Short answers, pulled from the story.
Hilton Garden Inn traces its origins to the late 1980s, when the brand launched under the name CrestHill by Hilton. It was reintroduced under the Hilton Garden Inn name in the early 1990s as an upscale offering targeting secondary and tertiary markets.
Hilton Garden Inn has 862 properties with 126,086 rooms across 49 countries and territories. Of those, 81 properties with 15,678 rooms are managed directly, while 781 properties with 110,408 rooms operate as franchises.
The first Hilton Garden Inn outside North America opened in Stuttgart, Germany in 2006. The property is known as the Hilton Garden Inn Stuttgart Neckarpark.
Hilton Garden Inn was originally called CrestHill by Hilton when it launched in the late 1980s. Only four of the 25 proposed CrestHill hotels were ever built before the brand was rebranded and repositioned in the early 1990s.
Three of the four original hotels built under the CrestHill name are still part of the Hilton Garden Inn chain today. They are located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Southfield, Michigan; and Valencia, California. The fourth original hotel, in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, became a Four Points property.
Hilton Garden Inn is owned by Hilton Worldwide. The brand operates through a mix of directly managed properties and franchised hotels, with the franchise model accounting for the majority of its more than 860 locations.