Dubai: Conversion [of hotel properties] is a key focus area for Starwood Hotels and Resorts’ development team this year, according to a senior Starwood executive.

“Conversions are very attractive propositions from a growth standpoint. It is something we have been thinking very carefully internally over the last couple of years,” Neil George, Vice President, Acquisitions and Development, Africa and Middle East, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, told Gulf News in an interview.

The company recently announced conversions on three of its brands in the Middle East including Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton and one in its Luxury Collection portfolio.

An accepted practice in the West, Starwood aims to get at least four to five conversions done this year in the Middle East and Africa region, said George. “We would like to get that target over the next few years. And the UAE will form a chunk of it,” he said.

Asked if Starwood was going to extend the practice to all its brands or limit it to some, George said: “Some brands are relatively less complicated than others. But there is no way that we are going to say that we absolutely will not do a conversion on.”

He added: “We thought this was a good time to look at conversions. Dubai went through this boom when anybody could open a hotel and generally do well. What brand was on it was kind of a secondary thing. Then it went through a correction. And now we think we are in a period of relative stability.

“We spent quite some time last year making sure that we had internally all of the processes and systems in place to quickly look at an existing hotel that could be converted into a Starwood hotel.”

Starwood on Sunday announced two conversions: Grand Hills Hotel & Spa in Broumana – an upscale mountain resort town near Beirut, Lebanon – will join its iconic Luxury Collection portfolio, and will open in early 2015 following a complete renovation.

The other one is the debut of the Four Points by Sheraton brand in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the new Four Points by Sheraton Riyadh Khaldia.

The first conversion was done by the company in Dubai recently as Starwood took over as the operator of erstwhile Pullman Dubai Mall of the Emirates hotel and rebranded it as Sheraton.