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Spying the same opportunities, other U.S. chains are following Hilton abroad as fast as they can. The second biggest U.S. hotel chain after Hilton, Sheraton Corp., now has seven foreign hostelries; Hotel Corp. of America has five, and Knott Hotels three. But Hilton's biggest U.S. rival overseas is Intercontinental Hotels Corp., a Pan American World Airways subsidiary that has no hotels in the U.S. In the past six years, Intercontinental has added 13 hotels abroad, to bring its total to 19, expects to double that number within four years. Its hotels are generally smaller than Hilton's, however, and have yet to return an overall profit to Pan Am.
Last of Its Kind? The rush for rooms with a view abroad is a godsend for the big U.S. hotelmen, since business at home is not what it used to be. Speedy jets have made it possible for businessmen to fly into a city and out again swiftly, transacting all their business in one day. Families traveling by car have long since bypassed downtown hotels for motels and plush motor hotels. Hotel occupancy rates have shriveled from 93% in 1946 to 62%. More and more U.S. hotels depend on convention business—and, luckily, it is good and growing. Last year 37% of all downtown hotel business came from conventions. In medium-sized cities that no longer attract the conventioneers, such as Buffalo and Hartford, hotels are having a hard time surviving.
In the Hilton chain, during this year's first quarter, domestic revenues fell 10.6% and profits by nearly a half, offsetting profits from abroad. The recently opened New York Hilton (2,153 rooms) in Rockefeller Center offers what new U.S. hotels need nowadays if they hope to succeed: free parking to compete with the motels, expensive specialty restaurants to attract the high-livers, and lots of room for conventions to meet. It may be the last of its kind. "With perhaps an exception here and there," says Conrad Hilton, "we are not going to build any more large hotels in this country, and there are no more hotels in the U.S. that I want to buy."
Wringing the Dollars. Even so, Hilton is doing better than most hoteliers in the U.S., and better than any abroad. An English author once described American tourists as people who "dare everything and risk nothing"—and nowhere do they risk less than at Hilton hotels. Whether he is in Teheran or Trinidad, the traveler can be sure that Hilton will offer him a clean bed, pleasant surroundings, plentiful ice water, and food that he can safely eat. He can also be sure that, while supplying American comforts, Hilton will wring his dollars out of him as efficiently, as economically and as unobtrusively as possible.
Hiltons are assembly-line hostelries with carefully metered luxuries—convenient, automatic, a bit antiseptic. Conrad Hilton's life is rooted in the belief that people are pretty much equal, and that their tastes and desires are, too. His hotels have made the world safe for middle-class travelers, who need not fear the feeling of being barely tolerated in some of the older European hotels; at a Hilton, all they need is a reservation and money.