Desert, Calif.

Set in South Dakota near the Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation in 1899, nine years after the Massacre of Wounded Knee, the film "West of Thunder" is a strangely earnest revenge picture, a kindhearted Western with its fair share of killing. A stranger named Henry Seed (Dan Davies, also the film's co-writer) arrives in a small town and soon begins knocking off residents with what seems an almost mystical power. Seed turns the injustices suffered by the natives back onto the settlers, acting as a righteous defender of the people who have been shunted off to their reservation.

BOSTON - As he gave his acceptance address at the Republican National Convention last week, Mitt Romney for the first time gave America an intimate look at the role that his Mormon faith has played in his life and how his work in the church as a pastor helped shape him. When Romney and his wife, Ann, attended church Sunday in Wolfeboro, N.H., his close friend J.W. Marriott (who is known as “Bill”) offered a bookend to that discussion - testifying during the service about how the spotlight on Romney this week had cast the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a positive light and had drawn welcome attention to good works of the church.

IT'S the flicker of candlelight, the lick of a fire, the aroma of the ocean breeze. It's the crowd, effortlessly good-looking without pretense, and the stuffed sofas that make it impossible to be uncomfortable. Glow in Marina del Rey is the most enticing club on the Westside. The fact that it's located at a Marriott hotel is in many ways astounding. "Glow has brought a very hip new energy to the area," says Valerie Arais, a marketing executive who frequents the harbor-front nightspot.

Two powerful bomb blasts targeting major international hotels rocked the business district of the Indonesian capital today, killing nine people and wounding at least 50 others. Authorities did not immediately identify the perpetrators of the explosions at the Ritz-Carlton and Marriott hotels in Jakarta, but anti-terrorism forces were at the scenes of both explosions.

The Courtyard Maui Kahului Airport opened last week with a splashy outdoor party and an introductory offer of $179 a night for a limited time. The four-story Marriott property on Maui has 138 rooms and is the first Courtyard-style hotel on the island. The deal: The hotel is close to Kahului Airport and offers free shuttle service to and from. Guests also receive free Wi-Fi, business center access and access to the pool and gym. When: The offer is good through Oct. 31. Tested: I checked availability at the hotel for Labor Day weekend (Aug.

So much happens in Chicago  during the Fourth of July week. There's a free Independence Day Celebration concert at Millennium Park , fireworks at the Navy Pier and a boat tour to take it all in. JW Marriott Chicago marks the holiday by dropping room rates to $199 a night.  The deal: This is for folks who want to travel over the holiday and want a classy holiday far from a backyard barbecue. The downtown hotel is close to Millennium Park, Magnificent Mile shopping and other landmarks, which makes for easy touring.