Marriott’s Convention and Resort Network upped its portfolio to 106 hotels with the addition of 39 Starwood properties.
Following the Marriott and Starwood merger, the new combined company is working to up its brand portfolio—with the most recent addition to Marriott’s Convention and Resort Network (CRN) earlier this year. Between January and June, 39 Starwood properties were added to the portfolio, bringing the total up to 106 properties in Canada, North America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
“Yes, we have added a lot of new hotels this year, but we absolutely do not have a grow-at-any-cost approach,” Todd Sherstad, Marriott’s CRN director told Meetings and Conventions. “In fact, we are very particular about what hotels we invite. They have to meet certain physical as well as sales criteria and be a good fit for the other hotels in the network.”
The CRN is invite-only, and the new properties were 19 Sheraton hotels and 17 Westin hotels.
This year was also the CRN’s first foray into Canadian hotels, inviting two hotelss in Toronto, one in Montreal, and one in Vancouver.
“Prior to the Olympics, Vancouver was not on a lot of peoples’ lips,” Sean Antonson, the regional director of sales and marketing at Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, told Meetings and Conventions. “My understanding is that Marriott takes the CRN network very seriously, and we are learning as we go. We are looking to grow our inbound U.S. group segment, so it is definitely an important step for us.”
None of the newly invited properties to the CRN are from Delta Hotels and Resorts, which Marriott acquired in 2015 – and there are no plans in the works to include any of those properties, either, Sherstad said.