Skift Take
With exponential growth in global wealth and connectivity, Starwood anticipates the next phase of hotel innovation will revolve around personalization.
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Starwood Hotels & Resorts CEO Frits van Paasschen is regarded as one of the brightest minds in the hospitality industry, which was on full display this summer at the hotel group’s annual Rendezvous sales pow wow in New Orleans. Starwood operates nine hotel brands: W Hotels, Westin, Sheraton, St. Regis, Starwood Luxury Collection, Le Meridien, Four Points by Sheraton, Element and Aloft.
Previously the CEO of Coors and GM of Nike Europe before moving into hospitality in 2007, van Paasschen has injected his lifestyle brand expertise into the Starwood brand building machinery. No hotel company has created and delineated hotel brand stories as well as Starwood.
During his 22-minute presentation at Rendezvous, van Paasschen defined today’s shifting global travel economy, tomorrow’s hotel trends and how his company is adapting to those trends ahead of the curve.
The following is a slightly abbreviated transcript of Frits van Paasschen’s speech at Starwood Rendezvous New Orleans 2013:
It’s safe to say it’s been a very big year. If you remember back to Seattle [Rendezvous 2012], we talked a lot about globalization and how the world is changing so quickly. One of the things we said then is that, 'We focus on the trend lines, and not the headlines.'
That is how we shape our business and our brand, from what I like to call ‘our court side seats at the global economy.’ And that change we talked about a year ago, if anything, today it has accelerated.
We see so much change in the world that we’ve coined the phrase ‘The Age of Great Change’ to describe what’s happening. Because around the world as we speak to customers and companies and industries in every sector, we also spend time talking to pools of capital and investors in over 100 different countries…. They are the people who build hotels with us. And maybe most importantly, every day we see the faces of over a quarter million travelers, and what’s going on in 1,150 hotels around the world. A
