Starwood Plans 12,000 New Jobs - Analyst Blog

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (HOT) plans to add over 12,000 jobs in 2010. The news comes at a time when many companies are still shedding costs through job cuts. Additionally, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last Friday that the unemployment rate remained high at 10% in Dec. 2009, with over 15.3 million in the U.S. population having no jobs.

Approximately half of these new jobs will be in U.S. markets, ranging from New York to California. These jobs will include positions in general management, human resources, food and beverage, engineering and maintenance, housekeeping, spa and guest services.

The addition of these 12,000 jobs to its global workforce will come from the 80−100 new hotels that Starwood and its development partners have scheduled to open this year. The hotels will include Starwood’s nine brands and will be located in both urban markets such as New York City and Los Angeles and in smaller markets such as Biloxi, Mississippi and Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Starwood anticipates a large number of applicants for these jobs. As of Dec. 31, 2008, Starwood had approximately 145,000 people employed in its corporate offices, owned and managed hotels and vacation ownership resorts, of whom approximately 36% were employed in the United States.

Starwood is scheduled to release its fourth quarter financial results prior to the market opening on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010, followed by a conference call at 10:30 am EST. According to the Zacks Consensus Estimate, Starwood will report earnings of 21 cents per share for the fourth quarter and 69 cents per share for the full fiscal 2009.

The operating environment in the lodging sector has continued to deteriorate in the past few quarters, and we expect revenue per available room (RevPAR) to keep falling in the near term, though the rate of decline has moderated of late. However, we believe Starwood’s strong development pipeline will provide some relief and offset the declines.

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