FEATURE: HILTON WORLDWIDE
Global context, regional focus.
In the first of a series of articles looking at the design teams within the major hotel groups, Sleeper Editor Matt Turner speaks with key figures from Hilton Worldwide’s Global Design Services and Architecture & Construction teams.
that didn’t work out he ended up buying a hotel instead. The 40-room Mobley hotel thus became the first property in a global portfolio which now totals some 3,900 hotels worldwide. Hilton’s name would go on to become synonymous with the hotel business, the company still enjoying a brand recognition which is the envy of its competitors. Even in the early days, the company
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showed a propensity for design innovation. The high-rise Dallas Hilton (the first to carry the Hilton name) was opened in 1925, before air-conditioning had been invented. Elevators, laundry chutes and back-of- house facilities were placed on the building’s west side, meaning all the guestrooms were sheltered from the western sun. In 1947, the Roosevelt Hilton in New York became the first hotel to install TVs in its guestrooms. Another landmark was the 1955 opening of the Hilton Istanbul, the first modern hotel built from the ground up in Europe
onrad Hilton was originally planning to buy a bank when he rolled into the oil-boom town of Cisco, Texas in 1919. When
following World War II. The same year saw a programme launched to bring air- conditioning to every Hilton hotel around the world. In the latter part of the twentieth century,
new brands were launched to augment the Hilton core brand, beginning with the first DoubleTree in Scottsdale Arizona in 1969. The 1980s were a particularly fertile period with new brands Conrad Hotels (1982), Embasssy Suites (1984), Hampton Inn (1984), Homewood Suites (1989) and Garden Inn all launched in a ten year period. Significant changes in corporate structure and ownership also took place, most notably the 1964 separation of Hilton International (the overseas properties) from Hilton Hotels Corporation (the domestic US portfolio). The Hilton portfolio was not reunited
until February 2006, when US-based Hilton Hotels Corporation purchased the hotels division of UK-based Hilton Group Plc, which had acquired Hilton International’s operations in 1987. This paved the way for Blackstone
Group’s $26 billion acquisition of Hilton Hotels Corporation in 2007 – a deal quickly
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followed by the appointment of a new CEO – Christopher J. Nassetta, who joined Hilton from Host Hotels & Resorts. In 2009, ninety years on from that
inauspicious beginning in Cisco, Hilton cemented its reunified status and new ownership with a new name – Hilton Worldwide – and a new logo, drawing a line under three years of corporate restructuring. From the outset, one of Chris Nassetta’s
key aims was to reassert Hilton Worldwide’s reputation for design excellence. Having relocated the company headquarters from Beverly Hills to McLean, Virginia he brought in Matt Richardson, previously Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer for Host Hotels & Resorts, to oversee the company’s design and construction activities. Another key appointment was that of
Larry Traxler – previously Director of Architecture & Design for Hyatt Hotels & Resorts in North America and the Caribbean – as Senior Vice President of Global Design Services. Speaking to Sleeper Magazine, Traxler
picks up the story. “One of Chris Nassetta’s first mandates was to ‘elevate design’ and I
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