Starwood tops four categories in Travel Weekly's 2013 Readers Choice Awards

The Westin Sydney

Starwood Hotels & Resorts ("Starwood"), the world's largest high-end hotel company, was honored in four categories in the 11th annual Travel Weekly's Readers Choice Awards, namely, Best Hotel Chain in Asia, Hawaii/Pacific and Top Overall Hotel Group. The Company's Westin brand also won Best Hotel Chain in the "Upscale" category.

The nominees and award recipients were chosen in two rounds of voting by Travel Weekly's readers. Each category represents the "best of the best of the travel industry" and for the 2013 Readers Choice Awards, Travel Weekly registered a record 9,000 responses from travel professionals who voted for their favourites.

Starwood Senior Vice-President, Sales - Asia-Pacific, Ms Alison Taylor, said: "We are truly honored to be recognized by travel professionals who are experts in this field. Wining another four further amplifies the strength of our nine Starwood brands and demonstrates once again why travel professionals and meeting planners have more reasons to choose Starwood as their preferred hospitality partner."

Starwood has continuously strived to improve its platforms, offerings, products, services and meeting facilities to provide guests and meeting planners more value, better rewards, an enjoyable stay and a seamless event at all its properties. Its various platforms of services and benefits include:

Starwood Sales Organization - A strong and dedicated team of sales associates which is currently comprised of more than 5,000 associates to cater to our customers' needs in nearly 100 countries around the worldProprietary meeting portal StarwoodMeetings.com which was designed to increase the ease of doing business with Starwood. It delivers relevant and comprehensive content, and provides useful tools for all phases of the meeting planning process, making it easy for event planners to choose from over 1,000 Starwood properties worldwideStarwood Preferred Planner ("SPP") and Starwood Preferred Guest® ("SPG") loyalty programs which allow members to earn Starpoints® with their bookings that can be redeemed for attractive rewardsStarwoodPro, a destination education program for travel professionals that is also an exclusive resource center with important destination information such as activities as well as the location of Starwood properties. The information is categorized into modules and certificates are given upon the completion of each module. Those who successfully complete the Loyalty & Brands module will qualify for STARPRO travel professional rates

Asia Pacific continues to fuel Starwood's growth momentum. In 2013, the company opened 23 hotels in Asia Pacific, led by openings in China and Southeast Asia. This year, Starwood expects another strong year with major growth in Australia and the Pacific region. The company will open five more hotels including Sheraton Melbourne Hotel, Four Points by Sheraton Brisbane, Sheraton New Caledonia Deva Resort & Spa, Sheraton Fiji Resort & Spa, Tokoriki Island and debut Starwood's and Sheraton brand in Samoa with Sheraton Samoa Aggie Grey's Resort. Today, it operates 14 properties in the Pacific region, with nine hotels in Australia, including Sheraton on the Park; The Westin Sydney and The Westin Melbourne; Sheraton Mirage Resort & Spa, Gold Coast and Sheraton Mirage Port Douglas Resort; in addition to three hotels in Fiji and two in New Caledonia. Starwood in the Pacific manages properties under a range of brands including Westin, Sheraton, Le Meridien and Four Points by Sheraton.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with nearly 1,200 properties in 100 countries, and 171,000 employees at its owned and managed properties. We are a fully integrated owner, operator and franchisor of hotels, resorts and residences with the following internationally renowned brands: St. Regis®, The Luxury Collection®, W®, Westin®, Le Méridien®, Sheraton®, Four Points® by Sheraton, Aloft®, and Element®. One of the industry's leading loyalty programs, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) allows members to earn and redeem points for room stays, room upgrades and flights, with no blackout dates. Starwood also owns Starwood Vacation Ownership, Inc., a premier provider of world-class vacation experiences through villa-style resorts and privileged access to Starwood brands. For more information, please visit www.starwoodhotels.com.