Starwood Hotels & Resorts is to open 50 Sheraton Hotels & Resorts over the next three years around the world, increasing room numbers by 20,000. Starwood and its partners are investing more than US$4b in new hotel openings across four continents – a development effort that follows the recent three-year, multi-billion dollar revitalization of its brand.
As Starwood’s largest and most global brand, Sheraton currently boasts more than 400 hotels in 70 countries.
Beginning this year, the brand will open roughly 50 new hotels over three years in 15 countries, including the United States, Colombia, India, Russia, Slovakia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Sheraton – the largest international upper-upscale hotel brand in China – will nearly double its footprint in the country with the addition of 28 stunning new properties, including the Sheraton Shanghai Hong Kou Hotel, Sheraton Qingdao and Sheraton Huadu Resort, bringing its total number of hotels there to 50.
The brand will also add 10 new resorts to its renowned portfolio, expand its footprint in New York City with new properties in Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood and open several new convention hotels.
Starwood, president of global development, Simon Turner said: “Looking ahead, we continue to grow the Sheraton brand’s already robust presence globally by working with our proven development partners to ensure we have best-in-class properties wherever our guests want to travel. Increasingly, we are seeing demand and growth opportunities for new hotels in fast-growing international markets like China and India. In addition, as transaction activity increases in more mature markets throughout North America and Europe we expect to see a number of high quality conversion opportunities to be realized, especially in light of the successful completion of the brand’s global revitalization.”
By 2015, 400 million Chinese and Indians will have sufficient incomes to travel abroad – for perspective that is seven times the number of international travelers who visited the United States last year.
