CEO Interview: Barry Sternlicht Is His Own Biggest Critic

Barry Sternlicht has a lot to be happy about these days. Just minutes after we spoke to the former founder and CEO of Starwood Hotels, who is now the founder, chairman, and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, Sternlicht officially opened his latest hotel, proclaiming it to be the "most exciting, greatest hotel I've ever done." And with panoramic views of Manhattan and an enviable location in the heart of New York City's Brooklyn Bridge Park, it's hard to disagree with him. But as you'll see in our following interview with Sternlicht, as happy as he is with his newest hotel, 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, he isn't completely satisfied just yet. For the billionaire real estate investor, everything is always a work in progress. There's always room for improvement. There's always room for more innovation. Skift spoke to Sternlicht about what it's like to build a new hotel brand from the ground up today, how the industry has changed, and what hospitality needs to do today to avoid becoming just a commodity. Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Skift: Well, it's been about two years since you opened the first 1 Hotels property in South Beach, Miami. In that time, do you think things have changed a little bit with the brand? I know you mentioned that, when you first opened it, that 1 Hotels was more of a cause than a brand. Sternlicht: Oh, it's still a cause. I think we're getting better at it. We keep learning from our mistakes. This hotel, I think, is the greenest of the hotels because we got to build it from scratch. We reclaim water, for example. We do a lot of things that you can do with a new building to start out. Wanting to build a green building, with all of this glass, and having these systems that are state-of-the-art ... I feel that, from that perspective, I think this is our laboratory as a showroom. It's just lots of little things that we didn't quite get right [before]. It's really a challenge to keep your designers focused on sustainable, renewable materials, and resources and they drift, you know, because they just wanted [something like this], and I tell them, "No, no, no, don't drift." And even here, I think there are some things that are a little too perfect. It's a little too complicated, and nature is not perfect. I mean, in a way it's perfect, but it's also raw, and so I still want to do things that are ... well, you'll see the next hotel. Skift: You mentioned mistakes, or things you want