Starwood Capital Group Redesigns Website

Andrew Calvo | January 7, 2008 | 0 Comments

Normally it would not be news to anyone when a holding company redesigns their website – but today Starwood Capital Group redesigned their website, and finally explained some questions I always had about them, as well as put front and center their “Hotel Group”

StarwoodCapital.com had a website for years which really wasn’t very functional. Now obviously you would have the basic information – contact information, mission statement, important principals of the firm, career information, press releases and the meat and potatoes of what makes up Starwood Capital – information on their Funds.

With this re-design, they put in a few nice touches – images of some past projects that they were involved in, an easy way to discover some of the history of Starwood – how it formed Starwood Hotels, iStar Financial, Equity Properties and so on. One new feature which I personally liked is their “Hotel Group” section.

In this section it gives some background on Starwood Capital’s hotel and lodging holdings – explaining their positions in the industry.. The fact that they have started 1 Hotel, Le Crillion & Baccarat brands from the ground up, own and manage “existing brands” such as Concorde Hotels, and the Louvre Group, and also B.R. Guest Restaurants.

To those who follow Starwood with anything more than passing interest probably are well aware of Starwood’s involvement in all of the above – yet this is the first time that Starwood is actively making mention of it on their website – front and center. Demonstrating Starwood’s probable long term commitment to these ventures, and not just a passing interest.

One section which I found very interesting was their Disclaimer where if you read through the entire disclaimer you can see just how important Barry Sternlicht is to the firm.

Two things that the new site is missing is a press release section (the press release section on their old site was not updated since July 07), and also a Careers section (which I miss – how am I supposed to apply for a job there??!!). I also wish that they would go into some more details about their holdings – for example, its well known about their investment with Twin River Casino in Rhode Island, their owning of most of the Le Meridien hotel properties outside of America – but since Starwood Capital is a privately owned company, I should be happy that they have put as much information as they have on their site… Many private investment firms are not one to boast about their holdings (besides saying they manage x billions of dollars of so and so).

Like I said previously – this website design is a non-issue for 99.9% of the people out there, but it’s a welcome change in my eyes as I’m always interested in learning as much as I can about Starwood Capital.

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