New Orleans - Starwood
Hotels & Resorts Worldwide in the coming years primarily will focus on growth
in developing markets, particularly in Asia, company executives told their top
clients here at the Starwood Global Rendezvous event.
To date, about 56
percent of Starwood's portfolio is outside the United States, and that
percentage will increase steadily in the coming years, said sales organization senior
vice president Christie Hicks. In the past two years, the company opened more
hotels in Asia than in Europe and the United States combined, and its pipeline
indicates that trend will continue.
In China, Starwood
currently has 120 hotels and more than 100 in the pipeline, including 20 that are
scheduled to open this year. In India, where Starwood currently has 34 hotels,
it plans for another 100 to be open or under development by 2015. In Latin
America, the company within five years plans to increase by 50 percent its
current portfolio of 72 hotels. Hicks noted an "explosion of activity in
Jakarta."
"This is the next
golden age in global travel," Starwood president and CEO Frits van
Paasschen said. "Business executives are traveling to places they might
not even have heard of a few years ago in search of growth."
While Starwood certainly
is not alone among multibrand hotel companies focusing development on emerging
markets, it has taken a few different approaches in its strategy. Two years
ago, the company temporarily moved its headquarters operations to China, and
this year it did the same in Dubai.
"Our job wasn't to
oversee the team there but to focus on the global teams and see what we needed
to accelerate growth," van Paasschen said. "The highlight in both
these relocations was spending time with associates, hearing how each were
working."
There have been some tangible
results from the headquarters relocations, van Paasschen said. In China, for
example, Starwood subsequently accelerated its growth rate and doubled the local
membership of its loyalty program.
Hicks said that
Starwood's client conference itself in recent years has become more
international, with more of the elite group of attending buyers and agents
coming from outside North America.
"Each year, more of
[our clients] are doing business outside of North America," she said.
"We don't operate in 100 countries for bragging rights. You're telling us
that's how your company wants to do business."
Development continues in
mature markets as well, Hicks said. Starwood last year opened 23 hotels in
North America, including its $75 million transformation of the New York
Helmsley Hotel into the Westin New York Grand Central, and plans to open 30
this year. The company during the next five years also plans to open 50 hotels
in Europe, many of those in such fast-growing markets as Russia, Turkey and the
Commonwealth of Independent States.