WHITE PLAINS, New York: Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc opened its 1,000th hotel in the world on Wednesday along East China's Qiandao Lake, also known as the Lake of a Thousand Isles.
The selection of the milestone hotel, Sheraton Qiandao Lake Resort, represents Starwood's ambitious expansion plan in the Chinese market. While Starwood currently has 54 hotels up and operating in China, it has another 70 hotels under development or construction in the country, according to a company executive.
"We will have 100 hotels in China by the end of 2012 and double our footprint in China from the end of 2009 to the end of 2012," Matthew Avril, president of the hotel group for Starwood Hotels and Resorts, told China Daily in an exclusively interview on Tuesday in the Starwood headquarters in White Plains, outside New York City.
Avril said China is not only the fastest developing market for Starwood in terms of growth, but also a very important market globally due to outbound travel excursions made by China's growing middle class.
Starwood CEO Frits van Paasschen described China as one of the world's largest outbound tourism markets with more than 100 million trips abroad a year - 10 times the number of trips by Japanese tourists, who had a profound impact on the industry in the 1980s.
"When Chinese do travel, they are going to stay in the brands that they know from home, which will have a meaningful effect on our business globally and underscores why we are investing so heavily in this critical market now," Van Paasschen said.
Avril, who travels to Asia several times a year, said Starwood's top management works on their China strategy every day.
By 2012, China will become the second largest market for Starwood outside the United States.
"And there is no reason why China should not be our largest market," said Avril, but when, he did not know.
Starwood now has 500 hotels in North America, including the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
He believes that with 170 cities in China with a population of 1 million or more, compared with some 35 markets in the US with 1 million residents, there are enormous opportunities and a bright future for all Starwood brands in China.
Starwood expects to open 80-100 additional hotels in 2010, 20 of which will be in China.
According to data from STR Global, a hotel industry watcher, there are 360 hotel projects comprising 124,109 rooms either planned or under construction in China.
The hotel group includes Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton, Westin, Le Meridien and St Regis-branded hotels.
Starwood is going to open its first W hotel on the Chinese mainland later this year in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
