Hilton Hotel Profile

Company Profile of Hilton Hotels Corporation - May 7th, 2011

Hilton Worldwide (formerly, Hilton Hotels Corporation) is a global hospitality company. It is owned by the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm. As of November 2010 Hilton brands encompass over 3,600 hotels with 600,000 rooms in 82 countries.[1] Hilton is ranked as the 36th largest private company in the United States by Forbes.[2]

The company owns, manages, or franchises a portfolio of brands, including Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Conrad Hotels, Doubletree, Embassy Suites Hotels, Hampton Inn, Hampton Inn & Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, Hilton Grand Vacations Company, Homewood Suites by Hilton, Home2 Suites by Hilton and The Waldorf-Astoria Collection.

It was founded by Conrad Hilton in Cisco, Texas and was headquartered in Beverly Hills, California from 1969 until 2009. The company moved to Tysons Corner, unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, near McLean in August 2009.

Hilton Hotels Corporation is a leading hospitality company that owns, manages, and franchises over 2,000 hotels across the country. The company's international arm, Conrad Hotels, has locations in Australia, England, Ireland, Egypt, Belgium, Turkey, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Though publicly traded, the chain was for most of its history led by members of the Hilton family from 1919, when founder Conrad Hilton bought his first hotel. By the late 1940s, Hilton owned a worldwide chain of premium hotels. In the 1960s, Hilton sold its international operations and concentrated on management contracts and franchising. The company created innovative joint-venture arrangements that became standard industry practice. It then entered what would become a prime source of revenue for the company: casino-hotels. Hilton expanded into gaming in 1971; by 1989, gaming provided 44 percent of the company's income. In 1996, Barron Hilton relinquished day-to-day management of the chain to Stephen F. Bollenbach. Asserting that "Big companies do big...