Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is a chain of luxury hotels owned by AccorHotels since 2016. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was created in 2001 following the merger of Canadian Pacific Hotels (founded in the late 1880s) and Fairmont Hotels (founded in 1907). Fairmont operates 75 properties in 24 countries, with a strong presence in United States.
History
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Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was created following the merger of Canadian Pacific Hotels and Fairmont Hotels between 1999 and 2001.
Fairmont Hotels, 1st generation
During the 1890s, James Graham Fair bought the land where the Fairmont San Francisco now stands, the first hotel to bear the Fairmont namesake. The nearly completed structure survived the earthquake of 1906. Although heavily damaged by the subsequent fires, the hotel was renovated under the eye of architect Julia Morgan and finally opened in 1907. In 1926, the Penthouse Suite was created with three secret passageways to access it. The hotel was acquired by Benjamin Swig.
Starting in the 1960s, Fairmont began developing a small chain of luxury hotels in major cities across the United States. The Fairmont chain consisted of seven properties in San Francisco, New Orleans (The Roosevelt), Boston (Copley Plaza), New York (Plaza Hotel), Chicago, Dallas, San Jose (Fairmont San Jose).
Canadian Pacific Hotels
In the late 1800’s, the Canadian Pacific Hotels (CP Hotels) was a division of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) that operated a series of resort hotels across Canada. Most of these hotels were originally built and operated by the railway's hotel department, while a few were acquired from Canadian National Hotels. Over the years, a collection of unique hotels was put together in Canada’s cities and attractive rural areas. By the 1980s, CP Hotels' collection included the Chateau Lake Louise, the Banff Springs Hotel, the Château Frontenac, the Empress Hotel, the Palliser Hotel, the Fairmont Royal York, and others.
CPR's rival Grand Trunk Railway and later Canadian National Railway copied Van Horne's approach by building hotels such as the Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper, Alberta, and the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa. CPR purchased CN's hotel chain in 1988, making CP Hotels the nation's largest hotel owner. In the 1990s, CP Hotels began to expand and purchased the Canadian Delta Hotels chain and the international Princess Hotels chain in 1998, which became wholly owned subsidiaries of CP Hotels. In 1999, the CP Hotels purchased the San Francisco-based Fairmont Hotels and Resorts chain.
2001: Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
In April 1999, Canadian Pacific Hotels, Kingdom Hotels and Maritz Wolff & Co. bought Fairmont Hotel Management L.P., with Canadian Pacific Hotels holding the majority of the shares (67%).
After purchasing Fairmont in 1999, Canadian Pacific Limited split into five companies in a 2001 "starburst" move designed to increase the valuations of its individual divisions. The former Canadian Pacific Hotels division took on the name of the much smaller Fairmont chain to reflect the new global focus of the new company.
In the early 2000s, Fairmont multiplied its openings in the United States. In 2001, Fairmont introduced the Willow Stream Spa prototype, a $7 million 2-floor 8,000-square-foot spa located inside the Fairmont Empress Hotel. The signature spa brand was then implemented in many of Fairmont’s locations. In July 2001, Fairmont Hotels signed a joint-venture with Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan for a minority-stake purchase and the management of a luxury 393-room hotel in Dubai. The Fairmont Dubai was the first of Fairmont’s branded hotels in the Middle East. In 2003, Fairmont introduced its signature Fairmont Heritage Place, a label for all exceptional hotels of its portfolio, with the opening of the Acapulco Diamante in Mexico.
In 2004, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Inc. paid $70 million to take full control of the management company that runs its properties. Then in early 2006, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was sold for $3.9 billion USD to Colony Capital, LLC and Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Hotels International. As a result of that purchase, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was united with Raffles Hotels and Resorts and Swissôtel to form Fairmont Raffles Hotels International (FRHI), though the four chains still operate under their individual names.
The Ghirardelli Square and the Mareazul locations were added to the Fairmont Heritage Place portfolio in 2008.
In April 2010, Kingdom Hotels sold 22% of its shares of FRHI (from 58% to 35%) to Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment, which now owned 40% of FRHI and became the largest shareholder of the company. The Middle East became Fairmont’s new target market, where Fairmont opened in the Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel in 2010 and at the Palm Jumeirah in 2012. In Asia, Fairmont reopened the Peace Hotel in Shanghai in 2010, opened in Baku’s Flame Towers in 2011, and opened its first hotel in India in 2012. In the USA, Fairmont acquired the iconic Claremont hotel in Berkeley, California in 2014.
In 2015, AccorHotels announced the acquisition of Fairmont Raffles Hotels International (FRHI), thus adding Raffles, Fairmont and Swissôtel to its Luxury Hotel Brands portfolio. Acquiring Fairmont Hotels enabled the French hotel group to gain access to the North American market.
In 2017, Fairmont opened the Qasar Istanbul, its first hotel in Turkey.
Activities
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is a chain of luxury hotels with 75 properties in 24 countries.
Notable properties
Sustainable development
In 2009, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts joined the Climate Savers Program of the WWF, committing to reduce operational CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2013. In 2011, LED lights became the norm for Fairmont hotels, and a sustainability consultant was assigned to all construction/renovation projects.
References
External links
- Official website
