Westin Hotels

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Westin Hotels & Resorts are an upscale[1] hotel chain owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. As of 2005 Westin operated over 120 hotels in 24 countries.

In 1930, hotel owners Severt W. Thurston and Frank Dupar, both of Yakima, Washington USA, formed a partnership in order to manage their hotels more efficiently. Together with Peter and Adolph Schmidt they formed Western Hotels, with seventeen properties, all but one in the state of Washington.

Early management developed each property individually. After more than two decades of rapid growth, prompting a name change in 1954 to Western International Hotels, many of its properties were merged into a single corporate structure in 1958, and the company went public in 1963. For its 50th anniversary in 1980, it changed its name again to the current Westin Hotels & Resorts.

In 1970, the chain was acquired by UAL Corporation. In 1987, UAL Chairman Richard Ferris announced a plan to make UAL into Allegis, a travel conglomerate based around United Airlines, Hertz Rent a Car, Hilton Hotels, and Westin and linked by Apollo. This strategy failed, however, and Westin was sold to Aoki Corporation of Japan. In 1994 Aoki sold it to Starwood Capital, real estate investment firm and parent of Starwood Lodging, and Goldman Sachs, an investment bank. In 1998 Starwood assumed full ownership of the company.

Among others, Westin claims to have been the first hotel chain to introduce guest credit cards (in 1946), 24-hour room service (1969), and personal voice mail in each room (1991).[2]

Westin markets certain amenities available in its properties to the public under the brand name Heavenly. In 2005, Westin became the first hotel company to gain a national retail store presence when Nordstrom started carrying the Heavenly Bed line in more than 60 stores.

Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta	Uptown Houston's Westin Oaks	Westin Southfield Detroit Hotel.	Westin at Gulshan, Dhaka.
Westin at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles.	Westin in downtown Seattle, WA.	Westin in downtown Ottawa, Ontario.	Westin in beach of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.