12 December 2003
Paris Hilton to be added to Paris Hiltons
Marriott poised to enter celebrity branding
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Hilton
Hotels Corporation announced today that it would be adding the first
"celebrity brand" to its European operation.
The new hotel will be located in a former video arcade near the
Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, and will be called the Hilton Paris Paris Hilton in honor
of the company founder's great-granddaughter, Paris Hilton. The Hilton
Paris Paris Hilton will join six other hotels already bearing the Hilton logo in
or near Paris: the Hilton Paris Arc
de Triomphe, the Hilton Paris La Defense, the Hilton Paris Orly Airport,
the Hilton Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport, and the Hilton Paris.
This move comes on the heels of
information released by the company yesterday that every one of its
hotels in Paris is "sold out" for the next 27 months. At first the
company was baffled by this development, but now it appears that the
buzz created by a 43-minute video tape of Ms. Hilton that is being
widely circulated on the Internet has
been the sole cause of the increase in reservations at each of the six
properties.
A similar phenomenon, though on a much smaller scale, was experienced by
the Sheraton Sand Key Resort in Clearwater Beach, Florida. It was there
in the late 80's that reservations for room 538 were nearly impossible
to book thanks to the notoriety given that room as the site of a
peccadillo between TV evangelist Jim Bakker and model Jessica Hahn.
Celebrity branding of lodging properties is not new for the Hilton
family of properties (e.g., Fess
Parker's DoubleTree Resort Hotel in Santa Barbara, California) but will
now be watched more closely by Hilton's
competitors. For instance it has been rumored that the board of
directors for
Marriott International has already commissioned a study of the heirs of
that company's chairman and namesake, J. W. Marriott, to identify any
"place-sounding names" among those progeny. To date they have
discovered an Alexandria, a Florence, a Hilo, and a Sydney.
Finally, in a related news item,
Travel Fox has learned that Madonna, perhaps the champion of femme celebs,
has expressed interest in buying a controlling interest in the Madonna Inn
in San Luis Obispo, California That well-known property would need
only a shift in marketing strategy, rather than a name change, to
capitalize on the diva's celebrity status.
Related Travel Fox scoops:
Related Err Travel columns:
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