Hi, I’m Brian King and I’m vice president of global brand management for Courtyard by Marriott, and welcome to gocourtyard.com. It’s our new interactive website that showcases the future of the brand. We created this site to engage you with the features of the new Courtyard lobby. It’s also the place for our latest news. And, of course, we encourage you, through the site, to share your thoughts about the new lobby.

If you’re a loyal Courtyard guest, I’m sure the first thing you noticed when you landed on the site was how we’ve completely redefined the lobby. If you haven’t clicked around yet, it’s easy. Using your mouse to navigate, you can take a 360 degree tour of the lobby and learn more about what we’ve done by watching the different videos, and we want your comments about each feature. Other than Jeremy, the GM, and me, the people you see in those videos are real Courtyard guests sharing their impressions of the new lobby.

The Courtyard hotel in Fair Oaks, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. was the first to debut the new lobby. We’ll be ramping up the roll out of the new design beginning this year and even more aggressively in 2009. You can see a list to the right of which hotels will be offering the new lobby experience in the future.

Another exciting aspect of the site is the Courtyard News section, where you are right now. I will blog here whenever I can with my own personal thoughts and stories related to the brand and the new lobby. I’m also thinking of asking our customers to be guest bloggers too. In addition, this section will be frequently updated with the most current Courtyard news or announcements. And I have some exciting news for you right now: this year, Courtyard will surpass 800 hotels around the world.

I’ve been with Marriott long enough to say my first job with the company was back when we were also in the theme park business. In my many years at Marriott, I’ve never undertaken an assignment quite as exciting as this huge makeover. It has truly been a team effort for the past year or so, and I’m grateful.

This is my first post, but I have much more to tell you about the brand and where it’s headed. In the meantime, take a look around and let us know what you think.

That’s it for me today. Thanks for keeping Courtyard on the go.

Brian