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It was $600k for doing it at one hotel. Had there been an indication that it was a corporate-wide policy, not a site-specific one, the penalty would probably have been much larger.

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That hit likely made that hotel run at a loss that year, which when you're a massive corporation it might not look like much, but Marriott uses a franchise model.

The corporation can't risk a franchisee revolt, and you'll get that if the franchisees think there's a corporate policy out there that could potentially wipe out their profits for a year.

Surely Corporate would pay for it, unless it was the franchise's idea.

That might assuage the franchisee somewhat, but there is still the effective loss of revenue from that particular hotel as well as indirect costs the franchisee will have to bear, such as lost business and time spent dealing with FCC enforcement actions.

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