Sheraton Hotels and Resorts

Sheraton Hotels and Resorts

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Hospitality
Founded	1937 in Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.
Founder	Ernest Henderson Robert Moore
Number of locations	400+ (worldwide)
Number of employees	145,000[1]
Parent	Marriott International
Website	sheraton.com

Sheraton Hotels and Resorts is a chain of luxury hotels owned by Marriott International.

History

The origins of the brand date back to 1933, when Harvard classmates Ernest Henderson and Robert Moore purchased the Continental Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1937, they purchased the Standard Investing Company and made it the company through which they ran their hotels. Their second hotel, and the first as part of the new company, was the Stonehaven Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts, a converted apartment building they purchased in 1937. The chain got its name from a third hotel the pair acquired in Boston, which already had a large lighted sign on the roof saying "Sheraton Hotel" that was too expensive to change. Instead, Henderson and Moore decided to call all of their hotels by that name.^[2]

Henderson and Moore purchased Boston's famed Copley Plaza Hotel in 1941, continuing with their rapid expansion and opening properties along the entire East Coast. In 1945, Sheraton was the first hotel chain to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

In 1949, Sheraton expanded internationally with the purchase of two Canadian hotel chains. In 1956, Sheraton purchased the Eppley Hotel Company, which was then the largest privately held hotel business in the United States, for $30 million.^[3] Three years later, in 1959 it purchased the four hotels owned by the Matson Lines in Honolulu, Hawaii, its first hotels outside North America. In 1955, Sheraton began to build large highway hotels (100-300 rooms); in 1962 a franchise division was created to promote Sheraton Motor Inns. These provided free parking and competed with roadside motels.^[4]

The 1960s saw the first Sheraton hotels outside the US and Canada with the opening of the Tel Aviv-Sheraton in Israel in February 1961 and the Macuto-Sheraton outside Caracas, Venezuela, in 1963. By 1965, the 100th Sheraton property, the Sheraton-Boston Hotel, had opened its doors.^[5] The multinational conglomerate ITT purchased the chain in 1968, after which it was known as ITT Sheraton. The chain deployed its automated Reservatron system^[6] and, in late 1969, a US national toll-free number displaced two hundred local Sheraton reservation numbers.^[7]

In 1985, ITT Sheraton became the first western company to operate a hotel in the People's Republic of China. It assumed management of the state-built Great Wall Hotel in Beijing, which became the Great Wall Sheraton.

ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection

On January 13, 1992, ITT Sheraton designated 28 of its premier hotels and 33 of the Sheraton Towers, the luxury "hotel-within-a-hotel" facilities located within Sheraton's largest and most exclusive hotels, as the ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection.^[8] The flagship of the division was The St Regis in New York City. In 1994, ITT Sheraton purchased a controlling interest in the Italian CIGA chain,^[9] the Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi, or Italian Grand Hotels Company, which had been seized from its previous owner, the Aga Khan, by its creditors. The chain had begun by operating hotels in Italy, but over-expanded across Europe just as a recession hit.^[10] The majority of these hotels were placed in the ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection, though a few were placed in the Sheraton division. After Sheraton's purchase by Starwood, The Luxury Collection was marketed as a separate division, though it somewhat confusingly contained a large number of hotels still named Sheraton. Most have been renamed over the last few years, there are only three such hotels remaining today, operating with the name Sheraton, but not technically part of Sheraton - Sheraton Addis (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit (Bangkok, Thailand), and Sheraton Kuwait Hotel (Kuwait City, Kuwait).

Four Points by Sheraton

In April 1995, ITT Sheraton introduced a new, mid-scale hotel brand, Four Points by Sheraton Hotels, to replace the designation of certain hotels as Sheraton Inns.

Purchase by Starwood

In 1998, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. acquired ITT Sheraton, outbidding Hilton. Under Starwood's leadership, Sheraton began renovating many hotels and expanding the brand's footprint.

Purchase by Marriott

In 2016, Marriott International purchased Starwood Hotels, and the newly-merged company became the largest hotel and resort company in the world.

Sponsorships

• Hawaii Bowl (2003-2013)

Gallery

• Sheraton Hotels and Resorts
• 
  Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel, New York City
• 
  Le Centre Sheraton Hotel, Montreal
• 
  Sheraton Princess Kaiulani Hotel, Hawaii
• 
  Sheraton Stockholm Hotel & Towers
• 
  Sheraton Tunis Hotel & Towers, Tunisia
• 
  Sheraton Hotel Adana, Turkey
• 
  Sheraton Oran Hotel & Towers, Algeria
• 
  Sheraton Libertador Hotel Buenos Aires
• 
  The Sheraton Zhongshan Hotel in Zhongshan, Guangdong, China
• 
  Sheraton Hotel Zagreb
• 
  Sheraton Hotel and adjacent square in Batumi, Georgia
• 
  Sheraton Hong Kong Hotel And Towers
• 
  Sheraton Parkway Toronto
• 
  Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel
• 
  Sheraton Hotel Xiamen, Fujian, China
• 
  Sheraton Miramar in Viña del Mar, Valparaiso, Chile

See also

• Eppley Hotel Company
• Holiday Inn
• List of chained-brand hotels
• List of hotels
• Sheraton on the Falls
• Sheraton Hawaii Bowl

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sheraton hotels.

• Official website