Westin Hotels & Resorts are an upscale hotel chain owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. As of 2011, Westin operated over 160 hotels in 37 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 in 1988 to Aoki Corporation of Japan.
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| Founded: | 1930 |
| Founders: | Severt W. Thurston, Frank Dupar |