Marriott weighs in on Starwood’s future

The ceo of Marriott International has outlined four possible outcomes for Starwood, teasing that buying the hotel group was potentially one of them.

The comments come following last week’s announcement Starwood Hotels & Resorts would be exploring “a full range of strategic and financial alternatives to increase shareholder value”, adding that “no option” would be left off the table.

Marriott ceo, Arne Sorenson told delegates at the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference in Dubai overnight that while one option would be for the company to acquire the hotel group, which owns brands Le Meridian, St Regis, W Hotels and Sheraton among others, it would be unlikely.

“Either Marriott or Hilton acquires them, they acquire someone else equally strong, they receive a buyer from Middle East or Asia who wants a platform or it is ‘steady as it goes’, and they sell off real estate or get a new ceo. They are all potentially likely outcomes except perhaps the first one,” Sorenson said during a ‘Hard Talk’ session at the conference, and reported by Hotelier Middle East.

Sorenson said while Marriott had made significant acquisitions in recent years, a Starwood-type deal would be profoundly different.

According to Hotelier Middle East, Starwood senior vice president, acquisitions & development AMEA, Neil George, said Sorenson did not comment on “anything new or unexpected”.

“As we’ve said before, our Board has initiated a strategic review and no option is off the table so we will look at every single option and Arne laid out the four options that would be available to us or to any other company for that matter,” George told the paper.

“We’ve appointed Lazard Ltd. to work with us and explore all the options and once that exercise is completed we’ll have something to talk about.”

Responding to questions on whether Starwood would acquire another business, George told the paper “in 2005 we acquired Le Meridien, so it’s not something we haven’t done”.

Last week rumours were rife that Starwood would buy IHG, with some analysts saying it would be a logical tie-up between the two groups, in particular due to IHG’s strength in China.

“We’re looking at all kinds of options. I think those kinds of things come with the right opportunities and the right brands and they make a lot of sense,” George said to the paper at the conference.

“We look at that on continual basis; it’s not something we’ll look at just because of the announcement. We evaluate options all the time in Africa and the Middle East.”

Starwood also made a number of senior management changes yesterday, including appointing John Peyton to a newly created role of senior vice president, brands and shared services.

Global brand leader, Sheraton and Tribute Porfolio is to be led by Dave Marr, while Jim Petrus was named global brand leader, St. Regis.

Hoyt Harper was appointed as global brand leader, The Luxury Collection and Anthony Ingham as global brand leader, W Hotels Worldwide.

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