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Now everyone knows that there are hotel chains with the same name and the same level of service all over the world - be it London, Paris, Moscow or the Cayman Islands. But the first hotel chain was created by the American Conrad Hilton, who gave all his hotels his own name and offered them a standard set of services.

It was he who first came up with the idea of ​​assigning "stars" to hotels (by analogy with cognac) and was the first to start selling everything that customers might need in the halls of their hotels.

Acquisition of the Mobley Hotel cost Hilton not so cheaply. In addition to his own $5,000, he had to borrow $15,000 from friends and also take out a bank loan for $20,000. Now everything depended on Conrad himself.

Mobley's main clientele were workers from the nearby oil fields, who rented rooms only for eight hours of sleep. The rooms cost $1 and $2.5 per night. And although Hilton himself called Mobley-type hotels nothing more than "bedrooms", they were somewhat reminiscent of his first hotel experience in organizing a family boarding house during the depression of 1907. The first thing Conrad did in his hotel was to increase the number of beds in order to eliminate the seething crowd waiting for the night. Then he came up with the idea to entertain the visitors with something, while, preferably, for his own benefit. To do this, he placed several showcases around the columns in the lobby, in which every little thing was sold - from newspapers and magazines to clothes brushes and toothpaste. Hilton later said that each column brought him $8,000.

Conrad decided to break out of the countryside and build the first hotel of his name in the Texas capital of Dallas. Many years later, when Hilton became a recognized authority in the hotel business, and simply rich and famous, one of the journalists asked when exactly he realized that he was rich. Conrad quite seriously answered: "When I spent the night on the benches in the park." And although Hilton spent his entire life sleeping on benches only in a figurative sense, he was thinking about creating a global business empire while still opening his first failed bank.

The grand opening of the 325-room Dallas Hilton took place on August 2, 1925. Interestingly, the rooms in it were not much more expensive than in "Mobley" - $ 1.5 and $ 3 per night. By this point, Hilton was opening about one hotel a year in Texas.

The happy life did not last long and ended with the stock market crash of 1929. Then 80% of American hotels went bankrupt. Konrad fought to the end, introducing a austerity regime and trying to knock out new loans from banks. To save his business, Hilton closed three of the eight hotels, but that didn't help either. But the crisis dragged on and in December 1931 Hilton lost ownership of his Hilton Hotels company. It was a complete disaster.

Interestingly, Hilton was saved by the same Great Depression that ruined him. Hotels weren't a big-time business at the time, and no one in the Moody family-owned National Hotel Company had any idea what to do with eight more money-losing hotels. In general, there was no one to sell them, it was a pity to close them. Therefore, the new owners offered to buy Hilton Hotels to Hilton himself. Having received a financial respite, Conrad began to buy back hotels named after himself. Three years later, in 1934, he received back three hotels and a new loan secured by them in the amount of $95,000.

From that moment on, wiser, having survived the last major economic downturn in US history, Hilton continued to build his worldwide company, which was already in his dreams. And the tactics of acquisitions have not changed, just the hotels have become larger. For fifteen years, Conrad painstakingly bought up competitors' hotels and built new ones.

The main changes took place inside the Hilton hotels. Conrad made something like "McDonald's" out of them - in all hotels the client was met with a standardized set of services. There was even an advertisement in which a taxi was depicted with a single inscription: "To the Hilton." In order to "equalize" his hotels even more, Konrad was one of the first to designate the class of the hotel with asterisks - like cognac. Another know-how of Hilton was the following: all purchases in hotels were made in advance, based on an analysis of demand and taking into account upcoming events. No customer requirement should come as a surprise.

By the early 1960s, the Hilton had become the most "technological" hotel chain in the world, and its expansion was unimpeded. By the end of the 1960s, Conrad had about 40 hotels in the United States and the same number outside of them. The Hiltons have become a natural fixture in London, Rome, Caracas and Barbados. In 1964, Hilton spun off all "overseas" assets to the Hilton Group, which from that moment owns the right to the Hilton brand outside the United States and Mexico.

Fundamental operating principles

• 1. The client should be offered as many services as possible for free.
• 2. Everything that the client may need should be sold at the hotel.
• 3. Money should bring the entire space of the hotel.

• 1. "Standard offer" of services, uniform in all Hilton hotels.
• 2. "Star" gradation of hotels - by analogy with cognac.

hospitality accommodation america

Today, at the word "Hilton", most of the contemporaries immediately have an image of a glamorous girl throwing money to the right and left in their heads.

However, Hilton is primarily a hotel chain. The affairs of which are now going, to put it mildly, not in the best way. But once it was its founder, Conrad Hilton, who made hotels the way we are used to seeing them today (Figure 1).

He was one of the first people to put a star rating on this business, like in cognac. The most expensive and best hotels were to be designated 5 stars, and the cheapest and simplest 1. In addition, Konrad combined hotels with restaurants, casinos and much more. Conrad Hilton was born December 25, 1887. He was the eighth child in the family. His father - August Hilton had his own small business. He ran a grocery store. It cannot be said that the store brought in a lot of money, but the family did not starve, and Konrad quite calmly received a higher education he did not need at the Mining Institute. He was an engineer by profession, but that didn't appeal to him at all. Since childhood, Conrad Hilton dreamed of becoming a bank manager. He saw himself among people moving millions. But the war has come. In 1917, Konrad volunteered for the army. After a year and a half, he returns home, and learns that his father died in a car accident.

Figure 1 - Conrad Hilton

However, with the business that he so dreamed of, everything turned out to be not so simple. Hilton began to endure one fiasco after another. At the age of 31, his first bank went bankrupt, which lasted less than a year. The young man at this point had only $5,000 in his wallet, and a head filled with dreams of banking. Arriving in Cisco, Texas, the 31-year-old Hilton stayed at the inconspicuous Mobley Hotel. The young businessman immediately noticed the queue that lined up in the hope of getting a number. But there were no free places, and the owner was already so tired from work that he did not even think about expanding (clients simply left to look for a place to sleep in other hotels). He just wanted to retire. It was one of those situations where a person is at the right time in the right place (the same happened with Ray Kroc when he went to the McDonald Brothers restaurant).

After purchasing Mobley, Hilton began to improve the hotel. To begin with, he equipped it with a large number of bedrooms, thereby eliminating the queue. Then he came up with the idea that you can make money on guests by offering them some additional services and goods that will entertain them (at that time, most hotels looked like boring inns). So, in the lobby, around all the columns, small showcases appeared, on which various trinkets (newspapers, magazines, razors, toothbrushes and pastes) were located. Conrad later noticed that one column brought him 8 thousand dollars a month.

The success of Conrad Hilton was greatly surprised by his family, which already considered him a loser. After all the failures in the banking business. However, a year after buying Mobley, Conrad buys his second hotel in Fort North, and then several more. So, by 1924, Conrad Hilton became the owner of 350 rooms in all his hotels. He has come to the point where finances allow him to build his own hotel.

And on August 2, 1925, the stunning (at that time) Dallas Hilton Hotel was opened (about 300 rooms, that is, about the same as all the other hotels owned by Conrad Hilton). A year later, the 38-year-old businessman finally marries Maria Baron (although he will later divorce and marry two more times). It was a good time, considering that the Dallas Hilton became the first hotel to bear the founder's name and the center of the entire Hilton Hotels company. But it was impossible to relax. Three years after Conrad's marriage, the country experienced an economic crisis. It hit the hospitality business hard. People just started traveling less. Yes, and business trips have declined.

By the early 1930s, most of the American hotel companies were bankrupt. Conrad Hilton was forced to sell his business, however, since at that time the hotel business was, to put it mildly, not the best option, the owners of Hilton Hotels hired Conrad to manage the hotel chain by the end of the Great Depression. And they were even ready to sell him the network back.

So, gradually, step by step, Conrad Hilton regained his business (he bought hotels one by one). In 1949, he had already purchased one of the most luxurious hotels in New York - the Waldorf-Astoria, and the first Hilton hotel outside the United States was opened in Puerto Rico.

In 1954, Conrad Hilton shocked the financial world with the biggest deal in American history. Statler Hotels, Hilton's main competitor, was bought for $111 million. Such acquisitions became possible for Conrad Hilton largely because in 46 his company went public, thereby receiving additional financial injections from outside. It is worth noting that by that time Conrad already owned two companies - Hilton Hotels, which owns a business in the United States, and Hilton International, which promotes the company's international business. Hilton hotels began to attract more and more people. Their success in the company was explained simply. Rich people, whether they are businessmen, royalty, or show business stars, just like ordinary middle-class people, need unobtrusive comfort. This is the main luxury. This is the fact that began to attract millionaires and movie / music stars, as well as the usual middle class, to Hilton hotels. They all liked the same hotels. Hilton hotels.

But it is one thing to talk about unobtrusive comfort, and quite another to provide it. To do this, they did it: firstly, it was in the Hilton chain that small kiosks in the lobby of hotels first appeared. No one before the Hilton has equipped their rooms with air-conditioning, automatic entry doors, alarm clocks, and telephones that include features such as direct dialing (no need to call the hotel and ask to be connected to such and such a phone number) . In addition, the Hilton chain built its hotels near airports and seaports, thereby offering tourists special packages (tour hotel). Finally, it was in the Hilton hotel chain that a special guest reward system called Hilton Honors appeared.

In 1966, Conrad Hilton retires, transferring management of the hotel chain to his son, Barron. At this time, the famous hotelier (that's what he liked to call himself after he heard this French word) writes his autobiography "Be my guest." At the same time, he founded his charitable Hilton Foundation, to which he bequeathed his entire fortune after his death in 1979 in Dallas (where the first Hilton hotel was built).

Barron Hilton managed to sue the right to the inheritance from his father's charitable foundation. It took him about 9 years to do this (here it is worth making a reservation that in total Conrad had 8 children and about 100 grandchildren, so the Hilton family does not live alone in Paris. Someone is even doing business now). I must say that the son quite successfully managed the hotel business and made several key changes to the Hilton network. First, the company switched to a franchise model. True, this was started by Konrad himself, but his son had to complete the work. Second, in 1973, the company introduced a remote help system called Hiltron. The client only needed to dial the hotline phone, and he received all the information he was interested in from the robot, including the availability of rooms in the hotel. In 1999, the system was replaced by a more powerful one - Hilstar, which took into account all the possibilities of the global Internet.

In general, if we talk about information technology, the Hilton hotel chain is implementing them much faster than all competitors. So, in Hilton hotels, wireless Internet has been available for all laptop owners for a long time.

Figure 2 - Granddaughter of the founder of Hilton Hotels - Paris Hilton

In addition to all this, it is worth noting another moment in the history of Hilton hotels. Merger of hotels and casinos. The first hotels-casinos appeared in the late 60s, under the direction of Conrad Hilton in Las Vegas. It was one of the most controversial moves in the company's history. But he showed his worth in 1987, when Hilton International merged with the Ladbroke Group, whose main business was gambling houses.

In the 21st century, circumstances so developed that the hotel business of the Hilton family brought them nothing but losses. But the gambling one managed not only to be profitable, but also to cover the losses of the company's hotel activities.

In 2007, the Blackstone investment group bought the entire hotel business from the Hilton family for $26 billion. At the same time, 7.5 billion went to pay off the company's debts.

I must say that things are not going well for Hilton Hotels now. Revenues are constantly declining, and Google, in response to Hilton queries, provides information not about legendary hotels, but about the star of show business, the granddaughter of Barron Paris, who earns quite a lot on her “idleness” (Figure 2).

Conrad Nicholson Hilton (Conrad Nicholson Hilton; 1887 - 1979) was an American entrepreneur and investor. Company Founder Hilton- a global hotel chain.

Hilton was born December 25, 1887 in San Antonio, New Mexico, USA. His father, August Halvorsen "Gus" Hilton, was a Norwegian immigrant with his own grocery store, and his mother, Marie Genevieve, was from a devout Catholic American family of German origin. Hilton was the seventh child in their family.

Hilton trained at the New Mexico Military Institute, St. Michael's College (now Santa Fe College), and the New Mexico School, now New Mexico Tech. He was a member of the international Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. When he turned 21, he took charge of his father's shop, but quickly became disillusioned with the monotony of the business. During this time, he developed his entrepreneurial skills. Seeking new opportunities, Hilton joined the Republican Party and was elected to New Mexico's first state legislature in 1912, when the territory became an official U.S. state. He served two terms before leaving politics. During World War I, Hilton served in the US Army. After serving two years, he was sent home due to the death of his father.

Hilton's mother, having been brought up in the canons of the Catholic Church, instilled in Conrad a love of prayer, whenever he was troubled or alarmed by something: whether it was upset from the childhood loss of a beloved pony, or serious financial losses during the Great Depression. His mother continually reminded him that prayer was the best investment he would ever make.

Hilton's first purchase was the 40-room Mobley Hotel in Cisco, Texas, where he went during the oil boom to open his bank. But his plan to invest in a bank in an oil booming city fell through, and that's when he checked into the Mobley Hotel. Here he saw the potential of this institution and having bought it immediately began repairs. He saw exactly where the mistakes were made in the management of the hotel and immediately began to correct the situation, increasing efficiency. Soon the hotel had a restaurant and a dance hall, as well as an innovation by Hilton, not previously seen in any hotel, a newsstand located in the lobby of the hotel. All his efforts were aimed at meeting the needs of the client. Hilton believed that the hotel staff is responsible for the happiness and comfort of each guest.

Within a year, Conrad's investment paid off in full, so he continued to buy hotels throughout Texas. With the company's proceeds, he bought the Melba Hotel in Fort Worth and the Waldorf Hotel in Dallas. In 1925, Hilton leased land in Dallas and built his first high-rise hotel, the Dallas Hilton, at a cost of $1 million. From that moment on, Hilton set, and I must say, successfully coped with the task of building a hotel every year. The Dallas Hilton was followed by the Abilene Hilton in 1927, the Waco Hilton in 1928, and the El Paso Hilton in 1930. Hilton built his first hotel outside of Texas in 1939 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, known as the Andaluz Hotel. During the Great Depression, Hilton lost several of its hotels and was on the verge of bankruptcy. The new owners offered him to buy the hotels and left him as a manager. Over time, Hilton bought his hotels and continued to build new ones. In 1946, he founded the Hilton Hotels Corporation, reorganized as the Hilton International Company in 1948.

In the 50-60s. the international expansion of the Hilton hotels continued in leaps and bounds. The Hilton Company was the world's first international hotel chain. Hilton owned the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the most luxurious Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, which Conrad dreamed of buying for a very long time. In 1954, he bought the Statler hotel chain and renamed them the Hilton.

The first overseas Hilton hotel appeared in the city of Madrid in Spain in 1948, after which the Hilton Hotels International company was created. He continued to develop both directions, both domestic and foreign. Ultimately, he had 185 hotels in the United States and 75 overseas hotels.

Conrad Hilton died on January 3, 1979 at the age of 91 and was buried at Calvary Hill Catholic Cemetery in Dallas, Texas. He left most of his wealth to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which he established in 1944 for charitable purposes.

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Conrad Hilton, 23, was admitted to the Menninger Psychiatric Hospital in Houston, Texas for treatment. The younger brother of Paris Hilton was arrested on May 7 by the Los Angeles police for breaking into the house of the mother of his ex-girlfriend Hunter Daily Salomon, whom the court had previously forbidden him to approach, and also for stealing her father's Bentley, Tyson Salomon. On Wednesday, May 10, a court session was held at which Konrad shouted and tried to rush at the accusers. The court ruled that Conrad be released on bail of $90,000 on the condition that he be placed in a psychiatric hospital for compulsory treatment, writes TMZ.

Conrad Hilton and Hunter Daly Salomon were together for some time, but in June 2015 the couple broke up. Conrad took the breakup hard and began blackmailing Daly with suicide. After another quarrel, he tried to enter the ex-lover's house, then the court forbade Conrad to approach Daly.

Photos from the court session

The younger brother of Paris Hilton has repeatedly had problems with the law. In July 2014, he made a scandal on board a plane en route from London to Los Angeles. Conrad loudly shouted insults at the passengers and came into conflict with the flight attendants. The crew had to use force to restrict their freedom of movement. Then Conrad was sentenced to 750 hours of community service, ordered to pay a fine and undergo treatment at a clinic for people suffering from drug addiction, according to Fox News.

Barron Hilton II, Nicky Hilton-Rothschild, Paris Hilton, Conrad Hughes Hilton

Note that Conrad is the namesake of his famous great-grandfather, American tycoon and owner of the world-famous Hilton hotel chain Conrad Hilton. Conrad Sr. survived World War I, the Great Depression and became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. His contribution to the hospitality industry is undeniable. In addition to the hotel empire, he founded the Conrad N. Hilton Charitable Foundation, which rewards organizations that help people.

Below is a video from the courtroom:

When future hotel tycoon Conrad Hilton bought his first hotel, he already had several business failures behind him. Having received an engineering degree, he did not work in his specialty for a single day, but immediately went headlong into financial adventures. They only brought disappointment to Hilton - each new undertaking invariably burned out, and everything had to be started from scratch. Although he showed business acumen as a child: when he helped his father in the family grocery store, sales went up sharply. But Conrad himself dreamed of more than just a job as a grocer in the American outback, which was his hometown of San Antonio at the end of the century before last. The boy saw himself at the head of a prosperous bank, a famous financier who turned over millions.

And only at the age of 31, Conrad Hilton accidentally stumbled upon a case that brought him the long-awaited millions, and turned his name into a legend. In 1919, he once again found himself broke and wondering how to put together start-up capital for new banking scams. And then Hilton bought the idle Mobley Hotel in the Texas town of Sisco. This shabby inn with ridiculous columns on the facade could only be called a hotel if you had the imagination. However, Hilton was not deprived of just imagination - moreover, a special, entrepreneurial fantasy. He made not only the hotel itself profitable, but even its columns, surrounding them with glass showcases with goods necessary in any hotel: newspapers, magazines, razor blades, toothbrushes and much more. As the owner of the hotel later calculated, each column brought him an additional $8,000.

famous hotelier

Success inspired Hilton, and he, forgetting about the banking business, decided to take a closer look at the previously unknown hotel business. And, apparently, he saw considerable prospects in him. In 1925, he opened the first hotel in Dallas under the brand name Hilton, which became the cornerstone of the famous hotel empire. It grew stronger, expanded and with minimal losses went through the difficult years of the Great Crisis, when Hilton, in whose veins the blood of tight-fisted Scandinavians and Germans flowed, had to save literally on everything, including even his own salary.

In 1946, the Hilton Hotels Corporation was established and became a public corporation. At this time, Hilton expanded his business far beyond Texas, after buying and leasing several luxury hotels, the hotel chain became the largest in the United States.

And in 1949, the first hotel abroad was opened - Caribe Hilton in Puerto Rico. On this occasion, Conrad Hilton founded a new company (operating in parallel with the first) - Hilton International, engaged in promoting his brand outside the United States.

Today there are Hilton hotels in almost all countries of the world. Over the past quarter century, Papa Conrad's hotel industry has been replenished with a number of luxury hotels, led by the oldest and one of the most famous hotels in New York, the Waldorf Astoria (in 1977, Hilton Hotels acquired its controlling stake for $ 35 million). The corporation also includes three- and four-star hotels of the British chain Stakis and the Scandinavian Scandic Hotels AB.

Of all the titles given to him by newspapermen, the founder of the hotel empire loved the French name for his profession, hotelier, the most. The famous hotelier passed away in 1979, but until the last day he retained the post of chairman of the board of directors. Only in 1966, on the eve of his 80th birthday, Conrad Hilton allowed himself to part with another post - the presidency, leaving it to his son Barron. Journalists noted that, along with the construction of hotels, Conrad Hilton succeeded in another construction - his family clan: by now, eight children of “Papa Conrad” and almost a hundred grandchildren and great-grandchildren are living and healthy (and some are doing business) in the world .

His autobiography Be My Guest has become a reference book for a generation of hoteliers in many countries. Because the author, who inherited double pedantry from his Norwegian father and German mother, created a whole methodological manual on the topic “how to extract maximum profit from a minimum area or volume.”

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standard luxury

The corporate motto of the company: "Guaranteed luxury with affordable service of high standard quality" attracts a wide variety of clients to its hotels - from crowned heads, business leaders and cultural and show business stars to simple married couples belonging to the middle class. As American journalists wrote, Conrad Hilton was the first to understand what has become a commonplace in the service industry today: both millionaires and people with average incomes are equally in need of real comfort and unobtrusive, but ubiquitous service, and both of them are ready to stop together for this. in the same hotels.

And the main thing that brought success to the Hilton hotel chain was innovation in the field of service and marketing. The corporation was the first to install specialized souvenir and gift kiosks (Hilton Country Store). For the first time, all rooms were equipped with such common devices today as air conditioning, direct dial telephone, multifunctional programmable alarm clocks, automatic entry doors. In 1994, Hilton became the first hotel chain in the world to have all properties equipped with automatic opening, closing, locking and blocking of entrance doors. And since 1959, the company began to open specialized hotels at airports, which offered an appropriate package of services for air passengers and airline flight crew. Another innovation was the reward system for regular customers - the Hilton Honors program, as well as the system of a nationwide club resort holiday. Then a revolution in the hotel services market was made by a joint project of sea cruise holidays with the Festival Cruise company.

In addition, the Conrad Hilton Company was the first in its business sector to introduce and widely disseminate a franchise system, for which a subsidiary, Hilton Inns, was created in 1965. Over time, all Hilton competitors adopted this system, while Conrad Hilton's company itself today operates under franchise agreements with 1352 hotels.

Virtual booking

But the main innovations of the Hilton hotel chain saw the light after his death - when the world entered the electronic era. Following the precepts of the founding father, his followers were the first to be able to occupy all the profitable niches that opened up, mainly due to the fact that work on the "electronization" of Hilton hotels and related infrastructure began long before the emergence of the now well-known concepts - e-business and IT technologies. . Today, competitors are forced to rush through stages of technological restructuring that Hilton has long since passed. Back in 1973, Hilton Hotels was the first in the world's hotel business to introduce the Hiltron information and reference system - with its help, the client could remotely obtain information about availability and book rooms along with rail and air tickets. The effectiveness of this system turned out to be above all expectations - it successfully worked for 26 years, and only in 1999 it was replaced by a more modern one - the Central Reservations System (CRS or Hilstar), which united more than 500 hotels around the world.

In 1985, the corporation began operating another system - the marketing Answer * Net, which connected all regional offices and hotel complexes in the United States into a single network. And a decade later, the first in the industry launched the www.hilton.com Internet portal and, with the support of American Express, its own Hilton Optima credit card system.

In 2002, the Hilton empire was one of the initiators of the creation of a unified network booking system WorldRes, which, in addition to Hilton itself, included the resources of two other leading players in the field of resort and hotel business - Accor and Six Continents.

Finally, the company recently successfully announced another innovative service solution - WLAN access based on Symbol Technologies wireless switches. This communication complex was first tested in the Hilton Frankfurt hotel and immediately became popular with the administration and customers.

Roulette Hotel

But, perhaps, the most unexpected and controversial innovation was the active and systematic integration of Hilton's hotel business into a neighboring area - the gambling industry.

This alliance began in the late sixties, when two unusual hotels were built in the recognized gambling capital of America, Las Vegas - Las Vegas Hilton and Flamingo Hilton. Unlike all others built earlier, they were also gambling establishments. Prior to this, hotels in Las Vegas were built separately, casinos were built separately. And only Conrad Hilton, for all his piety, came up with a bold idea: to combine living in the "city-roulette" with the main local pastime - the game. This implied an additional system of service and various bonuses for customers. For example, restaurants and bars were placed right in the gambling halls, and each new guest was given free gambling chips for a certain amount.

The innovation was so successful that in 1987, as a result of a series of transactions, Hilton International merged with the British industrial group Ladbroke Group, whose main activity was just casinos, bookmakers, lotteries and sweepstakes. The association later became known as the Hilton Group.

The British gaming empire did not become the dominant division in the Hilton Group, but it certainly saved the hotel business during the most severe crisis associated with the main tragedy of the new century - the terrorist attacks in New York in September 2001. After them, for the entire global hotel business (as well as the air passenger, tourism, and many others), the era of relative prosperity of the late 1990s was replaced by a period of decline. And for someone - and a complete collapse.

For some, but not for the Hilton Group, she once again demonstrated a rare insight, having managed to acquire a saving magic wand in the form of the mentioned gambling business. Because it quickly became clear that natural and man-made crises and catastrophes in society lead to the fact that people are less willing to travel, fly on planes and stay in hotels, but the craving for gambling in such times, on the contrary, only intensifies! Which, in general, is natural - when everything is unstable in the world, there is a growing hope to increase one's well-being with the help of fortune.

In the early years of the new millennium, the Hilton Group's hospitality sector suffered losses, but profits from another division - gambling and betting - made it possible not only to cover them, but also to increase profits in 2003 by almost $ 2 million compared to the previous year. The Hilton Group's total sales in 2003 were approximately $16 billion, of which only 19% came from Hilton International's hospitality division.