Westin Hotels & Resorts

• 1. Introduction

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  Westin Hotels & Resorts, an American upscale hotel chain now owned by Marriott International, began with a chance encounter over breakfast in 1930. The setting was the coffee shop of the Commercial Hotel in Yakima, Washington. Severt W. Thurston and Frank Dupar, both of Seattle, ran competing hotels and had not arranged to meet that morning.

  Today the brand counts 226 properties holding 82,608 rooms. Another 58 hotels with 15,741 rooms are in its pipeline. How did a conversation between two rivals grow into a chain with that reach? Why did the company change its name so many times, and who owned it along the way? And which small comforts that guests now take for granted did this chain offer first?

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• 2. Depression Partnership

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  The Great Depression was already crushing hotel owners when Thurston and Dupar agreed to hand their properties to a single management company. They invited Peter and Adolph Schmidt, who operated five hotels around Puget Sound, to join them. Together the four men founded Western Hotels. The new chain began with 17 properties, 16 of them in Washington and one in Boise, Idaho.

  In 1931 the company reached Vancouver, British Columbia and Portland, Oregon. Alaska followed in 1939. California came in 1941, when Western took over management of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed.

  Utah joined the map in 1949, and Montana in 1950. In Seattle, meanwhile, a Western Hotels executive was working on a restaurant deal that would reach well beyond the lobby.

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• 3. Seattle Landmarks

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  In 1949, Edward Carlson persuaded Victor Bergeron, known as Trader Vic, to open his first franchised restaurant in the chain's Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Seattle. It started as a small bar called The Outrigger. In 1954 it grew into a full restaurant, and in 1960 it took the name Trader Vic's. Its success led Bergeron to open more locations inside other Western hotels.

  The Olympic Hotel in Seattle came under Western's management in 1955 and became the chain's new flagship. Headquarters moved from the New Washington Hotel to a freshly decorated suite on the 12th floor of the Olympic. The move marked the chain's 25th anniversary.

  Carlson became president in 1960. He is credited with bringing the Century 21 Exposition to Seattle in 1962. His own napkin sketch of a tower with a revolving restaurant on top, inspired by a visit to the Stuttgart TV Tower, was the origin of the Space Needle. During the fair, Western also ran a floating hotel aboard an ocean liner docked in Seattle harbor.

  The restaurant atop the Space Needle stayed under the chain's management until 1982, long after the company had changed its name.

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• 4. Going International

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  Hawaii entered the picture in 1956, when Western took over management of the Hawaiian Village Hotel, built by Henry J. Kaiser. Until then, each property had been managed on its own. After more than two decades of fast growth, many of the hotels were merged into one corporate structure in 1958, with the aim of giving them a shared identity.

  That same year, the chain took on three hotels in Guatemala. These were its first properties outside the United States and Canada. Its first Mexican hotel opened in 1961.

  In March 1961, the chain opened The Bayshore Inn in Vancouver, the first hotel it had both built and owned. The company took the name Western International Hotels in January 1963, to reflect its growth beyond the United States. By the mid-1960s it was publicly held, with shares traded on the American Stock Exchange.

  Partnerships with other hotel companies soon gave the enlarged chain even more reach.

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• 5. Partners and Parents

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  From the 1st of November 1965 to 1970, Western International shared a marketing agreement with the Hotel Corporation of America, known today as Sonesta. Together the two chains offered 72 hotels, promoted jointly as HCA and Western Hotels. A similar arrangement with the British company Trust House Hotels ran from 1968 to 1973.

  In 1970, UAL Corporation acquired Western International. Edward Carlson became president and chief executive of UAL, Inc and of United Airlines. The hotel company that began with a breakfast was now part of an airline group.

  In 1975, Western International bought New York's iconic Plaza Hotel for $25 million.

  On the 5th of January 1981, the company shortened its name to Westin Hotels, a contraction of Western International. The Washington Plaza Hotel in Seattle, its flagship, was the first to be rebranded, becoming The Westin Hotel on the 1st of September 1981. That year Westin also opened a new headquarters, the Westin Building, directly across the street. The building shared a parking garage with the hotel.

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• 6. Sold and Resold

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  In 1987, UAL chairman Richard Ferris announced a plan to reorganize the company as Allegis Corporation. It was meant to be a travel conglomerate built around United Airlines, Hertz Rent a Car, Hilton International Hotels and Westin. The Apollo computer reservation system would link them all.

  The strategy failed. In 1988, Allegis sold Westin to the Japanese Aoki Corporation for $1.35 billion. Aoki promptly sold the Plaza Hotel to Donald Trump for $390 million.

  In 1994, Aoki agreed to sell Westin to the real estate investment firm Starwood Capital Group and to Goldman Sachs. The price was $561 million, an enormous loss for the seller. By the time the sale closed in May 1995, the buyers had negotiated it down to $537 million. Starwood took full ownership in 1998.

  The next change came in 2016, when Marriott International acquired Starwood Hotels and Resorts and became the world's largest hotel company.

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• 7. Guest Firsts

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  Back in 1946, Westin became the first hotel chain to introduce credit cards for guests. In 1969 it was first again, this time with 24-hour room service. Personal voice mail in each room followed in 1991.

  The most famous comfort arrived in 1999, when Westin began selling the Heavenly Bed mattresses used in its properties to the general public. Simmons Bedding Company manufactured them. In 2005, Westin partnered with Nordstrom, which stocked the mattresses and bedding in its stores.

  In 2011, the Heavenly mattresses and bedding also went on sale at Pottery Barn stores. A bed first designed for hotel guests had become a retail product.

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• 8. The Modern Portfolio

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  In 2016, the chain counted 217 properties and 81,249 rooms. By 2023 the figures stood at 243 properties and 88,157 rooms. The count of rooms dipped slightly in 2020, to 81,800 from 82,472 the year before, even though the number of properties held at 225.

  North America remains the largest region, with 134 properties in 2023. Europe had 17 that year, the Middle East and Africa had 8, and the Caribbean and Latin America had 15.

  The notable hotels span the globe. They include The Westin Grand Berlin, The Westin Dhaka, The Westin Zagreb, The Westin Leipzig and The Westin Excelsior in Rome. In North America the list includes The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in Los Angeles, The Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta, The Westin St. Francis and The Westin Nova Scotian in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Moana Surfrider, A Westin Resort & Spa, and the Walt Disney World Swan are also on the list.

  The fastest growth is in Asia and the Pacific, where the chain went from 51 properties in 2016 to 69 in 2023, with rooms rising from 16,299 to 21,173.

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