Marriott International came up with a pretty novel way to recruit new people to come work in its hotels: A game available for free on Facebook called My Marriott Hotel. Positioned as a Farmville for the hotel business, it's designed to let users get their virtual hands on everything it takes to run a hotel and, the company hopes, get intrigued enough to want to make a real career out of it. After all, the company does have 50,000 jobs to fill before ringing in 2012.
So far, you can only play with the food and beverage department, but the rest is coming soon, according to the company. I haven't played with it yet, but it sounds kind of interesting—then again, I already have a day job, and the thought of taking on even just F&B for a virtual hotel sounds more stressful than fun to me (oh no, we can't run out of chicken right before the Absolutely Fabulous Association's closing banquet!). But maybe that's because I spent so much of my ill-spent youth working in restaurants to want that pressure in my life, even virtually.
It is a pretty brilliant idea, though.