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Sheraton Hotels and Resorts is an American international hotel chain owned by
Marriott International Marriott International, Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational company that operates, franchises, and licenses lodging brands that include hotel, residential, and timeshare properties. Marriott International owns over 37 ho ...
. As of June 30, 2020, Sheraton operates 446 hotels with 155,617 rooms globally, including locations in North America, Africa, Asia-Pacific, Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East and the Caribbean, in addition to 84 hotels with 23,092 rooms in the pipeline.


History


Early years

The origins of Sheraton Hotels date to 1933, when
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
classmates Ernest Henderson and Robert Moore purchased the Continental Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1937, Henderson and Moore purchased the Standard Investing Corporation and the International Equities Corporation, combining them into the Standard Equities Corporation, the company through which they would run their hotels. Also in 1937, they purchased their second hotel, and the first as part of the new company, the Stonehaven Hotel in
Springfield, Massachusetts Springfield is the most populous city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, and its county seat. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the ea ...
, a converted apartment building. Sheraton dates its founding to that year and considers that property its first hotel. The chain got its name from the third hotel the pair acquired, in Boston, in 1939. It had a large lighted sign on the roof saying "Hotel Sheraton," which was too expensive to change. Instead, Henderson and Moore decided to call all of their hotels by that name. The original name was probably a reference to furniture designer Thomas Sheraton. Henderson and Moore purchased Boston's famed Copley Plaza Hotel in 1941, and continued expanding rapidly, buying existing properties along the East Coast from Maine to Florida. In 1946, the Standard Equities Corporation merged with the United States Realty and Improvement Corporation, forming the Sheraton Corporation of America, which became the first hotel chain to be listed on the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...
in 1947.


Expansion

In 1949, Sheraton expanded internationally, buying the Ford Hotels chain, with three properties in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. They quickly resold the Toronto and Ottawa properties to finance their continued Canadian expansion in 1950, paying $4.8 million to purchase Cardy Hotels, a chain of six properties in Ontario and Quebec. In April 1951, the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City would host the
1951 NBA draft The 1951 NBA draft was the fifth annual draft of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The draft was held on April 25, 1951, before the 1951–52 season. In this draft, ten remaining NBA teams took turns selecting amateur U.S. college baske ...
, which was the second ever draft under the
NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Ca ...
name and fifth overall
NBA draft The NBA draft is the National Basketball Association's (NBA) annual event, dating back to 1947 BAA draft, 1947, in which the teams in the league can Draft (sports), draft players who declare for the draft and that are Eligibility for the NBA dr ...
in existence by that time. In 1956, Sheraton paid $30 million to buy the Eppley Hotel Company, which was then the largest privately held hotel business in the United States, with 22 properties across six Midwestern states. Sheraton retained ten of the largest hotels and immediately resold the other twelve. That same year, Sheraton acquired its first motels, purchasing two properties in the suburbs of Syracuse, New York. In 1957, Sheraton, which had previously focused on acquiring existing hotels, opened its first newly built hotel, the Philadelphia Sheraton Hotel. In 1958, Sheraton became the first hotel chain to centralize and computerize its reservations when it introduced ''Reservatron'', the hotel industry's first automatic electronic reservations system. In 1959, Sheraton acquired its first properties outside North America, purchasing four hotels owned by the
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on Waikiki Beach in
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,
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- the Moana Hotel, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, the SurfRider Hotel, and the Princess Kaiulani Hotel. That same year Sheraton opened its first newly built motel, marketed as a "Highway Hotel," the Sheraton Inn, located in Binghamton, New York. The early 1960s saw the arrival of the first Sheraton hotels outside the US and Canada, with the opening of the Sheraton-Tel Aviv Hotel in
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in March 1961 and two Caribbean properties in 1962 - the Sheraton-Kingston Hotel in
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and the Sheraton British Colonial in
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. In 1962, Sheraton created a franchise division, primarily to operate Sheraton Motor Inns, large highway motels providing free parking. In 1963 Sheraton opened its first hotel in South America, the Macuto-Sheraton Hotel, outside
Caracas, Venezuela Caracas ( , ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern p ...
. In 1965 the 100th Sheraton property, the Sheraton-Boston Hotel, opened. In 1966 Sheraton opened its first hotel in an Arab country, the Kuwait-Sheraton Hotel. In 1967 Sheraton unveiled ''Reservatron II'', a computer system for personalized reservations. That same year, Sheraton opened its first hotel in Asia, the Sheraton-Philippines Hotel in Manila; its first hotel in Europe, the Sheraton-Du Cap Hotel on the island of
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in France; and its first hotels in Australia, two Sheraton Motor Hotels in Melbourne and Sydney.


Purchase by ITT

In 1968, the multinational conglomerate
ITT Corporation ITT Inc., formerly ITT Corporation, is an American worldwide manufacturing company based in Stamford, Connecticut. The company produces specialty components for the aerospace, transportation, energy and industrial markets. ITT's three businesses ...
purchased the chain and immediately sold eighteen aging Sheraton properties. Under ITT's ownership, Sheraton quickly moved away from ownership and operation of its properties to a new model of franchising and management, as the chain expanded greatly both in the US and abroad. In late 1969, Sheraton introduced the hotel industry's first nationwide
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, which displaced two hundred local Sheraton reservation numbers. The radio jingle for "Eight-Oh-Oh, Three-Two-Five, Three-Five Three-Five" "ran throughout the decade and into the eighties" but the jingle's lifespan went even beyond. In 1970, Sheraton introduced the Sheraton Towers concept, a line of luxury "hotel-within-a-hotel" facilities designed for business travelers and located within Sheraton's largest and most exclusive hotels. The first Sheraton Towers to open was in the chain's flagship Sheraton-Boston Hotel. That same year, Sheraton opened its first hotel in
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, the Cario-Sheraton Hotel & Casino. In 1971 Sheraton opened its first hotels in
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, the Sheraton Stockholm Hotel and the Sheraton-Copenhagen Hotel. In 1972, Sheraton opened its first hotel in
Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...
, the Sheraton-Mont Febe Palace in Yaounde,
Cameroon Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...
. From 1977 to 1997 the company was headquartered at 60 State Street in Boston. In 1985, Sheraton became the first western chain to operate a hotel bearing the name of an international company in the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
, when it assumed management of the Great Wall Hotel in
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, a financially troubled two-year-old Chinese-American joint venture, which became the Great Wall Sheraton. By 1987, ''The New York Times'' described it as "50 years old, the world's largest hotel chain, and consumer-driven." On October 24, 1989, Sheraton was officially rebranded as ITT Sheraton.


Development in the 1990s

On January 13, 1992, ITT Sheraton designated 28 of its premier hotels and 33 of the Sheraton Towers as the ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection. The flagship of the division was The St Regis in New York City. In 1994, ITT Sheraton purchased a controlling interest in the Italian CIGA chain, the Compagnia Italiana Grandi Alberghi, or Italian Grand Hotels Company. The chain had begun by operating hotels in Italy, but over-expanded across Europe just as a recession hit, and had been seized from its previous owner, the
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, by its creditors. The majority of these hotels were placed in the ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection, though a few were placed in the Sheraton division. In April 1995, ITT Sheraton introduced a new, mid-range hotel brand,
Four Points by Sheraton Four Points by Sheraton is an American multinational hotel brand operated by Marriott International that targets business travelers and small conventions. As of June 30, 2020, Marriott operated 291 properties worldwide under the Four Points by Sh ...
, to replace the designation of certain hotels as Sheraton Inns.


Purchase by Starwood

In 1998, Starwood acquired ITT Sheraton for $13.3 billion, topping an offer by rival Hilton. Under Starwood's leadership, Sheraton began renovating many hotels and expanding the brand's footprint. Starwood also began marketing The Luxury Collection as a completely separate brand, even though it contained a large number of hotels still named Sheraton. Most of those properties have since been renamed. Only three such hotels remain today - Sheraton Addis in (
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,
Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...
), Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit in (
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,
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), and Sheraton Kuwait in (
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,
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). Also in 1998, Sheraton joined with the Arabella Hospitality Group in Germany to create ArabellaSheraton, a joint venture under which 14 Arabella Hotels in Germany, Switzerland and Spain were rebranded as ArabellaSheraton Hotels. In 1999, Sheraton bought the outstanding shares in CIGA, giving it complete ownership. In 2015, Starwood introduced the "Sheraton Grand" brand, higher-end Sheraton properties located in urban or resort destinations.


Takeover by Marriott

In 2016,
Marriott International Marriott International, Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational company that operates, franchises, and licenses lodging brands that include hotel, residential, and timeshare properties. Marriott International owns over 37 ho ...
purchased Starwood Hotels, and the newly merged company again became the world's largest hotel and resort company. Although the Sheraton brand expresses quality in Asia, aging properties have made the US market more problematic. In 2023, Marriott announced a new spinoff brand of Four Points by Sheraton, called Four Points Express by Sheraton, targeting the mid-range market in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Its first property opened in
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, Turkey that fall. In 2024, the brand was renamed Four Points Flex by Sheraton.


Accommodations


See also

* Eppley Hotel Company * List of chained-brand hotels * List of lists of hotels *
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References


External links

* {{ITT Corporation American companies established in 1937 Hotels established in 1937 Marriott International brands Franchises ITT Inc. 1937 establishments in Massachusetts 1968 mergers and acquisitions 1998 mergers and acquisitions