About Westin By Marriott Birken
Marriott International’s Westin Hotels & Resorts is an upscale hotel chain managing more than 269 hotels in various locations worldwide. The first hotel under this brand was the Westin Seattle, which was formally introduced in 1981. The hotel beside Westin’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington was formerly known as Seattle’s Washington Plaza Hotel.
The history of Westin can be traced back in 1930 when competing hotel owners Frank Dupar and Severt W. Thurston decided to work together in establishing Western Hotels, along with other hotel owners Peter and Adolph Schmidt. The hotel chain was comprised of one hotel in Boise, Idaho and 16 in Washington.
The years that followed until the 1950s saw Western Hotel’s significant expansion to other states in the U.S. and Canada, including British Columbia, Vancouver, Oregon, Alaska, California, Utah, and Montana. Its first expansion outside the U.S. was marked by its management assumption of three Guatemala hotels in 1958 and opening one property in Mexico in 1961. In 1963, to reflect this significant milestone, the hotel chain was renamed to Western International Hotels. It was further changed to Westin Hotels in 1981 following the acquisition of the company by UAL Corp and other joint marketing deals it had had with other leading hoteliers.
Westin Hotels was sold from one company to another in the following years until it was finally bought by the world’s largest company, Marriott International from Starwood in 2016.
