“There is this lagging perception, and that is why we’re going through the U.S. portfolio of the Ws and seeing which ones still belong with the brand the way it’s newly conceived, and those that don’t.”

　　Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide is in the midst of refurbishing 10 W Hotels Worldwide properties in North America.

　　Its ownership groups, which include Host Hotels & Resorts, Rockpoint Group and Estein & Associates USA, have committed more than US$100 million to the renovations. Many of the renovations focus on the Living Room (W’s take on the lobby), which is a key element to the W experience.

　　To find out what’s behind this push and how it fits into Starwood’s luxury play, HOTELS Editor in Chief Jeff Weinstein sat down with Frits van Paasschen, CEO and president of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, at this week’s International Hotel Investment Forum in Berlin for a wide-ranging interview, more of which will be published on HOTELSMag.com next week.

Frits van Paasschen, CEO and president of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

　　HOTELS: What is the strategy behind Starwood"s big push on the luxury side?

　　Frits van Paasschen: The decision to do this is a confluence of a few things. The first is, and I think maybe most important, is this massive secular growth in demand for and consumption of luxury brands. Not just for hotels, but in general, and that is a function of a fact that there are more people joining the ranks of the affluent with an appetite for luxury than there has ever been before.

　　That is the external drive for this. Internally, we look at our own luxury business and between the three brands — W Hotels Worldwide, St. Regis Hotels and Resorts and The Luxury Collection, where we have almost 160 hotels. We have essentially doubled that footprint in the last five years in spite of all that’s gone on and those hotels have all performed as well or better than before the crisis, and continue to do well.

　　Not only is there great demand for luxury, but we are meeting that with three brands that are very different in their character and their brand positioning and what people coming to those hotels looking for.

　　The challenge for us is to think about those things we can do in serving luxury travelers that can benefit from the platform of the three brands or the entire Starwood system.