Starwood Hotels & Resorts has announced it will move its Senior Leadership Team to China for one month.

 

From June 8th through July 11th, Starwood President & CEO Frits van Paasschen and the company's top executives will be headquartered in Shanghai, where they will conduct day-to-day business on a 12-hour time difference with their "usual" operations in White Plains, New York.

 

"With properties in nearly 100 countries, Starwood is no longer an American company that happens to run some hotels overseas. Today, we're a global company that happens to be based in New York," said van Paasschen. "Eighty percent of our future pipeline is outside of North America, and nowhere is more emblematic of our global growth than China, where we will open one hotel every two weeks this year. China's spectacular transformation is hard to grasp unless experienced firsthand - it's the proverbial, 'you can't really understand a culture until you buy groceries there.'"

 

The group will delve into Starwood's extensive business in China, meeting with local customers, partners and developers, while also touring new properties throughout the country, the company said in a statement.

 

The company said it intends to implement a month-long global relocation annually. Its next high-growth target markets include Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and India.

 

"It is not just language that gets lost in translation, but also cultural nuances. The companies that will break away in an increasingly global world will be those that are most globally fluent," said van Paasschen.

 

Starwood announced this week plans to open one new hotel in China every two weeks in 2011.

 

Click here to read van Paasschen's blog post on the China management relocation