Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. has chosen Denver as one of five cities in which it will launch a new urban hotel brand called Aloft, the company announced Wednesday.
Aloft will be a less expensive version of Starwood’s trendy, upscale W Hotels division. W is based in New York and owns 21 hotels in major metropolitan cities worldwide. It owns none in Colorado.
Its parent company, Starwood, manages six properties in the metro Denver area and owns two – the Westin Tabor Center and the Four Points by Sheraton Denver Cherry Creek.
The new Aloft hotel will be in the Cherry Creek area, but Starwood declined to give an exact location. The corporation could rebrand the Four Points by Sheraton, a value-oriented hotel on South Colorado Boulevard just south of East Alameda Avenue.
“The Cherry Creek area has been identified as an ideal location for the brand,” said Susan Stiff, Starwood’s Denver-area spokeswoman. “The area’s demographics of well-educated, affluent, young professionals mirrors the demographics the Aloft hotel brand hopes to attract.”
Two hotels have opened in Cherry Creek North in the past 15 months: the 196-room, $40 million JW Marriott hotel and the 35- room Inn at Cherry Creek.
“It has always been a desirable location for hotels, but the lack of vacant land and the high cost has always been somewhat prohibitive,” said local hotel consultant Robert Benton.
Aloft hotels are designed to compete with brands such as Courtyard by Marriott and Hilton Garden Inn. Its guest rooms will have a loft-like feel, with features such as 9-foot ceilings and MP3 docking stations.
White Plains, N.Y.-based Starwood said it plans to open five Aloft hotels by early 2007: in Denver; Lexington, Mass.; and Tucson; and at airport sites in San Francisco and Philadelphia. The company projects having 500 Aloft hotels worldwide by 2012.
Staff writer Julie Dunn can be reached at 303-820-1592 or jdunn@denverpost.com.
