
Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resort have just announced the separate, but concomitant meetings for their shareholders with a goal to merge their commercial operations.
Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resorts are cooperating with competition authorities worldwide as they seek regulatory approvals for the transaction, which the companies expect to close mid-2016. Respectively 3rd and 7th in the ranking worldwide of hotel groups in number of rooms (by MKG Consulting) prior to the merger, they will become the biggest player worldwide, with more than one million rooms (combined total as per January 1, 2015 figures from MKG Consulting), of which close to 800,000 are on the upscale alone.