In 1930, Severt W. Thurston and Frank Dupar, both hotel owners from Seattle, Washington, unexpectedly met during breakfast at the coffee shop of the Commercial Hotel in Yakima, Washington. Recognizing the potential benefits of collaboration, they made the decision to form a management company that would handle all of their properties to help deal with the crippling effects of the ongoing Great Depression. The men invited Peter and Adolph Schmidt, who operated five hotels in the Puget Sound area, to join them. Together, they established Western Hotels, a chain that consisted of 17 properties – 16 in Washington and one in Biose, Idaho.

In 1931, Western Hotels expanded its presence to Vancouver, British Columbia, and Portland, Oregon. It further expanded to Alaska in 1939 and California in 1941, taking over the management of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The company continued to grow by adding properties in Utah in 1949 and Montana in 1950.

In 1949, Edward Carlson, an executive at Western Hotels, successfully convinced Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron to open his first franchised Trader Vic’s location in the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Seattle. Originally, a small bar named The Outrigger was expanded into a full restaurant in 1954 and later renamed Trader Vic’s in 1960. Thanks to its success, Bergeron collaborated with Western Hotels to open Trader Vic’s locations in several of its hotels.

On January 5, 1981, the company underwent another name change and became Westin Hotels, a contraction of the words Western International. The first property to be rebranded was the chain’s flagship Washington Plaza Hotel in Seattle, which officially became The Westin Hotel on September 1, 1981. In the same year, Westin opened its new corporate headquarters directly across the street from the Westin Building. The building and the hotel shared a parking garage.

In 1987, UAL chairman Richard Ferris announced a plan to reorganize UAL as Allegis Corporation. This new entity would be a travel conglomerate centered around United Airlines, Hertz Rent a Car, Hilton International Hotels, and Westin, all connected through the Apollo system.

Despite its initial intentions, this strategy ultimately failed, leading Allegis to sell Westin in 1988 to the Japanese Aoki Corporation for $1.35 billion. Shortly after, Aoki sold the Plaza Hotel to Donald Trump for $390 million.

In 1994, Aoki agreed to sell Westin to real estate investment firm Starwood Capital Group (parent of Starwood) and Goldman Sachs at a significant loss, for $561 million. However, by the time the sale closed in May 1995, the buyers had successfully negotiated the price down to $537 million.

In 1998, Starwood assumed full ownership of the company. In 2016, Marriott International acquired Starwood, making it the world’s largest hotel company.