Starwood Hotels Launches New Blog; TheLobby.com to Provide Insider Access to Hotels, PGA Pros, Five-Star Chefs, Nightlife Gurus and More

With a focus less on the transactional and more on lifestyle andexperience, TheLobby.com is meant to capture people's passion fortraveling and hotels, as well as the unique camaraderie among globetrotting travelers who spend the better part of their life on theroad.

TheLobby.com's robust editorial section is led by Marc Schiller,CEO of ElectricArtists, and staffed with a team of travel writersrecruited from popular travel-related weblogs. Notables from withinStarwood's brands and hotels will also participate on the blog,including a regular column by Starwood associate William Sanders,a.k.a. The Starwood Lurker, who has been featured in USA Today, TheNew York Times and the Wall Street Journal for his candidparticipation in customer chat rooms such as Flyer Talk.

"Starwood Preferred Guest strives to be an industry leader andinnovator. By creating an experience outside of the corporate box, webelieve TheLobby.com will establish more personal relationships withmembers in a new and non-traditional way," said Robin Korman, VicePresident of Loyalty Marketing for Starwood. "It's all about fosteringa sense of community for our members where we can showcase andcelebrate their experiences and passion for travel and provide accessto great 'insider' editorial content."

The Lobby.com will provide visitors with insider peeks into newhotels and guestrooms, secrets from the "back-of-the-house," chatswith internal and external experts such as design executives, golfpros and chefs, destination pieces including cool places to go in hotcities penned by W concierges, how to play tough holes on resortcourses by PGA players or associates' favorite restaurants and thingsto do in locations around the globe. Regular columns include "MyFavorite Hotel," "Room with a View," and "It Happened Here." Otherfeatures include top ten lists and weekly contests and giveaways,travel tips and trend reports on fashion, travel and high techgadgets.

Starwood Preferred Guest offers members the ability to redeemawards at more resorts, more luxury properties, more European hotelsand more golf properties than any other hotel program, which hasproven to be a big draw for the world's most frequent travelers, and asignificant competitive advantage.

For more information about Starwood Preferred Guest, orreservations, please visit SPG.com or call (877) - STARWOOD.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:HOT) is one of theleading hotel and leisure companies in the world with approximately850 properties in more than 95 countries and 145,000 employees at itsowned and managed properties. Starwood(R) Hotels is a fully integratedowner, operator and franchisor of hotels and resorts with thefollowing internationally renowned brands: St. Regis(R), The LuxuryCollection(R), Sheraton(R), Westin(R), Four Points(R) by Sheraton,W(R), Le Meridien(R) and the recently announced Aloft(SM). StarwoodHotels also owns Starwood Vacation Ownership, Inc., one of the premierdevelopers and operators of high quality vacation interval ownershipresorts. For more information, please visit www.starwoodhotels.com.
Please contact Starwood's new, toll-free media hotline at
(866) 4-STAR-PR (866-478-2777) for photography or additional
information.