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even passed around his picture to security guards. Though the board asked him to stay, Sternlicht declined. He felt hurt, like he was losing his baby.
A NEW STAR IS BORN Ten years later, there is rebirth. Though Starwood Hotels & Resorts was sold to Marriott International in 2016, Sternlicht retained the rights to the Starwood name. In the interim, Sternlicht built out SH Hotels & Resorts, managing and evolving brands 1 Hotels, Baccarat Hotels and Treehouse Hotels. In March, the SH Hotels name was retired and renamed Starwood Hotels, a nostalgic appellation for erstwhile SPG loyalists in search of cool and hip. The brands may have changed, but the promise hasn’ t, and the man behind it is even more energized this time around.“ Building Starwood Hotels
A Pu’ u Poa Ocean Loft Suite at 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay. Photo credit: Mikkel Vang
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this time is a labor of love,” Sternlicht said.“ We have the benefit of moving at the right speed. While I was able to innovate at the design level at Starwood 1.0, now is the time with AI to also rethink how we operate and how we are organized. We love brands that mean something or that can be pivoted to own a niche.”
W Hotels was Sternlicht’ s magnum opus. 1 Hotels is his reprise— a luxury, lifestyle brand heavily focused on sustainability and wellness complemented by biophilic design. W Hotels became a juggernaut, and Sternlicht says that 1 Hotels, with 15 currently open, is growing at an even faster rate. Sternlicht has made a fortune in real estate, but brands are a passion. During a recent industry conference, Sternlicht, who also serves on the board of Estée Lauder, floated a rather portentous
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message about consumer tastes and upstart brands— what he referred to as“ piranha brands”— that are eating up older brands.“ We have proven that smaller, nimbler brands that access all the distribution channels and social media can not only compete but excel versus the lumpy, older brands that have larger third-partyowned fleets,” he said.“ It’ s harder to move when you have hundreds of hotels sporting a generation of design that is not as relevant.”
Starwood Hotels 2.0 is not nearly at the scale of its former self and may not achieve it again. Maybe that’ s the point. Public lodging companies are typically rewarded on their ability to grow net units, which, as Sternlicht points out, can lead to a brand’ s biggest sin: going stale.“ It’ s a constant battle both internally and externally to stay on brand
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and maintain our service ethos,” Sternlicht said. A brand should have specific character and promise; for Sternlicht, achieving both is heavily drawn from design.“ Styling is an art,” he has said. Sternlicht will go into hotel rooms and shift the furniture around until it fits his eye. Lighting, he maintains, is crucial.“ When I see hotels without dimmer switches, I want to castrate someone,” he pointedly said on the Bensinger podcast. Sternlicht sent designers of the upcoming 1 Hotel Tokyo pictures of Zen gardens to capture his vision.
“ Hotels, more than any asset class, operate on feel,” he said. Consider 1 Hotel South Beach, a conversion of the Gansevoort.“ The building didn’ t move, the rooms didn’ t change size, the city is the same city, but we embarked on a massive redesign, and not something ChatGPT can show you how to do,” he said. The hotel now runs rates as much as $ 700 higher than when it operated as a Gansevoort.
Not every deal is an outright success.“ You learn more from your mistakes than from your successes and anyone who is on the playing field makes mistakes,” Sternlicht said.“ The difference is what you learn and how you prevent it from happening again.” He points to Starwood Capital’ s 2005 acquisition of Société Du Louvre for $ 3.2 billion as one of those learning experiences, what he called“ a defining transaction.” The deal included the Louvre Hotels
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