W Hotels is owned by Marriott (the United States, NASDAQ: MAR), which acquired the brand on 23 September 2016, as part of a $13 billion deal that also included Sheraton, Westin and St. Regis.[1][2] W Hotels was founded in 1998 in the United States and was independent until 2016.
Evidence: Marriott International, Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K filed 2026-02-10, SEC EDGAR, 10 February 2026. Verified from filings; last checked .
W was created by Starwood in 1998 as a design-led brand aimed at a younger traveller, and it largely invented the boutique-hotel-at-scale format that every major group has since copied.
A plain count of the times the name appears in the text of each annual report, not counting the start of a sentence. A brand that an owner writes about more is usually one it treats as central. The brand is named less often than it was three years earlier.
The USPTO record for the W Hotels mark lists STARWOOD HOTELS & RESORTS WORLDWIDE, LLC as the owner of record (serial number 77454500). A trademark is often held by a group company rather than the listed parent, so the registrant's name can differ from the owner named above.[3]
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
Open the full Marriott ownership tree →
See the full Marriott brand portfolio (26) →
Marriott controls 26 brands on Brandtree, 26 of them in travel & transport.
The 43 brands in luxury hotels on Brandtree belong to 22 owners. The largest is Genting, with 4; Marriott has 3.
| Brand | Owner | Owner based in |
|---|---|---|
| Crockfords | Genting | 🇲🇾 Malaysia |
| Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo | Monte-Carlo SBM | 🇲🇨 Monaco |
| Fairmont | Accor | 🇫🇷 France |
| Grand Fiesta Americana | Grupo Posadas | 🇲🇽 Mexico |
| InterContinental | IHG | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom |
| Anantara Hotels & Resorts | Minor International | 🇹🇭 Thailand |
| Song Hotels | H World | 🇨🇳 China |
| Conrad Hotels | Hilton | 🇺🇸 United States |
Marriott is a publicly listed company headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, United States, founded in 1927. Brandtree records 26 brands under its control, and it is listed as NASDAQ: MAR.
Marriott is the largest hotel company in the world by rooms and owns very few of the buildings its name appears on, operating instead through franchise and management agreements. Its 2016 purchase of Starwood brought thirty brands under one owner and created the largest loyalty scheme in travel.
Brandtree records a controlling owner for 2,570 brands that began in the United States. 492 of them (19%) are now controlled by a company headquartered in another country; W Hotels is not one of them.
Marriott acquired Starwood Hotels & Resorts for about $13 billion, creating the largest hotel company in the world with around thirty brands. A rival Chinese-led bid pushed the price up during the process before being withdrawn.
The parent company of W Hotels is Marriott, a publicly listed company headquartered in the United States.
Yes. W Hotels originated in the United States in 1998 and its owner, Marriott, is also headquartered in the United States.
Marriott completed its acquisition of W Hotels on 23 September 2016, after announcing the deal on 16 November 2015. The deal, which also included Sheraton, Westin and St. Regis, was valued at $13 billion.
W Hotels was an independent company from its founding in 1998 until Marriott acquired it in 2016.
Yes. As of 29 October 2026, W Hotels is still owned by Marriott. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
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