Right places, right properties, right partners.” Dilip Puri, Managing Director, India and Regional V-P, South Asia, Starwood Asia Pacific Hotels & Resorts, summed up in these few words the hospitality major's agenda in the Indian market.

And going by the series of launches chalked out for the next few years, the strategy seems to have worked just perfectly.

Served on a platter for travellers in India is a motley collection of business hotels, chic properties, luxury selections and uber luxury additions from seven of the nine brands in Starwood Hotels & Resorts' kitty.

At the launch of the Sheraton Bangalore Hotel at Brigade Gateway, one of its most successful brands in India, the Starwood team was gung-ho about its unique positioning, targeting the right cities as well its mantra of ‘investing in the brands'.

Each brand to its own

Talking to BrandLine , Hoyt H. Harper II, Senior V-P, Brand Management, Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, emphasised that unlike other groups that position their hotel brands according to price points, Starwood brands are given their niche depending on the lifestyle choice of their guests and design.

So each brand has its unique positioning. “Sheraton, for example, is for the social traveller who loves to interact in public spaces, is successful, and enjoys luxury without pretence. Thus, Sheraton hotels always have common zones to meet and greet and it also invests more in beds. Aloft, on the other hand, targets guests who are more tech savvy, are always on their Blackberry or iPhone. Westin is more into pampering its guests, so it has larger guest rooms; W is very exclusive and St Regis is for the ‘left-side-of-the-menu' readers,” explains Harper.All the brands often cater to the same guests, but looking for a different experience, and they co-exist in different cities without competing with one another, he adds.

Room for more

“India is under utilised,” says Harper, adding that while the whole of India has 1,03,000 rooms, New York alone has 81,000 rooms.

It already has 32 hotels in its portfolio in the country, with 14 more in the pipeline.

These include four Alofts in Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Bangalore; two Westins each in Jaipur and Kolkata; while Visakhapatnam, Chandigarh, Mysore and Amritsar will get one Sheraton each.

Also launching soon in Mumbai is the luxury brand W.

Vincent Ong, Director, Brand Management, Asia Pacific for Sheraton and Westin says, “We have multiple campaigns in 2011, with lots of offers and packages in store.”

The group's loyalty programme has also worked well for it with 39 per cent of business in 2010 channelled through this programme.

According to the hotel group, as the largest operator of four- and five-star hotels in the world, Starwood is best positioned to benefit from the ongoing bounce-back and today luxury brands enjoy the strongest RevPAR (revenue per available room) gains of any segment.

The year 2010 played out better than predicted and the momentum continues into 2011, it says.

With 70 per cent of the world's growth over the next decade coming from fast-growing markets, Starwood's existing footprint and growth in these markets is a significant advantage.

India is Starwood's fourth largest market.

But the hero of Starwood's success story in India is Sheraton. In fact, Starwood, one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with 1,051 properties in 100 countries, has quite a few plans up its sleeve for Sheraton in India and globally.

All eyes on Sheraton

It is investing $120 million to roll out its new fitness programme with Core Performance that lets guests use the strategies developed by the leading experts in pro-athlete training.

The brand has also unveiled its specially designed branded portal powered by Microsoft's Bing decision engine called Link@Sheraton.

As part of the brand's $6-billion revitalisation efforts, Sheraton Hotels has redesigned about 400 lobbies worldwide to highlight this networking zone.

Also new to Sheraton is its global spa concept called Shine for Sheraton that will be developed exclusively for its hotels and will be featured in 17 hotels by 2011. So far, there are six Sheraton hotels in India.

But what India is waiting for is Starwood's uber luxury brand, St. Regis, that is expected to take the hospitality industry in India to a whole new level.

While plans are afoot to introduce Indian travellers to an altogether new experience, its lesser siblings meanwhile are leaving no stone unturned to bite into the meatiest bit of the Indian tourism pie.

Clearly, Starwood is on the ascendant.

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