Starwood Capital Group, best known for its W Hotels brand, is planning to up its bid for bankrupt hotel chain Extended Stay, a lawyer for the company said in court. Starwood had been previously outbid by a group of investors led by Ceterbridge Partners and Paulson & Co. and joined yesterday by Blackstone Group, who offered $905 million for the 680-property chain. The offer is considered by the investors and by Extended Stay to be the stalking horse bid, meaning other offers would need to exceed it. Extended Stay filed the largest-ever bankruptcy in the hotel industry in June with $7.6 billion in debt. The deadline for proposals is May 17 and an auction is scheduled for May 27. [Bloomberg]

What was formerly the Designers of the Future Award has been renamed the W Hotels Designers of the Future Award, thanks to a new partnership between W Hotels and Design Miami/Basel. The awards were started in 2006 by Design Miami/Basel to recognize young designers excelling in limited-edition design. The partnership was announced at Salone del Mobile in Milan. According to the terms of the deal, the award winners will have their work shown in W Hotels around the world. [Real Estate Channel] Comments

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In a segment called “How I Built It,” Barry Sternlicht talked to the Wall Street Journal about how he founded Starwood Capital, the real estate investment firm that founded Starwood Hotels and Resorts and, subsequently, the “W” Hotels brand and the Westin Hotels line. “I borrowed money from friends and invested what I had… and I borrowed a million dollars, which is a lot when you’re 31 and have a net worth of about $100,000,” Sternlicht said.

Two years after construction began in a boom environment, the W Hotels’
new $500 million South Beach outlet opened to a much worse travel
environment. The hotel has sold out its July weekends with aggressive
promotional pricing and found buyers for 96 condo hotel rooms, leaving
312 available for guests. The condo hotel project has a total of 408
units. May room occupancy rates plunged 11.5 percent from last year,
according to the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Unemployment provided a huge labor pool, with 12,000 applicants for 400
jobs at the hotel. [more]