The New Year will not be kind for many Starwood employees in Connecticut. Marriott International is reportedly preparing to layoff as many as 163 Marriott employees in Stamford between Dec. 31 and Jan. 13, according to records filed with the Department of Labor. Stamford, Conn., has been the headquarters of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide since 2012, when it moved from White Plains, N.Y.
The layoffs are not entirely unexpected. Starwood has approximately 700 employees in its Stamford office, and following Marriott’s $13-billion purchase of the company in September rumors began circulating that Marriott would move Starwood’s operations out of the city.
“They’re going to move—it’s not going to make sense for them to have two of everything,” Jack Condlin, president and CEO of the Stamford Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement in September. “They’ll consolidate, and there will be layoffs. There are going to be people who will lose their jobs.”
Today we became part of @MarriottIntl. Our journey continues. https://t.co/plASMnznP3 pic.twitter.com/a2hEkENVjW
— Starwood Hotels (@StarwoodBuzz) September 23, 2016
While no specific plans have been announced, officials with Marriott have said in the past that they have plans to keep a presence in Stamford. No long-term plans for Starwood’s Stamford location have been spoken about by Marriott executives following the September acquisition, but there had been rumblings of a shakeup at the time of the buy.
“We will begin to explore longer-term options and needs now that we have completed the acquisition,” Marriott officials told Hearst Connecticut Media in September. “When we announced the merger in November 2015, we said that there would be some duplication of functions — mostly at the corporate level. While we don’t have an exact number of jobs that will be impacted in Stamford at this time, we will know more about staffing decisions as we continue the integration process.”
Stamford has been Starwood’s home since 2012, and before that it was located in White Plains, N.Y. In June, when rumblings of the merger were still fresh, Stamford mayor David Martin shared hopes that the company would retain at least some of its staff in the city, particularly in digital marketing and information technology positions with which Starwood employs roughly 400 people.
Meanwhile, Marriott is mulling over the prospect of a new headquarters near Washington, D.C. The company has roughly 4,000 employees in Bethesda and the surrounding area, and the company’s current lease is good until 2022.