The answer, of course, is Marriott International's September 2016 acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide — the hotel news sensation that captivated the nation (and the world) in the months leading up to the deal's completion and well afterwards.
It's fitting that the most significant deal in modern hotel history happened in the year that everyone is talking about on social media lately: 2016.
You've seen it. Mostly millennials and older Gen Z people are taking to socials to wax nostalgic about what this columnist calls "our last hopeful year."
Yes, it was a simpler time — a time before global pandemics and political roller coaster rides and AI everything.
It was a time when Marriott and Starwood were two separate companies! Starwood was the cool one in that relationship, while Marriott was older, kind of boring one. But together, wow, they were going to be the biggest, with the largest global distribution, most brands, etc. etc. etc.
For months, we dissected the brand overlap between the two companies, the final price, the role China's regulatory review played in the whole thing, so many factors. We wrote stories with headlines like, "The scarier side of Marriott/Starwood," and "Can Marriott adopt Starwood's culture of cool?" We built infographics and charts, set predictions, talked to the CEOs, all of it.
Ten years on, here we are. At the time of the deal, Marriott was probably the global hotel company closest to reaching the 1 million open rooms mark; the deal pushed it over the edge.
Today — well, at the close of the third quarter of 2025 — Marriott had about 1.8 million open rooms. That's more than doubling its size in less than a decade, because the real 10-year mark won't happen until this fall.
Could a deal like Marriott/Starwood ever happen again? I don't think it can, not in the near term at least. The regulatory hurdles that deal had to clear were significant. You won't see a Chinese insurance company entering a bidding war for a giant U.S. hotel company anytime soon. And a decade ago, the wars between hotel companies and online travel agencies were a lot more touchy. Many argued at the time that a real power move like Marriott made had to happen in order to gain ground over OTAs.
Plus, the battle for guest loyalty was heating up, too. Travelers were starting to show preference for what the industry was just beginning to call "lifestyle brands" then. Marriott had luxury brands, but nothing you'd call especially cool, while Starwood had cool cornered.
Today, the bigs have all the brand bases covered, from lifestyle to luxury and everything in between. They're striking their own loyalty moves. And with the pretty much complete transformation of all of them to asset-light models, the growth goal seems to be focused on striking lower-risk partnerships for distribution gains, not large-scale outright acquisitions that have their own baggage.
Over the next decade, I think we'll see more standalone high-end hotel brands courted by the bigs as possible acquisitions. I'd be surprised if they weren't already doing it.
What's your best memory from 2016? What do you think we'll be saying about this year in 2036? Email me or find me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CoStar News or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.