Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide announced on Wednesday its first conversion project for its Aloft brand – a company-owned hotel in San Francisco.
The 253-room Aloft San Francisco Airport, a former Clarion property, will undergo a significant renovation before opening in the summer of 2012.
“Building on the success of adaptive reuse projects like the award-winning Aloft Dallas Downtown, a former railroad depot, we’ve developed a conversion-friendly strategy for existing hotels to meet owner and guest demand for the brand while helping our partners reposition existing assets in a cost-effective manner,” said Simon Turner, president of global development for Starwood.
Turner added that with the right capital investment, well-located, older hotels in metro markets represent the better repositioning opportunities for the brand. “We see two types of opportunities as ideal candidates for an Aloft conversion: older hotels in need of a major renovation, and unique independent boutique hotels seeking a stronger brand point of view and the ability to utilize Starwood systems,” Turner said.
