Fairmont Hotels & Resorts

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1926, the Fairmont San Francisco gained a Penthouse Suite that could be reached by three secret passageways. That hidden detail belongs to Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, a Canadian luxury hotel chain that now operates more than 70 properties worldwide. Its name was born in California, yet its Canadian character was shaped by a railway. How did a railway's hotel department and a San Francisco hotel come to share one banner? Why was the company eventually cut loose from its parent, and who has owned it since? And how did a brand tied to Canadian landmarks end up opening hotels on several continents?

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• 2. Railway Hotel Empire

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  As early as 1886, the Canadian Pacific Railway was running hotels along its own rail lines through a dedicated hotel department. Many of these resort hotels were built and operated by the railway itself. A few were bought later from Canadian National Hotels, the hotel division of the Canadian National Railway.

  By the 1980s, the collection included the Chateau Lake Louise, the Banff Springs Hotel, the Château Frontenac, the Empress Hotel, the Palliser Hotel and the Fairmont Royal York. The railway's hotels reached both rural and urban Canada. A few stood outside the country, in Germany, Israel, Mexico and the United States.

  The Grand Trunk Railway, and later the Canadian National Railway, copied the approach of Van Horne. Their results included Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper, Alberta, and the Château Laurier in Ottawa.

  In 1988, the Canadian Pacific Railway bought Canadian National Hotels, the hotel arm of its old rival. That purchase made CP Hotels the largest hotel owner in the nation. The 1990s brought further growth. CP Hotels bought the Canadian Delta Hotels chain, and in 1998 it added the international Princess Hotels chain. Both became wholly owned subsidiaries.

  The brand that would give the whole company its future name was still independent. Its story began far from the Canadian rail lines, in San Francisco.

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• 3. San Francisco Beginnings

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  During the 1890s, a man named James Graham Fair bought the land where the Fairmont San Francisco now stands. It became the first hotel to carry the Fairmont name. The nearly finished building survived the earthquake of 1906, although the fires that followed left it heavily damaged. The architect Julia Morgan oversaw the renovation, and the hotel finally opened in 1907.

  In 1945, Benjamin Swig acquired the Fairmont San Francisco. Beginning in the 1960s, the Swig family grew the property into a small chain of luxury hotels across the United States. The chain operated as Fairmont Hotels Management, and it both bought and built hotels.

  In 1965, the chain acquired the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans. It renamed the building the Fairmont Roosevelt, and later the Fairmont New Orleans. Some hotels carried the Fairmont name only briefly. The Colony Square Hotel in Atlanta ran as Fairmont Colony Square Hotel from its opening in 1974 to 1977. The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia ran as Fairmont Philadelphia from 1979 to 1980.

  The Fairmont San Jose opened in 1987. The company took over management of the Plaza Hotel in New York in 1995. In 1996 it bought the Copley Plaza Hotel and renamed it The Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel. By 1998, the company managed seven properties in the United States.

  The Copley Plaza, founded in 1912 in Boston, still appears among the hotels the brand manages today.

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• 4. Merger and Starburst

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  In April 1999, Canadian Pacific Hotels, Kingdom Hotels International and Maritz Wolff & Co. bought Fairmont Hotels Management L.P. Canadian Pacific Hotels held the majority of the shares, at 67%.

  In 2001, the parent company, Canadian Pacific Limited, was reorganized. It owned both Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts and the Canadian Pacific Railway. During the reorganization, the hotel division took the name of the company it had bought two years earlier. It became Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. Several properties moved to its Delta Hotels subsidiary, but most of the signature hotels and resorts stayed under the Fairmont banner.

  In October 2001, Canadian Pacific Limited spun off all its subsidiary companies as separately traded, independent businesses. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was one of them. The company called this a "starburst" move, and it was designed to raise the valuations of the individual divisions.

  Fairmont now had to make its own way. It soon tested a spa concept at a single hotel in Victoria.

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• 5. Spas and Timeshares

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  The Willow Stream Spa prototype cost $7 million and filled two floors and 8,000 square feet inside the Fairmont Empress Hotel. Fairmont introduced it in 2001. The signature spa brand was then rolled out to many of the chain's other locations.

  In July 2001, Fairmont Hotels signed a joint venture with Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The deal covered a minority-stake purchase and the management of a luxury hotel in Dubai with 393 rooms. The Fairmont Dubai became the first Fairmont-branded hotel in the Middle East. In the early 2000s, the company also multiplied its openings in the United States.

  In 2003, Fairmont launched Fairmont Heritage Place, a chain of timeshare hotels. The first one opened in Mexico.

  In 2004, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Inc. paid $70 million to take full control of the management company that runs its properties. Two years later, a far larger transaction would change who owned the company.

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• 6. Owners Changing Hands

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  In early 2006, a cluster of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was sold to Colony Capital, LLC for US$3.9 billion. Colony Capital then formed a joint partnership with the Kingdom Holding Company. Fairmont was united with Raffles Hotels and Resorts and Swissôtel to form Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, known as FRHI. The four chains still operate under their individual names.

  In April 2010, Kingdom Hotels sold 22% of its shares in FRHI to Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment. Its stake fell from 58% to 35%. Qatari Diar ended up with 40% of FRHI and became the second largest shareholder.

  In 2015, AccorHotels announced it would acquire FRHI, with the approval and support of the external party. The deal added Raffles, Fairmont and Swissôtel to its luxury hotel brands. For the French hotel group, the acquisition meant greater access to the lucrative North American market. In 2016, FRHI became a subsidiary of AccorHotels.

  The 2010 sale also coincided with a new strategic focus on the Middle East.

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• 7. Opening Around the World

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  The Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel opened in 2010, as the Middle East became Fairmont's new target market. In 2012, the company followed with a hotel at the Palm Jumeirah.

  Asia was also in focus. In 2010, Fairmont reopened the Peace Hotel in Shanghai. In 2011, it opened in Baku's Flame Towers. In 2012, it opened its first hotel in India. Back in the United States, it acquired the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California, in 2014.

  In 2015, Fairmont stated that it would invest in two new hotels in Egypt. It already had a Fairmont in Cairo. The Fairmont Quasar Istanbul opened in 2017 as the company's first hotel in Turkey. In 2019, it opened its first South American hotel in Brazil.

  In 2021, Fairmont opened the Fairmont Taghazout Bay in Morocco and the Fairmont Ambassador Seoul in South Korea.

  In 2025, the company made its debut in Japan with Fairmont Tokyo, a 217-room hotel in Shibaura, Tokyo.

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• 8. Heritage Addresses

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  The Fairmont Banff Springs in Banff dates to 1887, and the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise in Lake Louise to 1890. Le Château Frontenac in Quebec City followed in 1893. The company's list of managed hotels assigns all three the same year of management by Fairmont, which is 2001.

  The railway rivals' buildings sit on that same list. The Château Laurier in Ottawa dates to 1912, and Jasper Park Lodge to 1922. Both came under Fairmont management in 2001.

  The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto opened in 1929. The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver dates to 1939. The Fairmont Empress in Victoria dates to 1908.

  Some heritage names lie abroad. The Savoy in London dates to 1889, and The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi to 1904. Fairmont took over management of both in 2004. The Plaza in New York City dates to 1907.

  The list also reaches back further than the railway era. Le Montreux Palace in Switzerland is listed as founded in 1837. The oldest founding year in the list belongs to The Mere in Knutsford, England, at 1834.

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