Starwood Brand Standards (Westin, Sheraton, Four Points, W...etc.)
 

Does anyone know what some of the brand standards are for each Starwood hotel chain? If not, I'd suggest to the Lurkers that they get permission to release some details, which could help us report the violators....

Some background: I stayed at a Holiday Inn earlier this month and asked if their rooms had hdtvs. The front desk manager responded: "As of November 2011, all Holiday Inn hotels that have the newer 'H' logo are required to have high-def TVs in guest rooms." I was also told that these hotels also had to meet a new--faster--internet speed requirement. Granted, while this didn't require the hotels to offer HD channels (presumably that will happen sometime in the future) on those TVs, I like to hook my laptop up to hdtvs to review PowerPoint presentations I'm going to give the next day. But these two features: hdtvs & fast internet are two of the most important things for me when I travel. Since there have been 25,000+ views of my other thread, regarding horrible internet speeds at Starwood hotels, I guess I'm not alone.

If a 3 star chain like Holiday Inn can demand that their hotels meet standards like this, why on earth can't Starwood force their hotels to have some basic consistency? This year alone, I can think of three separate Four Points hotels & one Sheraton hotel that still don't have hdtvs--something that weighs on my hotel decisions. And I'd say that ~60% of the Starwood hotels I stayed in this year still have awful/unusable internet speeds.

I think the best thing Starwood could do would be let us know what some of the basic brand standards are, since the lower-end Four Points & Sheraton hotels (more than any other Starwood brand) seem to ruin the brand reputation for their respective chain. If I'm staying at a Hyatt Place, Courtyard or even Holiday Inn (with the new logo), I have a general idea what my experience will be like--each hotel is remarkably similar. Not so for Four Points, where there are some AWFUL (Kansas City airport comes to mind) hotels, ditto Sheraton (Newark airport).

While I recognize that many of us (myself included) sometimes complain on this board, I could see a thread like this really creating an opportunity for Starwood to get some honest feedback (& free reporting) on their standards! I've been an SPG Plat for 10 years, but it concerns me that Starwood's standards seem to have dropped precipitously in the past few years. Not at all hotels, nor even at most hotels, but all you need is a few hotels to ruin the brand. Let those of us who love Starwood help to maintain its quality!

I'm going to guess that you're going to need to get more specific with your request. Although I've never seen any documentation, I'm sure that the brand standards for each brand cover numerous pages and aren't something that Starwood would be inclined to simply blanket on the internet. In the past, the Lurkers have answered brand standard questions on specific items.

Ok, in that case I'll start with these two specific requests:

1. What is the brand standard regarding in-room internet speed, by chain? Is it xx meg/sec per xxx rooms (so it could broken down to x meg/sec per room)? If not, will Starwood be moving to this policy, as it seems many other chains already have? When will all Starwood hotels be required to offer "high speed" internet (as some hotels currently--and correctly--only offer "high speed lite," which is practically dial-up speed)?

2. What are the brand standards regarding hdtvs in guest rooms, by chain? Are all chains currently required to have hdtvs in all guest rooms (if not, when?), what is the minimum tv size & when will hotels need to offer actual HD channels?

Thanks for the offer for assistance, but this is proprietary information and will not be exchanged outside of Starwood and its branded properties.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

Some of the Hilton brand standards (the whole guide, not just HDTV) can be found with Google. Try '<brand> brand standards guide'.