How Sheraton Lost Its Way and Marriott’s Plans to Bring It Back
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Before you read this, ask yourself: What exactly does Sheraton stand for? For example, Westin is synonymous with wellness, St. Regis with luxury, W with lifestyle. And at the end of this article, ask yourself that same question again. If you struggle to come up with an answer, it's clear Marriott has a lot more work to do with the Sheraton brand.
Marriott International doesn't just need to refresh the 80-year-old Sheraton hotels brand — it needs to transform it completely.
At the NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment conference last week, we got a chance to see exactly how Marriott intends to do just that. The company, which inherited Sheraton as part of its Starwood Hotels acquisition in 2016, constructed an entire 4,200 square-foot physical space in order to demonstrate to hotel owners and developers what the new Sheraton's public spaces would not only look like, but feel like.
The space itself was sleek, with midcentury modern influences, and at the heart of it was a massive "productivity table," designed to encourage guests and locals to do their work "alone together." Novel features of the table included the ability to lock personal items in a drawer and to wirelessly charge mobile phones.
"Studio spaces" that can be rented ad hoc from the digital "Sheraton Experience Platform" flanked the large comm
