By Tom Belden, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Dec. 28--Barely six months after the luxury hotel at 17th and Chestnut Streets switched from being a Ritz-Carlton
to an equally posh St. Regis, it will get a third, less luxurious brand name hung on it, the hotel's owners said
yesterday.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. said it will change the 290-room St. Regis to a Westin, its upscale
chain aimed at business travelers, effective Feb. 15.
Starwood officials said it had no plans to dismiss any of the 350 St. Regis employees, including its widely touted
staff of butlers, who were supposed to give the hotel a competitive edge over the city's other luxury lodgings.
As the Westin, the butlers will have other jobs, the officials said.
By not having a hotel in central Philadelphia, "the Westin customers were missing a major market," said
Norman MacLeod, Starwood's vice president for operations. "We felt it was important to fill that gap. ...
It wasn't that there was anything wrong."
However, the St. Regis hasn't been commanding as high an average daily room rate as the city's other luxury hotels,
according to information available to travel agents in their computerized reservations systems.
Throughout December, the Four Seasons Hotel was able to get customers to pay rates of $210 to $280 a night for
a standard room, compared with an average of $179 for the St. Regis. The Rittenhouse Hotel was offering rates of
$199 a night on many of the same nights.
Starwood officials said the average daily rate in recent months at the St. Regis was $202 a night, and it would
stay at that level as a Westin.
Starwood, which owns hotel real estate and operates more than 700 Sheraton, Four Points, Westin, Caesars, Luxury
Collection and St. Regis hotels, announced with great flourish on Feb. 9 that it would convert the 10-year-old
Ritz-Carlton to a St. Regis. It made the switch July 1.
That change for the building, which has been owned by Starwood for almost three years, came as Ritz-Carlton, a
division of Marriott International Inc., began working in earnest on opening a new hotel in the landmark former
Girard Trust and Mellon Bank buildings on East Penn Square. The 330-room Ritz is expected to open next spring.
Hotel-industry consultant Peter R. Tyson said he believes the Westin brand name will improve the hotel's performance:
"When it was announced it was going to become a St. Regis, I wasn't sure what, if any, value it would bring,
because that name is not known here."
Starwood, based in White Plains, N.Y., said it also plans to change the brand names on two hotels it owns at Route
291 and Island Avenue, near Philadelphia International Airport, on Saturday. The 251-room Westin Suites will become
a Sheraton, and the 177-room Sheraton hotel next to it will become a Four Points, a moderately priced brand.
Starwood officials added that they are still working on building one of the company's trendy `W' hotels in the
abandoned NewMarket complex in Society Hill. That project, announced earlier this year, is to be done with a group
of investors led by actor Will Smith, a Philadelphia native.
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