As of June 30, 2020, Sheraton operates 446 hotels with 155,617 rooms globally, including locations in North America, Africa, Asia Pacific, Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East and the Caribbean, in addition to 84 hotels with 23,092 rooms in the pipeline.

[7] Henderson and Moore purchased Boston's famed Copley Plaza Hotel in 1941, and continued expanding rapidly, buying existing properties along the East Coast from Maine to Florida.

[8] In 1949, Sheraton expanded internationally, buying the Ford Hotels chain, with three properties in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

That same year, Sheraton acquired its first motels, purchasing two properties in the suburbs of Syracuse, New York.

[21] In 1968, the multinational conglomerate ITT Corporation purchased the chain and immediately sold eighteen aging Sheraton properties.

In 1972, Sheraton opened its first hotel in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sheraton-Mont Febe Palace in Yaounde, Cameroon.

In 1985, Sheraton became the first western chain to operate a hotel bearing the name of an international company[28][29] in the People's Republic of China, when it assumed management of the Great Wall Hotel in Beijing, a financially troubled two-year-old Chinese-American joint venture,[30] which became the Great Wall Sheraton.

[35] The chain had begun by operating hotels in Italy, but over-expanded across Europe just as a recession hit, and had been seized from its previous owner, the Aga Khan, by its creditors.

[37] In 1998, Starwood acquired ITT Sheraton for $13.3 billion, topping an offer by rival Hilton.

[38] Under Starwood's leadership, Sheraton began renovating many hotels and expanding the brand's footprint.

[39] Starwood also began marketing The Luxury Collection as a completely separate brand, even though it contained a large number of hotels still named Sheraton.

[32] Although the Sheraton brand expresses quality in Asia, aging properties have made the US market more problematic.