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When you’re the third person to oversee a nearly century-old family business, chances are you’ll be asked how you keep the legacy intact.

If you’re Marriott International (MAR) chairman David Marriott, 50, the answer is the company’s longstanding five-pillar business philosophy: put people first, strive for excellence, embrace change, act with integrity, and serve our world.

“We are a growth company,” Marriott told Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid podcast (video above; listen in below). “We are going to grow organically, but we also need to be looking at the travelers’ [future] needs, and how do we fill [them.]”

With growth in mind, Marriott and CEO Anthony Capuano are first looking toward emerging markets.

The company now has 530 hotels in China and 500 more in the development pipeline. As for India, Marriott sports 153 hotels and has 85 in the development pipeline.

"They [India] have a middle class the size of the US population, and people are just discovering the beauty of travel in India. So there are places all over the globe where we have opportunity," Marriott explained.

His company currently operates nearly 9,000 properties, tallying 1.7 million rooms in 141 countries.

Marriott thinks the hotelier can also play a bigger role in the experience business, offering vacation packages in the safari, adventure, and wellness categories.

Case in point: Taylor Swift access.

"We've had a phenomenal partnership with Taylor Swift, where our Bonvoy [rewards] customers are able to enter into a lottery for tickets to be able to redeem those huge experiences," Marriott said.

Marriott entered a new expansion chapter in 2016 when it spent $13 billion to buy Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

The deal — which David helped to integrate alongside his father J.W. "Bill" Marriott, Jr., 92, (then chairman; now chairman emeritus) and former CEO Arne Sorenson — gave Marriott access to top hotel brands such as Sheraton and St. Regis.

The greater number of brands led the way for Marriott franchisees to open in new markets and benefit from economies of scale.

Ultimately, the deal was in line with Marriott's growth DNA.

David Marriott is the grandson of J. Willard Marriott, who founded the company in 1927 with his wife Alice Marriott. It started as a nine-seat A&W root beer stand in Washington, D.C.

From there, the business rebranded as Hot Shoppes and extended, bringing innovations like drive-ins and the double-decker burger to the masses. Marriott entered the hotel space in 1957 with the opening of a motor lodge in Arlington, Va.