About Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.
Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.
Starwood’s public-company journey began in 1994, when Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital exchanged assets and partnerships for an interest in NYSE-listed Hotel Investors Trust, a Maryland REIT organized in 1969. What began as a real-estate play soon checked into the hotel big leagues.
In 1998, Starwood Lodging acquired Westin, adopted the Starwood Hotels & Resorts name, then acquired ITT and its Sheraton, CIGA, and Caesars operations. The portfolio gained Sheraton, The Luxury Collection, and St. Regis; W Hotels debuted in New York that same year. In 1999, the company became a C-corporation and launched Starwood Preferred Guest—because hotel points were about to become a personality trait.
From White Plains, New York, Starwood built a global hotel, resort, residence, management, and franchising business. It acquired Le Méridien in 2005, shifted toward an asset-light model, and moved its global headquarters to Stamford, Connecticut, in 2012. By year-end 2015, its hotel portfolio included 1,297 properties and about 370,000 rooms in roughly 100 countries.
Our Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. collection celebrates the polished, points-obsessed era of SPG, Heavenly Beds, W’s lobby nightlife, and corporate hospitality scaled to planetary size. Marriott completed its acquisition on September 23, 2016, ending Starwood’s independent run and sending this hotel-world heavyweight into the corporate afterlife.