Starwood Hotels is planning to move their CEO Frits van Paasschen and other key executives to come and live and work out of Starwood’s India hotels in Mumbai and Delhi for a month, in the month of March 2015.
For a company in the hospitality business, to be close to their customers is important, and Starwood is making that effort. In the past, Starwood’s top brass has been over to Shanghai for a month in 2011, and in 2013, about 200 Starwood executives were in Dubai for 30 days, appreciating local nuances to build them into their management philosophy for the regions.
As per the Wall Street Journal, Starwood already has 40 hotels they operate in India, and another 36 projects in the pipeline. Starwood pegs the number of travellers from India in 2020 to be over 50 million, and this makes us an attractive market for them.
Also, an interesting tidbit via the Mint newspaper:
The country will play an outsized role in global travel within the next decade and continues to be among the richest sources of new loyal travellers for Starwood, with Indian enrolment in Starwood Preferred Guest, Starwood’s loyalty programme, doubling every two years since 2007.
Welcome to India, Starwood. I’m hoping to see more of you here!
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Perhaps they will get ITC to step up dreadful compliance with the elite program.