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In keeping with his restless nature, Hilton is particularly fond of making flying visits to his chain or searching out new hotel sites. He scrambled like a mountain goat over Rome's Monte Mario to pick out just the right spot for the Cavalieri Hilton, declared with the spirit of a Medici commissioning a palace that he wanted it to be "a balcony of flowers overlooking Rome." Whenever Hilton appears at one of his hotels, the staff jumps to give him royal treatment—and sometimes stumbles. His bathtub at the New York Hilton was cracked, and at the Waldorf recently a flustered waiter forgot to serve him the ham he ordered with his eggs. In London he was delayed in a faulty elevator for 15 minutes, and in Amsterdam every spigot he turned in his room produced only boiling hot water. Yet Hilton is a gentle executive who never has a sharp rebuke for an employee's mistakes, seems almost apologetic when he points them out.
He presides over board meetings with a princely aloofness. "I, Conrad Hilton, can do anything I want to do," he declares with the assurance of a man who owns or controls 30% of the company's stock and a clear majority of its esprit. Actually, Hilton has had to wear down objections from his board to some of the biggest steps the company has taken, including the purchase of the Waldorf and the takeover of the Statlers. Hilton listens to the board's advice and usually gives in gracefully to strong opposition to his schemes. But when he thinks he is right, he is hard to turn aside. "Behind that pleasant exterior is a hard business mind," says Donald Gordon, president of the Canadian National Railways, which owns the Hilton-operated Queen Elizabeth hotel in Montreal. "He is not belligerent, but he is tenacious."
Into the Pool. Hilton management needs tenacity to face the problems and frustrations of running a worldwide hotel chain. Long before their foundations were laid, most of Hilton's hotels abroad became centers of controversy, sometimes discreetly abetted by rivals. The Communists on Rome's city council battled Hilton for 2½ years before he got a permit; Londoners objected to the Hilton's height and its proximity to Buckingham Palace; Montreal's French Canadians fought for a French name for the Queen Elizabeth. Openings have often been ill-starred; Hong Kong's opening last month was marred by a water shortage, and the death of Pope John canceled elaborate plans for opening festivities in Rome.
Conrad Hilton so revels in lavish openings that he sometimes spends as much as $150,000 on one. He tries valiantly to give a little speech in the native language, no matter how disastrously it turns out, loves to mingle with the celebrities and movie stars he has invited. There are other types about, too. The honored guests at the Portland, Ore., opening threw furniture into the swimming pool and made off with the portrait of Hilton that hangs in every Hilton lobby. At the New York opening, some wayward members of the press took their whisky by the bottle instead of the drink, someone painted a swastika on a Dong Kingman mural and the overzealous door guards tried to keep out Mayor Wagner. In Rotterdam all the lights went out while most of the guests were dressing for the party.