By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor
The international hotel chain Marriott is drawing criticism as an international travel company licensed to use its brand name is selling tours through Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of the South Caucasus that Azerbaijan emptied of more than 120,000 ethnic Armenians in 2023, in what prosecutors formerly with the International Criminal Court have called a genocide.
The tour was listed on Marriott’s Bonvoy Tours & Activities platform and participants earn Marriott Bonvoy points for booking it, said the Center for Armenian Research and Analysis (CARA) in a report titled “Genocide Tourism, Occupied Artsakh and the 14-Hour Tour.” It runs 14 hours out of Baku and includes a guide, transportation, entry to all sites, and hotel pickup, with guides offered in Turkish, Spanish, English, Russian and Italian.
“Permission to enter Karabakh zone” is listed among the tour’s inclusions without further comment or explanation.
The webpage advertizing the tour was deactivated at some point between Thursday afternoon and Friday. When The Christian Post accessed the link on Thursday afternoon, the page was still active.
Marriott Bonvoy Tours & Activities states on its website that it is “not owned, developed, or sold by Marriott International,” but is allowed to use the international hotel chain’s marks “under license from Marriott International, Inc.”
Marriott International states on its website that it has partnered with Travel Curious to offer “thousands of tours and activities globally” — from adventure trips in Aruba to “skip-the-line tickets at the Eiffel Tower” or “a custom wine tour in Cape Town.”
“The domain is Marriott’s. The brand is Marriott’s. The loyalty points are Marriott’s,” the CARA report notes. “A corporation does not get to franchise its name onto the whitewashing of a crime against humanity and then plead that the paperwork sits with a subcontractor.”
The Christian Post has reached out to Marriott International and Marriott Bonvoy Tours & Activities powered by Travel Curious for comment. CP called the information line for Marriott Bonvoy Tours & Activities and was told the issue has been escalated but that a formal statement would be sent via email. This story will be updated if a response is received.
The itinerary for the Nagorno-Karabakh trip stated that the 10th stop is a monument known as Babik-Mamik, or “We Are Our Mountains,” also called the Grandmother and Grandfather, carved from volcanic tuff above the city of Stepanakert.
The tour calls the monument “one of the most well-known landmarks in the Karabakh region” and “a notable example of regional stone art and architecture.” The word Armenian does not appear anywhere in the listing, CARA notes.
The tour markets the area as “the rebirth of a region” that is “welcoming visitors after decades,” without stating what took place during those years.
In September 2023, following a nine-month blockade that cut off food, fuel and medicine, Azerbaijan cleared the region of over 120,000 Armenians native to the area within a matter of days.
Prosecutors who formerly served at the International Criminal Court have assessed the removal as a genocide.
The area was home to a self-declared Armenian republic that had existed for 32 years before it was dissolved within a week during the 2023 offensive, in a region Armenian communities have inhabited for thousands of years.
Armenian hostages remain held in prisons in Baku. At least 80 people have been forcibly disappeared and more than 200 people remain missing. Azerbaijan has allegedly not investigated or acknowledged any of the disappearances.
Churches in the region have reportedly been destroyed or altered, and cemeteries have vanished. Azerbaijan has renamed Stepanakert as Khankendi, Shushi as Shusha, and Akna as Aghdam.
Azerbaijan has termed the redevelopment a “Great Return,” with $14 billion committed to what it calls reconstruction, CARA said.
Azerbaijan also convened a global media forum in “occupied Shushi” for journalists, according to CARA.
Nagorno-Karabakh, known to Armenians as Artsakh, was the site of a war between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in the early 1990s that left the region under the control of a self-declared, ethnic Armenian government. A second war in 2020 ended with Azerbaijan retaking surrounding territory, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed under a ceasefire agreement.
Azerbaijan blockaded the Lachin corridor, the region’s only road link to Armenia, beginning in December 2022, restricting food and medical supplies for months before the September 2023 offensive.
The Armenian National Committee of America accused Marriott Bonvoy Tours & Activities of “running tours across sacred Armenian Christian lands that Azerbaijan ethnically cleansed of their indigenous population.”
“How is profiting from genocide consistent with your stated commitment to upholding ‘uncompromising ethical and legal standards’?” the committee asked in a Thursday post on X.
Dede Laugeson of the U.S.-based advocacy group Save the Persecuted Christians accused the company of helping Azerbaijan “white wash the ethnic cleansing of 120+ thousand Christians.”
“Helping Azerbaijan to white wash the ethnic cleansing of 120+ thousand Christians from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) is obscene and should be criminal,” she wrote on X. “Azerbaijan is still holding hostages from Armenia. Azerbaijan is erasing Armenian religious and cultural heritage that belong to the people of the world. Armenians have lived in the region for thousands of years. Azerbaijan is maliciously erasing the historic record of the region’s indigenous population. Azerbaijan is GUILTY OF GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING This isn’t a good look for the Marriott brand.”
Other global entities are profiting from Azerbaijan’s takeover of Nagorno-Karabkh.
In 2020, Anglo Asian Mining, a company listed in London, called the seizure of territory it planned to mine a “liberation.” The company now mines gold and other ores there.
A candidate currently running for the U.S. Senate, John E. Sununu, a Republican who previously served in the House of Representatives and the Senate, owns a stake in Anglo Asian Mining valued at up to $5 million, the largest investment he has disclosed.
Ansaldo Energia, an Italian energy company, reportedly supplies substations in the region.
The German-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce, a bilateral trade group, led a “Karabakh Strategic Reconstruction Mission” in the spring, guiding business leaders through the towns of Kovsakan and Berdzor and the cities of Shushi, Stepanakert and Akna.
Slovakia’s president reportedly toured the region in July and arranged export financing after returning home.
The United Nations held discussions on “restoring destroyed identity” in Baku during its World Urban Forum, a conference on urban development it sponsors.
