“Goal Achieved” - Helping Montgomery County, Maryland Retain Marriott International
Recently, I saw a LinkedIn post from Marriott International’s CEO announcing the grand opening of the company’s new LEED-Gold headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland. It was, no doubt, a massive milestone for the world’s largest hospitality company. And notably, it was also a profound moment that demonstrated the return on investment of location intelligence being used by economic development leaders to retain key businesses in their community.
Here’s the backstory: In the fall of 2015, a Datastory client interested in the economic well-being of Montgomery County asked if we could help them tell a data-grounded story to Marriott about why they should keep their global headquarters in the County.
It was, at the time, the most daunting challenge that our team had undertaken as a relatively new location intelligence company, not because of the required data and analytics but because of the challenge of presenting a LOT of information very clearly and quickly. We pulled it off and created our then-signature piece, an interactive Datastory grounded in a lot of data, visually engaging, and intuitive to take in.
I recall sitting in the room with Marriott executives and government officials and rapidly taking them through a host of data about workforce, access, diversity, and demographics. At the end of the presentation, I was given the compliment, “never before have we seen such a powerful, yet succinct, market snapshot.”
In the following months, Datastory won an award from the Maryland Economic Development Association for our work on the project. Our success with Marriott led the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to engage our team to help them attract Amazon HQ2 to the region.
And then, in the fall of 2022, Marriott celebrated the grand opening of their new headquarters, just a short drive up the road from their prior location.
“Goal achieved.” - Tina Benjamin, Manager, Special Projects, Office of the Montgomery County Executive
I’m unbelievably proud of our contribution of location intelligence to help economic development leaders retain Marriott and attract Amazon. Those are both “big fish” to catch, but our work is equally relevant to all sizes and types of businesses.
Contact our team to learn more about how we’re helping retain and attract businesses.
