Starwood Hotels & Resorts is moving away from priced-based competition and traditional segmentation to focus on "emotional branding".

At a media summit held last week in New York, Starwood unveiled new looks for eight brands - including the newly acquired Le Meridien hotel group - designed to foster greater loyalty among customers.

Steve Heyer, Starwood's chief executive officer, said the hotel industry had traditionally been poor at branding its products.

He stressed that emotive branding, not pricing, was the way forward for the industry.

• Starwood will sell 15-18 non-strategic hotels over the next 12-18 months for an expected $500m (£267m) to $1b (£534m).