Curated playlist
Franchises
- Hilton Garden InnHilton Garden Inn began as CrestHill, an experiment where only four of 25 proposed hotels were built.
- Courtyard by MarriottMarriott couldn't find enough places for its hotels, so it built a new chain. Courtyard by Marriott opened in 1983.
- Sheraton Hotels and ResortsSheraton Hotels got its name from a lighted sign on a Boston roof. Changing it was too expensive.
- ValvolineValvoline began in a doctor's bag, not a garage. Dr. John Ellis went looking for medical uses for crude oil.
- Westin Hotels & ResortsWestin Hotels & Resorts, an American upscale hotel chain now owned by Marriott International, began with a chance encounter over breakfast in 1930. The setting was the coffee shop of the Commercial Hotel in Yakima, Washington. Severt W.…
- JW Marriott HotelsThe JW Marriott Jakarta hotel reopened five weeks after a 2003 car bomb. Twelve people were killed in that attack.
- Renaissance HotelsRenaissance Hotels began as an upscale offshoot of a roadside motel chain. The first opened in 1981 near Denver.
- Wyndham Hotels & ResortsA journalist said a Dallas developer named the Wyndham hotel brand after her. Trammell Crow launched it in 1981.
- Le MéridienLe Méridien hotels began as a place for Air France crews to stay. The airline opened its first one in Paris in 1972.
- The Ritz-Carlton Hotel CompanyThe Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company runs a luxury chain owned by Marriott International, yet one of its earliest hotels was once so empty that its owner staged a bluff. In 1933, only 30 guests were registered at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston.…
- Circle KCircle K sells 17 Polar Pop fountain drinks every second in the United States, a figure the company reported as of 2018. Those cups pass through a convenience store chain that, by February 2020, had more than 14,800 stores carrying its…
- 7-Eleven7-Eleven, headquartered in Irving, Texas, operates, franchises or licenses roughly 85,000 stores in 20 countries and territories, as of August 2024. Few retail brands have spread so widely, and fewer still have done it without a single…
- Embassy Suites by HiltonIn 1983, two men bet that hotel guests wanted more than one room. Their chain, Embassy Suites, opened in Kansas in 1984.
- Kimpton Hotels & RestaurantsEvery Kimpton hotel was built around an on-site restaurant or bar. The chain began in San Francisco in 1981.