Marriott International has finalised its acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, making Marriott the largest hotel group in the world.
Starwood put itself up for sale in April 2015, which led to a bidding war between Marriott and Anbang, a Chinese insurance group. However, earlier this year Anbang withdrew its offer leaving Marriott to move forward with the merger.
The two groups linked their loyalty programmes as of Friday, September 23. Members will have their statuses matched and be able to transfer and redeem points across the programmes.
The merger brings the group’s total properties to over 5 700 in 110 countries and has doubled Marriott’s distribution in Asia, the Middle East and Africa combined.
