Today, Fool contributor Matt Thalman discusses the recent change that Starwood Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: HOT) made to their global headquarters, and how that may impact the company in the future.
Recently, Starwood moved its top management team to Dubai for one month. While, at first, this may sound crazy, Starwood's top brass performed a similar move in 2011 when they went to China for one month.
With a massive amount of potential hotel growth in China, Latin America, and the Middle East, these moves allow management to learn about the area and culture, and experience some of the pitfalls of doing business in a different region of the world on a first-hand basis. These experiences, and this style of learning, will give the team insight and knowledge which they would have never learned if they had remained in their cushy offices and board rooms in Connecticut.
Starwood is rapidly growing, and the company has more than 80% of its future hotels opening outside the United States. This should allow the company to capitalize on the strength of the world economy and, perhaps, become the most dominate player in the industry.
