Company Press Release: Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc.
December 10, 1999
WHITE PLAINS, NY -- Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc. announced yesterday that it has launched a major
drive to provide orphanages in Romania with badly needed winter items via the assistance of the International Red
Cross.
Over 50 hotels from 16 different countries are donating items such as blankets, bedspreads, mattresses and clothes,
along with towels, sheets, pillows and toys. The Red Cross will assist with pick-up and distribution of these items
by sending Red Cross trucks through Starwood's operations in Europe on their way to designated orphanages in Bucharest,
Romania. In Bucharest, a group of Starwood volunteers will meet the truck and help distribute the donated items.
``We estimate that over 5000 Starwood employees in Europe have been involved with this initiative in some way or
another,'' said Robert F. Cotter, President of Starwood's Europe Division. ``We are also sending a group of volunteers
to help with the distribution of the needed donations and toys donated from our staff. We hope that our team will
provide some holiday cheer for these kids.''
``With the help of our customers, we've been doing a lot of work this year for the children of Kosovo through Starwood's
'Check-Out-For Children Program,' along with targeted fund raising campaigns to aid in the earthquake relief efforts
in Turkey and Greece. As the winter deepens across Eastern Europe, Romania is often overlooked, and a group of
our reservation agents in Cork, Ireland have decided to help by organizing this campaign with the help of the Red
Cross.''
Cotter added, ``I hope that all of Starwood's employees will do something special within their local communities
during this holiday season. Europe's 'Check-Out-For-Children Program,' which has raised about US$4 million to date,
was the idea of and is administered daily by thousands of our front line staff. And our upcoming work in Romania
is yet another collaborative effort between our employees, our hotels and the communities in which we serve.''
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. through its St. Regis, Luxury Collection, Westin, Sheraton, Four
Points and W subsidiaries, is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with more than 700 hotels
in 77 countries and 130,000 employees at its owned and managed properties.
In 1998, the International Red Cross aided more than 1 million people with an estimated 9 million work hours in
missions in over 33 countries, providing urgent support in areas such as: Central America, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania,
Burundi, Rwanda, Colombia, Cambodia, Bosnia, Nigeria, Peru, Ecuador, Afghanistan, and Kenya.
SOURCE: Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc.