Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.
legal form	Corporation
founding	1930
Seat	Stamford , Connecticut , United States;
management	Thomas B. Mangas ( CEO )
Number of employees	188,000
sales	5,763,000,000 US dollars
Branch	Hotel industry , tourism
Website	www.starwoodhotels.com
	As of December 31, 2015

Starwood is one of the largest hotel and leisure companies in the world and operates under ten different brands. The company is divided into two business areas: Hotels and Vacation Ownership . Starwood is a subsidiary of Marriott International .

The business focuses on the operation of hotels and resorts around the world, primarily in the luxury segment or in the upper class of the hotel industry. Starwood endeavors to acquire shares, management or franchise rights in hotels in this segment. As of December 31, 2015, the portfolio comprised a total of 1,297 properties with around 370,000 rooms in 100 countries.

history

Initially, Starwood Lodging owned a number of hotels in North America, many of them under different brand names. In 1994 the Westin Hotel Company was bought by the Japanese Aoki Corporation . In 1998 Starwood acquired the rights to the Sheraton brand , Four Points by Sheraton and the Luxury Collection , all from ITT Sheraton .

In 1999 Starwood launched the “W” Hotels brand, which is supposed to represent a young and cheeky brand. In September 2005, Starwood announced the launch of the aloft brand , with 500 aloft hotels to be built by 2012 . In 2005, Starwood bought the Le Méridien brand .

In 2004, founder and CEO Barry Sternlicht stepped down from his chairmanship to focus his operations on another company, Starwood Capital . However, he remained a member of the board until 2005. He was succeeded by Steven J. Heyer, under whom Starwood sold many company-owned hotels and thus developed into a management company for the hotels, which are now mostly operated in the franchise system. In April 2007, Steven J. Heyer left the company at the request of the Supervisory Board because of disagreements between Heyer and the Supervisory Board. Bruce W. Duncan served as interim CEO until September 2007, when the company announced Heyer's successor, Frits van Paasschen.

In November 2015, Marriott International announced an agreement to acquire Starwood for $ 12 billion. The planned merger by 2016 would be the new largest hotel group in the world. In March 2016, it was announced that Starwood had instead opted for a $ 1 billion higher competing bid from a Chinese investor group led by the insurance company Anbang. At the end of March 2016, the Chinese bidding consortium surprisingly withdrew its offer. According to information from the British newspaper Financial Times , the bidding consortium was unable to raise the purchase price. The merger talks with Marriott International then resumed. The takeover was completed on September 23, 2016.

On November 30, 2018, the US hotel group Marriott International announced the theft of around 327 million customer data via the IT group subsidiary Starwood, including payment information. Affected were customers of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide with the brands W Hotels, St. Regis Hotel , Sheraton Hotels & Resorts , Westin Hotels & Resorts , Element Hotels, Aloft Hotels, The Luxury Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts , Four Points by Sheraton and Design Hotels. The cyber attack was discovered on September 8, 2018.

Brands

	Sheraton The largest hotel group under Starwood is Sheraton with more than 400 hotels in 75 countries. The first Sheraton opened its doors in Springfield , Massachusetts in 1937 , and just twelve years later (1949) the international market was conquered. In 1945, Sheraton was the first hotel chain to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
	Westin Hotel & Resorts Westin Hotels & Resorts is the original Starwood brand. The Westin brand has over 150 properties worldwide. Westin has its own bed and bathroom concept, the so-called Heavenly Bed or Heavenly Bath . In 2006 Westin was the first hotel company to introduce the Smoke Free Policy, which bans smoking anywhere in the hotel.
	Le Méridien Le Méridien , founded by Air France in Paris in1972, is Starwood's traditional European brand and was taken over by the hotel group in 2005. It mixes contemporary culture with its European heritage at the various locations. The hotels can be found in Europe, America, the Asia-Pacific region , the Middle East and Africa. Le Méridien's portfolio currently includes 120 hotels in more than 50 countries.
	The Luxury Collection The Luxury Collection Hotels & Resorts is a group of 70 hotels and resorts in over 25 countries with a range of services for customers with the highest demands. Some of these hotels are centuries old.
	Tribute portfolio "Tribute Portfolio" is intended to unite individual hotels & resorts with a clear focus on the 4-star category. It is a "soft brand" that hardly sets any rules for hoteliers and hotel operators and leaves them as free as possible. The first "Tribute" house since May 2015 is the Royal Palm South Beach in Miami, with more hotels to follow soon.
	St. Regis St. Regis Hotels & Resorts are top category luxury hotels. There are only 18 stores of this brand worldwide, three of them in Europe. The name of the hotel chain goes back to the famous St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan, which was built by Colonel John Jacob Astor IV in 1904.
	Four Points by Sheraton Four Points by Sheraton are 4-star hotels with comfortable business rooms. The brand was founded in 1995 as a sub-brand of Sheraton Hotels & Resorts. With openings in over 21 countries, Four Points by Sheraton is Starwood Hotels & Resorts' fastest growing brand. Today more than 130 hotels with a total of 23,223 rooms belong to this brand.
	W Hotels W Hotels currently operates 34 hotels worldwide; Features are modern design and a focus on pop culture.
	aloft aloft hotels are high-class, avant-garde hotels whose concept was created as a spin-off of "W Hotels". As of November 2015, the brand comprises around 180 hotels in the USA, China, the Middle East and, more recently, Europe. In Germany there are currently aloft Hotels in Munich and Stuttgart.
	element The Westin-inspired brand element is a new type of hotel concept that offers modern design for travelers with longer stays. The element brand is currently represented by eleven hotels in the USA and one hotel in Frankfurt am Main (Hesse, Germany).