Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide

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Incorporated: 1991 as Starwood Capital Group
NAIC: 721110 Hotels (Except Casino Hotels) and Motels

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. is one of the top hotel companies in the world. The company owns and operates hotels under leading brands such as Sheraton, Westin, St. Regis, Four Points, and its recently developed W brand. The majority of Starwood's hotels are owned by franchisees, and the company directly owns or leases about 170 of its approximately 750 hotels worldwide. Close to 500 of the company's hotels are in North America. Starwood also runs hotels in some 80 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America, including a chain of prestigious European palaces called the Ciga Group. The company began as a small investment firm and then became a real estate investment trust (REIT). In 1998 Starwood purchased ITT Corporation, a company seven times its size and at the time the world's largest lodging and gaming company. Starwood beat out the Hilton Hotels Corporation to get ITT, in what was one of the most dramatic takeover battles of the 1990s. Starwood is run by Barry Sternlicht, whose consummate dealsmanship parlayed the small trust into a global lodging company.

Starwood grew to be a hotel behemoth through the hard work and ambition of Barry Sternlicht, its chairman and chief executive officer. Sternlicht was described by Business Week (November 3, 1997) as a "vulture investor," and his eye for unusual opportunities led to rapid growth of the companies he directed. Sternlicht transformed a small investment firm into one of Wall Street's hottest stocks by making extraordinary real estate deals in markets others overlooked, and by capitalizing on a little-known legal loophole that gave his real estate investment trust (REIT) powers few could match. Sternlicht was born in New York City in 1960 and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1982. He got his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1986. Sternlicht's first job after Harvard was with JMB Realty, a Chicago firm known for multimillion-dollar land deals and corporate takeovers. Soon after joining JMB, Sternlicht spearheaded the acquisition of a Disney subsidiary, Arvida Corp., a transaction worth $400 million. Sternlicht apparently thrived on the high drama of deals like this. His job ended at JMB, however, after the acquisition of a London realty portfolio went bust. Sternlicht was lead analyst on a $425 million acquisition of the Randsworth Trust PLC in 1989. Shortly after JMB and its partners made the deal, the London real estate market collapsed. Although the fiasco was not said to be Sternlicht's fault, he nevertheless left JMB at this time. In September 1991 Sternlicht had a new job, investing $60 million for members of the Ziff and Burden families. The investment company was named Starwood Capital Group, after the luxurious Starwood section of Aspen, Colorado, where the Ziffs had a home.

Sternlicht began making a string of astonishing deals for Starwood Capital. Where other real estate investors were attracted to prime markets like New York and San Francisco, Sternlicht bought up rental properties in overlooked spots such as San Antonio, Texas, and Colorado Springs. Within 18 months of starting Starwood Capital, Sternlicht had tripled his investors' money. Starwood unloaded 6,000 apartments it owned in 1992, swapping them for a 22 percent stake in a new public company, Equity Residential Properties, run by another consummate dealmaker, Sam Zell. The stock in Zell's company was worth $140 million. Then in 1993, Starwood changed focus from apartments to hotels. The hotel industry had been overbuilt in the 1980s, and by the early 1990s, many assets were being sold at significant discounts. Starwood spent $81 million to pick up a string of hotels owned by Westinghouse, and then in 1994 the company initiated a complex deal for control of the Westin Hotel Co. Westin was a languishing brand that had changed hands in 1988 when the Japanese construction company Aoki Corp. bought it for $1.53 billion from Allegis Corp. Westin managed 80 upscale hotels in 19 countries, with some prestigious properties such as the Arizona Biltmore, near Phoenix, and the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. Revenues were more than $2 billion. Starwood went in on Westin with Goldman, Sachs & Company, and acquired the hotel chain for around $540 million. The deal took six months to complete.

In the meantime, Sternlicht had come up with a new plan for Starwood. Initially he had wanted to take the company's growing hotel portfolio public as a REIT. But REITs operated under specific regulations that said that at least 75 percent of revenue had to come from real estate assets. In owning hotels, a significant percentage of revenue was derived from service. So typically, in order to own hotels in a REIT structure, the management of the hotels had to be farmed out to a separate entity to keep the service income discrete. Sternlicht discovered, however, that there were three REITs in the country that had a peculiar arrangement called "paired-share" that let them both own and manage hotels. These companies had been grandfathered in when the regulations governing REITs changed in 1984. One of these was a near bankrupt firm called Hotel Investors Trust. Hotel Investors, reminiscent of the optimistic names given to greyhounds and thoroughbreds, traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HOT. But by 1994, it had been overburdened with debt for years, and its portfolio of 30 hotels and casinos traded sluggishly at under a dollar. Starwood bought control of Hotel Investors for $5 million in cash and nine hotels. Sternlicht immediately announced his intention to build the new company up to a billion-dollar REIT. Because of its paired-share structure, there was no legal constraint to the company both owning and managing hotels, as long as these functions were nominally separate. So Hotel Investors became Starwood Lodging Trust and Starwood Lodging Corp., and it went on buying hotels. After completing the deal for Westin in June 1995, the company spent $840 million on more than 30 hotels in the next year alone. Its HOT stock zoomed up to around $35 a share, and its market capitalization grew from $12 million to more than $800 million.

The company flourished. Starwood's paired-share status meant that it did not have to dilute earnings by paying a management firm to run its hotels. It also could hold on to its cash, because the REIT did not pay corporate tax as long as it distributed 95 percent of its revenue as shareholder dividends. Sternlicht seemed to have a magic touch. Only 36 years old in 1997, he told U.S. News & World Report (November 17, 1997) that he had "done over 180 transactions, and only two of them were bad investments." Starwood's stock continued to rise as the value of the company's assets increased. The hotel industry was in good shape in the mid-1990s, recovered from its earlier slump, and Sternlicht had bought many hotels in urban areas, where building new hotels would have been exceedingly expensive. He paid attention to the details of running hotels once he had bought them, overseeing room design and helping roll out a new brand for the Westin chain, its small urban W brand. Starwood acquired what it did not already own of Westin in the fall of 1997, and in November began what Fortune magazine (December 8, 1997) characterized as "one of the nastiest takeover battles of the '90s," its bid for ITT Corporation.

ITT was a venerable company that at one time had its hand in scores of different industries. During the 1970s it was a classic conglomerate, owning companies as disparate as Continental Baking, maker of Twinkies and Wonderbread, and Avis, the car rental firm. Under the direction of CEO Rand Araskog, ITT had sold more than 200 subsidiaries in the 1980s. By the mid-1990s, the company was still rather unfocused, with a diverse portfolio of leisure and entertainment businesses including a sports television channel, the basketball team the New York Knicks, a string of casinos, and the Sheraton hotels. In early 1997 ITT was about to embark on an expensive renovation and new construction campaign, aimed principally at bucking up its casinos. An equity offering failed, and the heavily leveraged company was in trouble. Its stock had fallen almost 40 percent over the past year, and it was unclear how the company would pay to refurbish its properties. Then ITT received an unsolicited takeover bid from Hilton Hotels Corporation. Hilton had a new CEO, Stephen Bollenbach, who had promised investors rapid growth. ITT's hotels and casinos seemed just what Hilton needed, and the company offered $70 a share for ITT. But Starwood, too, was interested in ITT. The company was seven times Starwood's size, but the confident Sternlicht sent ITT's CEO a simple note stating, "We have to talk." Starwood outbid Hilton, and outlined to investors ways the new owners could trim costs, principally because of Starwood's beneficial tax status. Hilton counteroffered, but eventually Starwood prevailed, spending $10.2 billion in a deal that made the company the largest in the worldwide hotel industry. The purchase price was about twice ITT's stock market value before the bidding war began, and twice what Starwood itself was worth.

Buying ITT took Sternlicht into new and uncharted territory. The young entrepreneur had risked tremendous amounts of money to build his empire, but he had not run a huge corporation. Sternlicht brought in an old college friend, Richard Nanula, to help oversee Starwood. Nanula had close personal ties to Sternlicht and his family, and was, like Sternlicht, a financial wunderkind. He had been chief financial officer of Disney since he was 31, and he had the kind of corporate background that Sternlicht lacked. The two seemed to have complementary skills that would enable them to shape up Starwood's businesses after the merger. But things did not get off to a good start. Hilton's CEO, stung by the loss of ITT, went to Washington to lobby for the closure of the loophole that gave Starwood the paired-share status. Within about six months of Starwood's purchase of ITT, Congress acted to change the law governing REITs, and Starwood lost its tax advantage. It then converted to a traditional corporate structure. The change made accounting difficult, particularly in comparing financial results from before and after the restructuring. In addition, there seemed to be trouble in the top echelons of management. Nanula had been named CEO of Starwood, with Sternlicht chairman, but Sternlicht demoted his friend to president and gave himself back the CEO title after the New York Times ran an article on Nanula that implied that he was the head man. Sternlicht named a former Westin executive to head Caesar's, the company's casino division, without informing the presiding Caesar's head what was happening, causing much bad blood. Juergen Bartels, who was credited with reviving Starwood's Westin brand, threatened to quit because he did not like working under Nanula, who lacked experience in the hotel industry. Starwood's stock price fell, and in December 1998 the company announced that fourth quarter earnings would be less than estimated. Other lodging stocks did badly as well, but Starwood was clearly struggling to integrate its vast new holdings. On May 10, 1999, Fortune magazine ran a profile of the company in which Sternlicht bemoaned having bought ITT. "Am I stupid, or am I a jerk?" he asked Fortune's reporter. "Half the time, I think I'm stupid. The other half, I think I'm a jerk." The article also laid bare the problems between Nanula and Sternlicht. Days after the Fortune story came out, Nanula quit. Several months later, Juergen Bartels also quit when it became clear he would not be offered the open position. The head of Starwood's gambling unit, which was about to be sold, also left, as did the head of the company's North American hotel operations.

Although Starwood clearly had a lot of problems, it also had enormous potential. It had several viable brands, and excess property it could unload for cash. The company sold off its casino division in 1999, making $3 billion on the deal with Park Place Entertainment. Starwood also began a push to renovate its Westin hotels, particularly in Europe. The company spent some $400 million on renovations, aiming to reposition Westin as a more upscale brand. Starwood had taken on a diverse collection of European palaces known as the Ciga Group when it bought ITT. In February 2000 the company announced plans to hang the Westin name on these properties, as well as to build more luxury Westins in Europe. While spending millions to renovate some of the ancient Ciga properties, later in 2000 the company announced that it would sell the group.

Starwood got a chief operating officer in 2000 when Robert Cotter took the spot left vacant by Richard Nanula's turbulent departure. The company also adopted the so-called Six Sigma quality improvement plan that year. Six Sigma had been developed by Motorola and used by General Electric and other industrial companies to trim costs and eliminate errors. Starwood was reputedly the first company in the lodging industry to try the Six Sigma program, which Sternlicht hoped would "jolt the organization," as he told the Wall Street Journal (February 5, 2000).

The slowing economy hurt Starwood and other hotel companies in 2001. The September 11 terrorist attacks were a huge blow to the industry. Starwood's North American business fell drastically immediately after the attacks, and two weeks later the company announced that it would lay off 23 percent of its North American workforce. Revenue fell in 2001 and 2002 as the global economy remained weak and business travel was less than robust. The company's European operations did better than its North American business, and Asia became the company's next frontier. Less than 10 percent of Starwood's operating profit came from its Asian operations in 2002, but the company aimed to increase that to 25 percent by 2007. Starwood planned to sell assets in other parts of the world in order to build and invest in Asia, particularly in China. The company hoped to have as many as 200 hotels in China in the next five years, and was also opening hotels in Singapore, Japan, and Korea. Starwood also continued to put money into renovations of its prime brands, particularly the Sheraton and Four Points brands, which had not done as well since the ITT takeover. Starwood sold four of its nine European Ciga Group properties in 2002, although it continued to manage the hotels.

Principal Subsidiaries

Starwood Vacation Ownership, Inc.

Principal Competitors

Marriott International, Inc.; Hilton Hotels Corporation; Four Seasons Hotels Inc.

Further Reading

Biddle, RiShawn, "Paying the Piper," Forbes, May 27, 2002, p. 48.

Binkley, Christina, "Starwood Hotels Faces Uphill Climb in Effort to Be Included in S&P 500," Wall Street Journal, August 28, 1998, p. A6.

------, "Starwood Hotels, in a Surprise, Names Cotter to Chief Operating Post," Wall Street Journal, February 16, 2000, p. B11.

------, "Starwood Pares North American Staff by 23% Amid Hotel Industry Layoffs," Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2001, p. A4.

------, "Starwood Puts New Face on Westin Brand," Wall Street Journal, February 29, 2000, p. B19.

------, "Starwood's Bartels Quits As Hotels Chief After Not Getting No. 2 Post at Parent," Wall Street Journal, November 5, 1999, pp. A3, A6.

------, "Starwood Seeks to Sell Ciga Group Hotels," Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2000, p. A6.

------, "Starwood Sets Effort to Enhance Quality and Improve Cash Flow," Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2000, p. B4.

Coleman, Zach, "Hotel Groups Bolster Presence in Asia," Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2002, p. D10.

Deady, Tim, "Hotel Investors to Merge with Eastern Partnership," Los Angeles Business Journal, June 20, 1994, p. 11.

Fitch, Stephane, "Boy Wonder Gets Distracted," Forbes, November 15, 1999, p. 54.

Galarza, Pablo, "Natural-Born Deal Maker," Financial World, August 12, 1996, p. 30.

------, "Starwood vs. Hilton: After a Rough Year, Can Their Dealmaker CEOs Bounce Back?," Money, April 1, 1999, p. 54.

Golden, Fran, "Investors Buy 80 Westin Hotels for $561 Million," Travel Weekly, December 1, 1994, p. 3.

Grover, Ronald, and Kathleen Morris, "Hilton's CEO Just Won't Check Out," Business Week, November 17, 1997, p. 43.

Hurt, Harry, III, "Just Like Playing Monopoly," U.S. News & World Report, November 17, 1997, p. 60.

Kirkpatrick, David D., "Starwood CEO Sternlicht Will Be Big Winner in Deal with ITT," Wall Street Journal, February 18, 1998, p. A4.

Koss-Feder, Laura, "Bartels Mapping Westin Strategy," Hotel & Motel Management, June 19, 1995, p. 1.

Lesly, Elizabeth, and Ronald Grover, "Is Showbiz No Biz for ITT?," Business Week, January 20, 1997, p. 80.

McDowell, Edwin, "Westin Hotel Co. to Be Sold to Starwood and Goldman," New York Times, November 26, 1994, pp. 39, 49.

Morris, Kathleen, "The Global Titan of Hotels," Business Week, November 3, 1997, p. 36.

Sellers, Patricia, "Divorce Corporate Style," Fortune, May 10, 1999, p. 106.

------, "Starwood: Splitsville: Corporate Romance Gone Bad," Fortune, May 24, 1999, p. 52.

"Starwood Hotels: Rising in the East," Business Week Online, October 22, 2002.

Warner, Melanie, "How Barry Sternlicht Became the King of Hotels," Fortune, December 8, 1997, p. 26.

— A. Woodward

"Starwood" redirects here. For other uses, see Starwood (disambiguation).

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Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide

Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: HOT S&P 500 Component
Industry	Hospitality, tourism
Founded	1969 as a REIT 1980 as a corporation[1]
Headquarters	Stamford, Connecticut
Products	Hotels, resorts
Revenue	US$4.71 billion (FY 2009)
Operating income	US$26.0 million (FY 2009)
Net income	US$73.0 million (FY 2009)
Total assets	US$2.17 billion (FY 2009)
Total equity	US$1.62 billion (FY 2009)
Employees	145,000
Website	www.starwoodhotels.com
References: [2][3]

Former Starwood logo

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. is a hospitality ownership and management organization, headquartered in Stamford, CT.^[4] One of the world's largest hotel companies, it owns, operates, franchises and manages hotels, resorts, spas, residences, and vacation ownership properties under its nine owned brands. As of December 31, 2009, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. owned, managed, or franchised 992 properties employing over 145,000 people, of whom approximately 26% were employed in the United States.^[5]

Contents 1 History 2 Brands 2.1 Westin 2.2 Sheraton 2.3 Four Points by Sheraton 2.4 The Luxury Collection 2.5 W Hotels 2.6 St. Regis 2.7 Le Méridien 2.8 Aloft 2.9 Element by Westin 3 Starwood Preferred Guest 3.1 Partnerships 4 References 5 External links

History

Starwood headquarters in White Plains

Westin Times Square

Starwood Hotels and Resorts was originally formed by the real estate investment firm Starwood Capital to take advantage of a tax break; at the time the company was known as Starwood Lodging.^[6] Initially, Starwood Lodging owned a number of hotels throughout North America, all under different brand names. The Westin Hotel Company was purchased in 1994 from Aoki Corporation of Japan. Starwood acquired the Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton, and The Luxury Collection brands from ITT Sheraton in 1998.

In 1999, Starwood launched their "W" Hotels brand. In September 2005, Starwood announced the launch of aloft, a new hotel brand based on W. aloft Hotels catered toward business travelers. Starwood intends to have 500 aloft hotels worldwide by 2012. In 2005, Starwood purchased the Le Méridien brand, which greatly increased the company's operations in Europe.

In 2004, Starwood's founder and CEO Barry Sternlicht stepped down as CEO to focus his attention on his other firm, Starwood Capital. He remained on the Board of Directors until 2005. He was succeeded as CEO by Steven J. Heyer, and Starwood began selling a number of its company-owned hotels, instead focusing on becoming a management company and franchiser for its current and future hotel brands. In April 2007, Steven J. Heyer left the company on the request of the Board of Directors because of an issue with Heyer's management style and after allegations of personal misconduct.^[7] Chairman of the Board Bruce Duncan served as interim CEO until September 2007, when the company announced Heyer's successor, Frits van Paasschen.

Brands

(The following list of Starwood brands is chronological, according to each brand's entry into Starwood)

Westin

The historic Westin Book-Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit.

Main article: Westin Hotels

The Westin Hotels and Resorts brand is Starwood's largest upscale hotels and resorts brand. It was bought by Starwood in 1994 and is also the oldest brand within Starwood, dating back to 1930.

Sheraton

Sheraton Poznań

Main article: Sheraton Hotels and Resorts

Sheraton is Starwood's 'flagship' brand, providing luxury hotel and resort accommodation. It began operating in 1937 and was sold to Starwood in 1998 by ITT.

The Romanos, a Luxury Collection Resort, Costa Navarino Messinia Greece

Four Points by Sheraton

Main article: Four Points by Sheraton

Four Points by Sheraton was launched by ITT in 1995 as a mid-scale hotel brand. Originally the brand was created by renaming existing Sheraton "Inns" (a smaller, limited service version of Sheraton Hotels). The new name avoided the confusion some guests found in having two hotel categories (full service and mid-scale) with the same name (Sheraton). These hotels joined Starwood along with Sheraton in 1998.

The Luxury Collection

The historic Hotel Imperial in Vienna.

The Luxury Collection brand began when ITT Sheraton purchased a controlling interest in CIGA (Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi, or Italian Grand Hotels Company), an Italian hotel chain, in 1994. Those hotels, as well as a number of top-tier Sheraton Hotels, were then marketed as ITT Sheraton Luxury Hotels. After Starwood bought Sheraton, they established a separate brand identity for The Luxury Collection and expanded it greatly.

Both ITT Sheraton and later Starwood kept CIGA's original logo (the four horses of St. Mark) for The Luxury Collection brand logo until 2009; each Luxury Collection hotel now uses its own logo. Many hotels in The Luxury Collection are smaller establishments in converted palaces or other significant buildings, others are lavishly restored historic hotels.

Confusingly, a few hotels in The Luxury Collection which were originally part of the ITT Sheraton Luxury group kept their Sheraton name when the Luxury division was spun off as a completely separate brand under Starwood. There are six such hotels remaining today, operating with the name Sheraton, but not part of Sheraton. Those hotels are Sheraton Addis (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit (Bangkok, Thailand), Sheraton Sofia Hotel Balkan (Sofia, Bulgaria), Sheraton Algarve Hotel (Albufeira, Portugal), Sheraton Park Tower (London, United Kingdom) and Sheraton Kuwait Hotel & Towers (Kuwait City, Kuwait).

A part of the Collection, the Royal Penthouse Suite, at Hotel President Wilson in Geneva, billed at US$65,000 per night, is listed at number 1 on World's 15 most expensive hotel suites complied by CNN Go in 2012.^[8]

W Hotels

The W Hotel in Washington, D.C. is located in the former Hotel Washington, built in 1918 to the designs of architectural firm Carrère and Hastings. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

W Hotels is Starwood's luxury boutique hotel brand, generally marketed towards a younger crowd. It was launched in 1998 with the W New York, a conversion of the old Doral Inn hotel at 541 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The first few W hotels were mainly conversions of existing hotels already within the Starwood group. The brand has since expanded with over fifty hotels and resorts around the world.

They have a common theme of spare, minimalist modern decor and hip, informal names for categories of rooms and public areas. For example the lobbies of all the hotels are known as the "Living Room."

W opened its first hotel in Europe in Istanbul in May 2008.^[9] The hotel, located in the renovated Akaretler Row Houses, a group of historic structures built in the 1870s to house the employees of the Dolmabahçe Palace, blends the traditional Ottoman design of the row houses with the contemporary feel of the luxury hotel chain.

The W Barcelona hotel was W's first in Western Europe and opened in October 2009. It features a futuristic design by architect Ricardo Bofill in the shape of a sail. Standing 26 stories tall, it can be seen from all over the city. The property is located next to the beach. It also includes a Bliss spa, gym and conference facilities.^[10]

The W Doha Hotel and Residences is the only W property in the Middle East and North Africa, and is considered one of the largest world wide, offering 441 rooms and residences makes it also one of the largest in the State of Qatar. The property is located in West-Bay area also known as the towers area of Doha on a walking distance from one of the worlds largest shopping malls.

St. Regis

The St. Regis New York.

St. Regis is Starwood's main luxury brand, launched in 1999. It is named for The St. Regis Hotel in New York, which was built in 1904 in Manhattan at 5th Avenue and 55th Street by John Jacob Astor IV, who also founded the Astoria Hotel (which later became the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel) and who died in 1912 on the RMS Titanic. In the 1930s, head bartender Fernand Petiot, introduced the Bloody Mary cocktail. The St. Regis was a Sheraton from 1966 on, and following a lavish restoration from 1985-1991 was part of the ITT Sheraton Luxury division before it became the cornerstone of Starwood's new brand. All St. Regis properties except The Lanesborough in London use The St. Regis name.

Le Méridien

Main article: Le Méridien

Le Méridien was founded by Air France in 1972 and was sold to Starwood in 2005, by which point it was based in the UK. It has 130 properties worldwide and its first property was Le Méridien Etoile in France.

Aloft

Main article: Aloft Hotels

Aloft is a mid-scale, urban-style business / boutique hotel brand. The brand was launched in 2005 as a 'vision of W Hotels', a relationship similar to Four Points by Sheraton and its 'brand parent', Sheraton. It has been criticized for being too slick and formulaic.^[11]

Element by Westin

Announced in 2006, this is Starwood's first brand of hotels intended to be environmentally friendly. The designs include energy and water efficient features.^[12] The first Element hotel opened in Lexington, Massachusetts in July 2008.^[13] As of April 2010, there are seven Element hotels in operation in Denver (Park Meadows), Las Vegas (Summerlin), Houston (Vintage Park), Dallas (DFW Airport), Ewing NJ, Lexington, and Arundel Mills (BWI Airport). Two Element hotels are scheduled to open within the next year, in New York City and Omaha, Nebraska. Element hotels are built eco-friendly from the ground up, from the floors made of recycled materials to energy-efficient lighting and plumbing fixtures.

Starwood Preferred Guest

Partnerships

It has a credit card partnerships with American Express (MBNA Canada Bank partnership replaced by American Express in 2010). Starwood Preferred Guest also has a partnership with 32 affiliated airlines allowing guests to redeem their points for flights under the "SPG Flights" program.^[14] According to Starwood Hotels and Resorts' corporate profile, the SPG program has over 41 million members.^[5]

StarPoints

StarPoints can be used by Starwood Preferred Guest Members(SPG) to redeem free nights at Starwood's hotel properties. In addition, they can be used for merchandise with their partners such as GAP, Westin at Home, Nordstrom and more.

Member Tiers/Levels

There are 3 main levels of Starwood Preferred Guest: basic, gold, and Platinum levels. Each level has better perks. They can be found on the SPG Website In addition to obtaining these statuses through hotel nights, all Starwood Vacation Ownership owners are automatically enrolled into the Gold Starwood Preferred Guest Program. Some owners of several weeks(5* Elite Owners)are enrolled into the Platinum Starwood Preferred Guest program.

References

1. ^ "Form 10-Q". p. 7. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=78669&p=irol-SECText&TEXT=aHR0cDovL2NjYm4uMTBrd2l6YXJkLmNvbS94bWwvZmlsaW5nLnhtbD9yZXBvPXRlbmsmaXBhZ2U9NTI2NTQ3MSZhdHRhY2g9T04%3d. Retrieved 2007-11-12. 
2. ^ Starwood Hotels & Resorts (HOT) annual SEC income statement filing. Wikinvest. Retrieved 7 February 2011.
3. ^ Starwood Hotels & Resorts (HOT) annual SEC balance sheet filing. Wikinvest. Retrieved 7 February 2011.
4. ^ "Contact Us." Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. Retrieved on March 27, 2012.
5. ^ ^{a b} "Company Overview". Starwood Hotels and Resorts. 2011. http://www.starwoodhotels.com/corporate/company_info.html. Retrieved 7 February 2011. 
6. ^ Celarier, Michelle (February 1998). "The trouble with REITs - real estate investment trusts". CFO: Magazine for Senior Financial Executives. ISSN 8756-7113. OCLC 42457969. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3870/is_n2_v14/ai_20390092/pg_1. Retrieved 11 May 2007. ^{[dead link]}
7. ^ Sanders, Peter; Joann S. Lublin (7 April2007-04-07). "Starwood CEO's Ouster Followed Battle with Board Over His Conduct". The Wall Street Journal. http://setup2.wsj.com/article/SB117590473824562740-C0wVg0bk4S0bRYE9gZwoaGPzsK0_20080429.html?mod=crnews. Retrieved 2007-05-11. 
8. ^ Arnold, Helen "World's 15 most expensive hotel suites" CNN Go. 25 March 2012. Retrieved 2012-04-11
9. ^ Howard, Hilary (18 May 2008). "First W Hotel Opens in Europe". The New York Times. http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/travel/18COMistanbul.html. 
10. ^ "Ricardo Bofill, Taller de Arquitectura, W Barcelona Hotel, Barcelona, Spain", arcspace, October 26, 2009
11. ^ Mary Louise Schumacher (Jan 12, 2010). "The adrift Aloft Hotel". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/81253377.html. 
12. ^ "ELEMENT Lexington opens its doors". TTG MENA. http://www.ttgmena.com/Articles/tabid/57/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/60/ELEMENT-Lexington-opens-its-doors.aspx. Retrieved 4 January 2009. ^{[dead link]}
13. ^ "Opening Day of ELEMENT Lexington Marks the World Premiere of Starwood Hotels' Newest..." (Press release). Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. Tuesday, 1 July 2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS109353+01-Jul-2008+BW20080701. Retrieved 7 February 2011. 
14. ^ SPG Flights

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Starwood hotels

• Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide official website

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