And the man behind the brand is...
Thomas Sheraton
Ernest Henderson and Robert Moore took over a failing hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts called the Continental at Depression-bargain prices in 1933.
It seems more money was leaving through the storerooms than walking through the front door. A few padlocks plugged the flow of red ink.
Henderson and Moore bought the Stonehaven Hotel and began dreaming of a chain. Their third hotel was a small residential hostelry in Boston that sported an expensive roof sign with the name in large letters. The cost of changing that electric sign might have been more than the price of the entire property so the name of the fledgling hotel chain became Sheraton.
The original Sheraton hotel was purchased deep in the Depression for $160,000. When it was sold ten years later it carried a price tag of nearly $1,000,000. The Boston Sheraton derived its name from Thomas Sheraton,
the 18th century English furniture designer. But strangely the hotel was never decorated in Sheraton's furniture - it was fitted out in a Hepplewhit motif.
Showing posts with label Hotel Brands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hotel Brands. Show all posts
February 12, 2007
Marriott
And the man behind the brand is...
Bill Marriott
The Marriott name is known for its hotels and resorts but it began as, and still primarily is, a food business. John Willard Marriott, known as Bill, was born in 1900. He grew up on the Utah range raising beets, herding sheep and serving the Mormon church. He gained a measure of renown around Ogden when, at the age of 14, he shot two brown bears in one day.
Marriott worked his way through the University of Utah selling woolen sweaters and long underwear in logging camps in the Northwest and when he graduated in 1927 he was ready for his own business. He became intrigued with a root beer he enjoyed during hot summer Utah days. Marriott would drive up to the curb and a waitress would bring out ice-cold mugs of 5¢ root beer to the car.
He learned that a man named Allen and a man named Wright had started
A & W Root Beer a few years earlier in Sacramento, selling only ice-cold root beer at their drive-ins. In the summer a good stand was averaging 5000 mugs a day. So Bill Marriott decided to stake his future to root beer.
He had become enamored with Washington, D.C. during a Mormon mission back east and that was where Marriott headed for his franchise. He leased eight feet of frontage from a baker and opened a nine-seat root beer stand on May 20, 1927 - the same day Lindbergh took off for Europe. Marriott placed a small radio of the countertop and prospective root beer buyers gathered round to hear the progress of America’s greatest aviator.
Inevitably Washington’s torrid summers give way to chilly winters. Obviously demand for ice-cold root beer would fall off. A & W franchises were required to sell only root beer but Marriott flew to Sacramento to obtain a special dispensation to include food on his menu. He didn’t want standard burgers and franks but opted for Mexican food, a specialty from home not often enjoyed in the nation’s capital.
When the heavily spiced chili and tamales and barbecued beef debuted Marriott called his new restaurant “Hot Shoppe;” hot food with a touch of English affectation. The new restaurant was a hit and Marriott barely waited for the cash register to fill before opening a second Hot Shoppe. Soon there was a chain of medium-priced family restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area. Marriott waited for the Depression to slow his business but it never did.
Marriott worked non-stop but he was never more diligent than in selecting new sites for his restaurants. He opened a Hot Shoppe out by the Hoover Airport and noticed a trade had developed in passengers and crew taking out food for their flights. In 1937 Marriott started boxing lunches of ham or chicken sandwiches, a small carton of slaw, a frosted cupcake and an apple for Eastern airlines.
“Sky girls” served the first airline food along with hot coffee in thermos jugs.
Marriott’s catering business soon picked up government cafeterias and entered the hospital food service market as well. Bill Marriott had been in the food service business for 30 years when he opened his first hotel in Arlington, Virginia in 1957. Over the next few years, Marriott continued to open hotels as well as Hot Shoppes restaurants.
By 1964 Marriott was ready to slow down. Physically he had survived Hodgkins Disease, battled chronic nervous exhaustion and weathered several heart attacks. While maintaining nominal control of the business he turned daily operations over to his son Bill Jr.
It was hard to let go but Marriott could reflect back on the time his father had entrusted him with a herd of sheep to take to San Francisco on his own at the tender age of 14. His son was no less successful. By the time he succeeded his father as Chief Executive Officer in 1972 Bill Jr. had quadrupled the size of the company. Marriott Corporation now owned the Big-Boy restaurant chain and started the Roy Rogers fast food chain.
The elder Marriott invested his time in the Republican party, entertaining political luminaries on his ranch in northern Virginia. He died at age 84 at his New Hampshire summer home. The business he started by selling root beer for a nickel was grossing $4 billion a year.
Bill Marriott
The Marriott name is known for its hotels and resorts but it began as, and still primarily is, a food business. John Willard Marriott, known as Bill, was born in 1900. He grew up on the Utah range raising beets, herding sheep and serving the Mormon church. He gained a measure of renown around Ogden when, at the age of 14, he shot two brown bears in one day.
Marriott worked his way through the University of Utah selling woolen sweaters and long underwear in logging camps in the Northwest and when he graduated in 1927 he was ready for his own business. He became intrigued with a root beer he enjoyed during hot summer Utah days. Marriott would drive up to the curb and a waitress would bring out ice-cold mugs of 5¢ root beer to the car.
He learned that a man named Allen and a man named Wright had started
A & W Root Beer a few years earlier in Sacramento, selling only ice-cold root beer at their drive-ins. In the summer a good stand was averaging 5000 mugs a day. So Bill Marriott decided to stake his future to root beer.
He had become enamored with Washington, D.C. during a Mormon mission back east and that was where Marriott headed for his franchise. He leased eight feet of frontage from a baker and opened a nine-seat root beer stand on May 20, 1927 - the same day Lindbergh took off for Europe. Marriott placed a small radio of the countertop and prospective root beer buyers gathered round to hear the progress of America’s greatest aviator.
Inevitably Washington’s torrid summers give way to chilly winters. Obviously demand for ice-cold root beer would fall off. A & W franchises were required to sell only root beer but Marriott flew to Sacramento to obtain a special dispensation to include food on his menu. He didn’t want standard burgers and franks but opted for Mexican food, a specialty from home not often enjoyed in the nation’s capital.
When the heavily spiced chili and tamales and barbecued beef debuted Marriott called his new restaurant “Hot Shoppe;” hot food with a touch of English affectation. The new restaurant was a hit and Marriott barely waited for the cash register to fill before opening a second Hot Shoppe. Soon there was a chain of medium-priced family restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area. Marriott waited for the Depression to slow his business but it never did.
Marriott worked non-stop but he was never more diligent than in selecting new sites for his restaurants. He opened a Hot Shoppe out by the Hoover Airport and noticed a trade had developed in passengers and crew taking out food for their flights. In 1937 Marriott started boxing lunches of ham or chicken sandwiches, a small carton of slaw, a frosted cupcake and an apple for Eastern airlines.
“Sky girls” served the first airline food along with hot coffee in thermos jugs.
Marriott’s catering business soon picked up government cafeterias and entered the hospital food service market as well. Bill Marriott had been in the food service business for 30 years when he opened his first hotel in Arlington, Virginia in 1957. Over the next few years, Marriott continued to open hotels as well as Hot Shoppes restaurants.
By 1964 Marriott was ready to slow down. Physically he had survived Hodgkins Disease, battled chronic nervous exhaustion and weathered several heart attacks. While maintaining nominal control of the business he turned daily operations over to his son Bill Jr.
It was hard to let go but Marriott could reflect back on the time his father had entrusted him with a herd of sheep to take to San Francisco on his own at the tender age of 14. His son was no less successful. By the time he succeeded his father as Chief Executive Officer in 1972 Bill Jr. had quadrupled the size of the company. Marriott Corporation now owned the Big-Boy restaurant chain and started the Roy Rogers fast food chain.
The elder Marriott invested his time in the Republican party, entertaining political luminaries on his ranch in northern Virginia. He died at age 84 at his New Hampshire summer home. The business he started by selling root beer for a nickel was grossing $4 billion a year.
Hilton
And the man behind the brand is...
Conrad Hilton
The first Hilton hotel was set up by Conrad Hilton in his family’s adobe home in
San Antonio, New Mexico in 1907. Business reversals in his father’s general store necessitated the conversion of six of the rooms in the house into quarters for transient lodgers. Hilton, then 19, worked all day in the store and went to the train station at 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. to meet the train and solicit guests. Room and board was $2.50 a day.
Slowly the Hilton family’s financial health was restored. By 1912 Hilton became interested in politics, winning a position in the state legislature just when the New Mexico Territory was accepted into statehood. He introduced nine bills which became New Mexico law but on balance found politics confining and frustrating. He came back home after two years.
Hilton decided San Antonio needed a bank. He organized a syndicate to establish the town’s first bank but the shareholders rewarded him by electing an aged former banker from Illinois as president and made Conrad Hilton a cashier. He began maneuvering for control of the bank. It wasn’t much of a bank,
but he had started it.
Hilton wrested control of the bank from the board of directors but there wasn’t much time to savor the victory. He wore out hot, dusty Texas roads tracking down new depositors and then World War I shattered his plans for a garland of New Mexico banks. Hilton was off to France to serve in the Army.
In 1919, following the death of his father in an automobile accident, Hilton returned from the army. He left for Cisco, Texas looking to buy an interest in a bank. When the slow pace of negotiations forced him to stay overnight he found all the hotels in town overbooked. Instead of a bank Hilton wound up making a deal for a hotel, the 40-room Mobley Hotel.
It didn’t take Hilton long to become a hotel man. He surveyed every inch of The Mobley to eliminate non-revenue generating space. He sawed the front desk in half and added a shop; he ripped out the dining room a nd spaced it off into bedrooms; he rented his own bed and slept on a leather chair in his office.
A few months later he purchased the Melba in Fort Worth, and in 1920 he added the 140-room Waldorf in Dallas. In 1925 Hilton committed himself to building a million-dollar hotel in Dallas, the first hotel to carry his name.
When the Depression hit Hilton controlled eight hotels. It was too much.
In 1931 Hilton defaulted on a $300,000 loan. His creditors hired him to manage his lost hotels but it was a turbulent business marriage. Nine months
later the business arrangement disintegrated into legal matters. Hilton eventually emerged from the Depression with five of his eight hotels; by 1937 he was free of debt.
Hilton began in earnest to take advantage of depressed hotel properties.
In the next few years he took control of the Sir Francis Drake in San Francisco,
the Town House in Los Angeles, the Roosevelt and Plaza in New York and the Stevens and Palmer House in Chicago. In 1946 the Hilton Hotels Corporation was formed, the first hotel company to have its stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Hilton cherished tradition. With each of these great houses he recognized an obligation to retain the atmosphere and individuality which gave it its prestige.
In 1949 he realized a life-long dream with the purchase of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, America’s greatest hotel. In 1954 Hilton executed the largest hotel merger in history, purchasing the Statler hotel chain for $111,000,000.
Hilton clinched the deal by pleading with the widow Statler to keep the great
hotels in “the hands of hotel people.”
Hilton turned the presidency of Hilton Hotels over to his son, Barron, in 1966. The next year Barron Hilton persuaded his father to swap his Hilton International stock for TWA stock. The stock plummeted by half in the next 18 months and the 80-year old Hilton lost the rights to his name overseas.
Conrad Hilton became the world’s premier hotelier by acquiring America’s most prestigious hotels. Only a handful ever carried his name. He assiduously avoided resort hotels and eschewed gambling houses. But under his son the Hilton name was franchised and the Las Vegas Hilton and Flamingo Hilton were purchased. When Conrad Hilton died in 1979 at the age of 91 the hotel-casinos were responsible for nearly 40¢ of every $1.00 Hilton profit. The business he had built proudly on the grandest hotel rooms in the world was being supported by roulette wheels and blackjack tables.
Conrad Hilton
The first Hilton hotel was set up by Conrad Hilton in his family’s adobe home in
San Antonio, New Mexico in 1907. Business reversals in his father’s general store necessitated the conversion of six of the rooms in the house into quarters for transient lodgers. Hilton, then 19, worked all day in the store and went to the train station at 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. to meet the train and solicit guests. Room and board was $2.50 a day.
Slowly the Hilton family’s financial health was restored. By 1912 Hilton became interested in politics, winning a position in the state legislature just when the New Mexico Territory was accepted into statehood. He introduced nine bills which became New Mexico law but on balance found politics confining and frustrating. He came back home after two years.
Hilton decided San Antonio needed a bank. He organized a syndicate to establish the town’s first bank but the shareholders rewarded him by electing an aged former banker from Illinois as president and made Conrad Hilton a cashier. He began maneuvering for control of the bank. It wasn’t much of a bank,
but he had started it.
Hilton wrested control of the bank from the board of directors but there wasn’t much time to savor the victory. He wore out hot, dusty Texas roads tracking down new depositors and then World War I shattered his plans for a garland of New Mexico banks. Hilton was off to France to serve in the Army.
In 1919, following the death of his father in an automobile accident, Hilton returned from the army. He left for Cisco, Texas looking to buy an interest in a bank. When the slow pace of negotiations forced him to stay overnight he found all the hotels in town overbooked. Instead of a bank Hilton wound up making a deal for a hotel, the 40-room Mobley Hotel.
It didn’t take Hilton long to become a hotel man. He surveyed every inch of The Mobley to eliminate non-revenue generating space. He sawed the front desk in half and added a shop; he ripped out the dining room a nd spaced it off into bedrooms; he rented his own bed and slept on a leather chair in his office.
A few months later he purchased the Melba in Fort Worth, and in 1920 he added the 140-room Waldorf in Dallas. In 1925 Hilton committed himself to building a million-dollar hotel in Dallas, the first hotel to carry his name.
When the Depression hit Hilton controlled eight hotels. It was too much.
In 1931 Hilton defaulted on a $300,000 loan. His creditors hired him to manage his lost hotels but it was a turbulent business marriage. Nine months
later the business arrangement disintegrated into legal matters. Hilton eventually emerged from the Depression with five of his eight hotels; by 1937 he was free of debt.
Hilton began in earnest to take advantage of depressed hotel properties.
In the next few years he took control of the Sir Francis Drake in San Francisco,
the Town House in Los Angeles, the Roosevelt and Plaza in New York and the Stevens and Palmer House in Chicago. In 1946 the Hilton Hotels Corporation was formed, the first hotel company to have its stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Hilton cherished tradition. With each of these great houses he recognized an obligation to retain the atmosphere and individuality which gave it its prestige.
In 1949 he realized a life-long dream with the purchase of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, America’s greatest hotel. In 1954 Hilton executed the largest hotel merger in history, purchasing the Statler hotel chain for $111,000,000.
Hilton clinched the deal by pleading with the widow Statler to keep the great
hotels in “the hands of hotel people.”
Hilton turned the presidency of Hilton Hotels over to his son, Barron, in 1966. The next year Barron Hilton persuaded his father to swap his Hilton International stock for TWA stock. The stock plummeted by half in the next 18 months and the 80-year old Hilton lost the rights to his name overseas.
Conrad Hilton became the world’s premier hotelier by acquiring America’s most prestigious hotels. Only a handful ever carried his name. He assiduously avoided resort hotels and eschewed gambling houses. But under his son the Hilton name was franchised and the Las Vegas Hilton and Flamingo Hilton were purchased. When Conrad Hilton died in 1979 at the age of 91 the hotel-casinos were responsible for nearly 40¢ of every $1.00 Hilton profit. The business he had built proudly on the grandest hotel rooms in the world was being supported by roulette wheels and blackjack tables.
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