DESPITE THE GLOBAL economic slowdown, Starwood Hotels & Resorts is to open a new Sheraton property every 12 days for the next 19 months - with more to follow in 2010. The multi-billion-dollar expansion is part of a global programme to revitalise the brand. By the end of 2009, Starwood will have opened 54 new Sheratons with 20,000 rooms between them, with a further 16 properties coming on stream the following year. The company is spending US$2 billion in the US alone.
"With awareness among upscale guests at 92 per cent, the Sheraton brand is iconic," says Hoyt Harper, senior vice-president for Sheraton
Hotels & Resorts. "We are leveraging Starwood's proven history of building great lifestyle brands to enhance the entire guest experience for the company's most global, recognised brand."
Outside the States, Sheratons will open this year in Argentina, China, Egypt and Ireland, followed in 2009 by new properties in Italy, Poland, Turkey, Vietnam, Russia and Taiwan.
Starwood will also renovate around 100 Sheratons in the US - nearly half its North American portfolio - upgrading 50,000 rooms and creating more than 100 new lobbies, with a renovations budget of US$1.3 billion.
More than US$170 million will be spent on existing Dallas and Denver "big-box" properties, adding more than 3,000 rooms and 360,000ft2 of meeting space. A new-build in Phoenix, Arizona, will have 1,000 rooms and 80,000ft2 of function areas.
They pale into insignificance, however, beside the new Sheraton Macau, which will have at least 4,000 rooms and more than 271,000 ft2 of meeting space.