Choices! What will it be? #52

When i read Hotel among the contest choices something clicked in my memory. The story started in 2008 when i heard the word Hotel for the first time on tv. I was 20th of September, my 10th birthday was in 3 days. I couldn't forget the sight i had seen on the screen, it was the first traumatic visual i was seeing about Marriott International Hotel Islamabad.

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Before unwinding my story i want you to know about Marriott Hotel, which you can also call a survivor, a fighter, and a service provider.

It is an American based hotel chain started in 1931 by J. Willard Marriott and his wife, Alice Marriott, in Maryland.

After 1960s they started their hotel chain out side of America across Europe.

Marriott came in Pakistan in 1980s.

Today Marriott is the world's largest hotel company, it comes in one of top 100 companies for hospitality.

What does make them the largest hotel company?

• It's their 8500+ properties across the world, out of which 6000+ are owned by Marriott while others are franchises.

• They have 1.5milion rooms in their hotels worldwide, imagine 1.5million rooms, it's crazy

• Lastly they have 30 or 31 brands under their names.

It's like an empire which needs effective management, so they broke Marriott into two:

• International Marriott: for management of its properties
• Corporation Marriott: it owns properties (hotels)

For decades its presidents were people from Marriott family. However it's current president and CEO is Anthony Capuano.

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Some of the interesting facts about Marriott.

• It was the first hotel to provide an online reservation opportunity for customers in 1995.
• they became first to provide trans free food in their hotels in north America
• Marriott's hotel in Dubai: JW Marriott Marquis Dubai
  was the tallest hotel in the world in 2012, it came in Guinness World Records. Today it's 2nd tallest, 1st tallest hotel is also is Dubai. Now i understand why Dubai is famous for its sky scraping buildings.

The fate of marriott is constantly shaking for the last three decades. Sometime it's the terrorist attacks, other times it's the case of:

• data breaching: of million of client's transactions and cards.
• price dipping: for charging resort fees which are not mentioned in their package. It's illegal in some parts of the world.
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  But it is still fighting and surviving.

It was the night of 20th September 2008. A few days ago we had first democratic elections in our country after many years of dictatorship.

Our country was suffering in the hands of terrorism because we were helping America in their war on terror in Afghanistan. The world thought we both countries have training camps for so called terrorists.

One war was going on in Afghanistan and its consequence was in my country, it was named terrorism.

There was a terrorist attack on Marriott hotel Islamabad, which is in our capital city, around it was many govt buildings like prime minister house.

A dumper truck full of explosives exploded outside the hotel and burnt its east wing.

I was watching this on tv, people were trapped inside the hotel, running to save their lives. Fire couldn't stop for hours and resulted in more than 50 casualties, out of which 4 were Americans.

^{This hotel is mostly used by bureaucrats, diplomats, politicians, rich people, and those who make and shake any country}.

Next day came and we were still glued to tv, we weren't into watching news and politics.

However, some incidents don't leave you any choice and you have to get into the affairs of what is happening in the world.

It was that year when i heard about hotel, forget about previous years, i don't recall if i had ever heard the word hotel before.

Hotel

I was terrorised and would only cry seeing the dreadful news.

Fast forward to the wedding of my mother's cousin, i guess it was after one or two months after this incident.

My mamo (mother's brother) had a flight to Malaysia after the wedding event. It was a business trip for one to two weeks.
He doesn't have any family or friend there so he would obviously stay in a hotel.

When i came to know about this i said to my mother:
how could he stay in a hotel, doesn't he know they bomb hotels and people die?

She didn't say anything but i kept asking her to not send mamo to stay in a hotel.

It was a child's wish to safeguard her loved ones

Everybody ignored me as if i was insane or who listens to the kid.

They day came when he had to go, his friends had also come already in the house who were supposed to go with him.

My mamo being married and father of one little baby girl and boy at that time also ignored my concerns.

When i saw no one was listening to me or thinking my words of any worth, i started crying.

Actually, we desi people cry when anyone is going to any other country like a mandatory thing.
And mind it we don't cry like normal people do. We make sure our neighbours know that we are crying for someone going aboard.

So did me, i spent the whole function crying in front of the mirror, which was hung on the wall outside of my mamo's room.

The door was open and he was inside with his friends.

So i continuously went to that mirror again and again where he could easily see me crying. He obvious knew the reason.

I just wanted him not to stay in any hotel, just sleep in any random street but not in the hotel.

I wasn't againt his trip by the way.

He kept seeing my drama but didn't cancel his trip.

When we were seeing him off, his friend pointed towards me and asked: is she your daughter too? (Seeing the quantity of my tears maybe, glad anyone noticed me).

Anyhow he went and stayed in hotel and came back safe and sound. Alhamdulillah.

That day my fear about all hotels being a target of terrorists vanished.

I realised terrorists don't choose to bomb every hotel in every country. They bomb hotels where they wanna seek attention.

My country's Marriott hotels are under Hashoo groups. They funded families who had lost their precious ones in the attack, most of them were guards.

Those guards chose not to run away seeing a truck caughting fire. They remained on the ground to douse a fire. They died doing their duty.

The hotel was repaired and reopened after three months in December. They had tightened its security and installed security measures in case of emergency.

It's walls and room's walls are bomb proof now.
The walls are 14ft high and 15inch wide.

Someone had chosen to come back stronger to provide hospitality services rather than shutting in down like a coward.

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You can skip the below text if you find it controversial or political. However, for some people it costs a big deal:)

^{All this choas started after 9/11, the month and year when i went to the school, the year when terrorists bombed world trade center which had come under Marriott international previously.}

^{Anonymous chose to bomb the hotel and killed close to 3k humans.}

^{Americans chose to enforce a war on terror in my neighbouring country. And my country chose to assist them.}

^{Terrorists chose to bomb hotel in my country's capital to send a msg to stop this war,
to my country or to America( because Marriott is American company).}

^{Both the state and terrorist organizations chose to bomb, bomb who? Ofcouse the civilians, the hotels.}

^{Who chose humanity? I must say NO one.}

^{However, we saw bloodshed since the war on terror, in our country too.
we muslims, we all were labelled as terrorists.}

^{I justed wanna say that we (Muslims) are not terrorists, we believe killing of an innocent soul is the murder of all humanity.
And if you find any Muslim terrorist, then he will simple not be a Muslim.}

^{We(Muslims) don't bomb hotels, Monsters do.}

@soulfuldreamer @samina-meenu and @event-horizon. I wonder if you guys remember it or not?