Sunday, March 3 marked the beginning of a 30-day relocation of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc.’s global company headquarters from Stamford, Connecticut to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Ten senior executives will make the trip for the duration, and the team will conduct its day-to-day business from the Middle Eastern city. They will be joined by more than 200 other executives and managers for meetings.
One of the meetings which will take place during the next 30 days will be the company’s first General Manager’s Summit and investor event. Approximately 100 luxury hoteliers from locations around the world and representing the company’s St. Regis, W Hotels and The Luxury Collection will be in attendance.
Company executives from the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia will relocate to Dubai, which is 7,000 miles and nine time zones away from New York, for the 30-day period. They will use this time to meet with owners, customers, associates and prospective developers in the United Arab Emirates. The executives will also use Dubai as a base for trips to other locations, including Mumbai; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Dushanbe, Tajikistan; and Kuwait.
Moving the base of operations to Dubai is not the first time that Starwood Hotels has experimented with a change of venue for its senior managers. The company conducted a similar immersion in China in 2011.
Both experiences aimed at “cultivating a more global culture by understanding, appreciating and leveraging different societal perspectives and approaches to business and hospitality,” according to a company official.
With the majority of the company’s business coming from rapidly-growing markets, the move to a new location was deemed essential to keep a finger on the pulse of the global business. The entire company will be involved in the relocation through social media. A Tumblr feed, “Beyond the Boardroom,” and an instagram account, “StarwoodBuzz” have been set up.
Starwood promotes itself as “the most global high end hotel company,” and for good reason. It currently has 45 hotels in operation. Thirty more properties are under development in the Middle East. Fourteen hotels and six proposed properties are located in Dubai alone.
The company has plans to open new W Hotels in Amman, Muscat and Abu Dhabi. It will also open a second St. Regis hotel in Abu Dhabi, more St. Regis properties in Amman and Cairo. A Luxury Collection hotel is slated to open in the Emirate of Ajman. The company’s Middle East holdings are expected to increase by approximately 70 percent over the next five years.
