More Starwood and Marriotts for Australia
by Leon Gettler
The new chief executive of the world’s largest hotel group clearly sees Australia as a growth market: he is planning to open more Starwood and Marriott brand hotels here.
With the $US14 billion ($18.36bn) Marriott-Starwood merger now proceeding, the president and CEO of Marriott International Arne Sorenson says the company is already looking at leads in Sydney.
“We want to actively look at more growth in Australia,” Mr Sorenson told The Australian.
He said there is one very good reason why Australia is attracting such interest: its proximity to Asia.
“Australia has been a real bright spot for new growth. It has not had that much hotel development — there is the Ritz Carlton in Perth and another hotel in Melbourne,’’ he said.
Certainly the merged entity will be massive. As Sorenson says, it will have 5500 hotels and 1.1 million hotel rooms around the world. Add to that the pipeline of another 350,000 rooms under development.
Mr Sorenson expects Marriott’s merger with Starwood will be finalised by midyear.
“Obviously we want to do everything in advance of that to start implementing decisions now,” he said.
And there are plenty of decisions to be made. There are questions of where the merged entity’s offices will be located. Also, which hotel technology systems are going to be adopted? And what’s the organisation’s new structure going to look like?
He said there will be a big focus on building and merging the loyalty programs of the two hotel brands.
To put it simply, Marriott’s rewards program has 55 million loyalty members and Starwood has 22 million. That’s a lot of members.
“We will be able to offer much more choices to our members. Besides making sure we don’t miss a beat and continue to take care of our guests, the single most important thing is to drive the strength of the loyalty program,” Sorenson said.
8th April 2016
