Lessons of a Lifetime

Abstract

Hilton International began on a comparative shoestring, with $300,000 in preopening money and an offer from the Puerto Rican government that Conrad Hilton could not refuse. With no further financial support from the parent company, a small staff expanded judiciously using profit-sharing leases and, later, management contracts. Each deal had to make sense on its own, and the company was ever sensitive to the potential impact on its good name of a bad deal. Cut loose from the domestic Hilton organization in 1963, Hilton International is now a multibillion-dollar company. In addition to pioneering leases and management contracts, the firm created an employee-development institute in 1968 that was instrumental in developing its key employees, which is one of the major contributions a management firm can bring to a hotel deal.