Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide is planning to operate all nine of its brands in the Middle East by 2013, including St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W, Westin, Le Méridien, Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft, and Element.

The company currently operates 50 hotels across the region and has 20 more in the pipeline due to open in the next five years. It intends to debut the W Hotels brand in the UAE with the signing of W Abu Dhabi, which is scheduled to open in 2013. This will be the second W in the Middle East following W Doha, which opened in the middle of last year. A new W Hotel in Amman, Jordan is also planned.

The Sheraton label is seeing an investment of US$1.5bn (£988m, €1.14bn) towards the opening of new Sheraton hotels and the renovation of existing ones in the EAME region by 2012, with the Sheraton Oman due to re-open later this year after an extensive refurbishment. The company's mid-market Aloft brand is to make its second appearance in the Middle East with the opening of a hotel in Riyadh in 2013. This follows the success of the first Aloft property in the area, in Abu Dhabi, which opened in 2009.

Starwood will also be introducing its environmentally-friendly, LEED-certified hotel concept - Element Hotels - to the Middle East in 2012, with the opening of Element Abu Dhabi. Deals have already been signed to open five new hotels under the St. Regis brand over the next three years - one each in Bahrain, Doha and Dubai and two in Abu Dhabi.

The Luxury Collection brand made its Middle East debut earlier this year with the conversion of the Grosvenor House Hotel in Dubai. Pic: The Sheraton Doha. Courtesy of Martin Belam