So my ears perked up recently in Las Vegas at the Global Travel & Tourism Summit. When President & CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Frits van Paasschen (left), was asked about his company’s global plans, he said he would be moving to China for a couple of months.

It was a casual remark which carried massive implications. For the first time, an American-based CEO would spend an extended length of time in an Asian market to get the understand the market better. He told the audience, to really understand the market, you have to be there.

I recall thinking at the time, now there’s a game changer – an American company is now really getting serious about Asia and not just paying lip service to the region. Takes a progressive, global-minded CEO to change a corporate culture.

Well, turns out it’s more than him that’s moving. This week, Starwood announced that it would move its Senior Leadership Team to China for a month – from June 8 to July 11, van Paasschen and his company’s top executives will be headquartered in Shanghai, where they will conduct day-to-day business on a 12-hour time difference with their “usual” operations in White Plains, New York.

This relocation underscores Starwood’s game-changing growth in China, which recently became its second largest market outside of the US and its fastest growing. The move also reflects Starwood’s innovative approach to cultivate a more global culture in a company that grew up largely in the United States.

“With properties in nearly 100 countries, Starwood is no longer an American company that happens to run some hotels overseas. Today, we’re a global company that happens to be based in New York,” said van Paasschen.

“Eighty percent of our future pipeline is outside of North America, and nowhere is more emblematic of our global growth than China, where we will open one hotel every two weeks this year. China’s spectacular transformation is hard to grasp unless experienced firsthand – it’s the proverbial, ‘you can’t really understand a culture until you buy groceries there.'”

From their home base in Shanghai, van Paasschen and seven members of his Senior Leadership Team will conduct daily business in an unconventional effort to understand, appreciate and ultimately leverage different cultural perspectives and approaches to business.

In addition, more than 20 Starwood executives from the US and international locations will join the team throughout the course of the relocation. The group will delve into Starwood’s extensive business in China, meeting with local customers, partners and developers, while also touring new properties throughout the country.

Miguel Ko, president of Starwood Asia Pacific, called it a changing of the tide. He told a hotel investment conference last month that when he started out with Starwood over a decade ago, his division was four percent of the business, now it’s 22%. “In a few years, it will be the biggest division in the world and all those predictions I made when I was young and bullish will come true.”

Starwood is investing heavily into understand the Chinese customer and this move by top management to Shanghai heralds a game-changer in the way foreign brands are rethinking the region.

Okay, it’s just for a month but I believe this will open the floodgates and more companies will be making their way out East and, by that, I don’t mean CEOs making quick trips in and out, but living and breathing the region. After all as they say, if you want to catch the fish, you got to go where the fishes are.