Renaissance Hotels

• 1. Introduction

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  Renaissance Hotels began not as a luxury vision but as an upscale division of a roadside motel chain. In 1981, the Ramada Renaissance brand opened its first property outside Denver, in Aurora, Colorado. It was an unlikely starting point for what would become a global portfolio spanning more than 170 hotels. The story of how that Aurora property grew into a chain operating across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America runs through boardroom deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, a Hong Kong property conglomerate, and one of the most recognizable names in the hotel industry. What did it take to transform a Ramada offshoot into a Marriott flagship? And which storied buildings, from a Chicago hotel that hosted presidents to a London railway terminus, ended up inside that portfolio along the way?

• 2. Ramada Roots

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  Aurora, Colorado is where Renaissance Hotels first took shape. The early brand was called Ramada Renaissance, an upscale tier designed to sit above the standard Ramada Inn product. The concept was simple: trade on the Ramada name while offering something more refined. That arrangement did not last long. In 1989, Hong Kong-based New World Development acquired Ramada's hotels and restaurants for $540 million. New World immediately restructured what it had bought, splitting Renaissance Hotels off as a standalone chain and developing it independently from the Ramada name. The U.S. rights to the Ramada name were sold separately to Prime Hospitality. The former Ramada Corp. was renamed Aztar Corp., and Renaissance moved forward on its own.

• 3. The Stouffer Acquisition

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  In 1993, New World Development paid an estimated $1.5 billion to acquire the Stouffer Hotels and Resorts chain from Nestle. The deal brought 40 hotels into the New World orbit at once. New World licensed the Stouffer Hotels brand for three years during a transitional period, and 28 U.S. Stouffer properties were reflagged as Stouffer Renaissance. The Stouffer Presidente hotels in Mexico were converted into Inter-Continental hotels rather than Renaissance properties. Several of the Stouffer conversions became notable entries in the Renaissance catalog. The Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., the Vinoy Hotel in St. Petersburg, and the Nashville hotel that would become Renaissance Nashville were all inherited through the Stouffer purchase. The Stanford Court Hotel in San Francisco also entered Renaissance management this way, staying under the brand until 2013.

• 4. Going Public, Then Sold

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  On the 27th of September 1995, New World Development took its hotel management and franchising operation public on the New York Stock Exchange. The new entity was called Renaissance Hotel Group N.V. It operated three brands: New World, Renaissance, and Ramada International. Ownership of the individual hotel buildings themselves remained separate. New World Development retained those assets through CTF Holdings, a private company controlled by the Cheng family, the owners of the NWD group. By the time Renaissance Hotel Group N.V. went public, the company was managing and franchising 150 hotels, 35 of them in the United States. On the 18th of February 1997, Marriott International bought the entire management company from New World Development for US$1 billion. Marriott had first moved on the deal only a few weeks after Renaissance Hotel Group N.V. had tentatively agreed to be sold to Doubletree Corp., which had offered $890 million. Marriott topped that figure and closed the acquisition.

• 5. What Marriott Gained

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  Marriott's existing portfolio at the time of the acquisition stood at 1,035 hotels in the United States and 75 additional hotels outside the country. Adding Renaissance and its Ramada International brand was explicitly about expanding Marriott's presence in fast-growing Asian markets. The Stouffer Hotels brand was not part of the deal. Ramada International was included, though Marriott later sold that brand to Cendant Corp. in September 2004; Cendant is today known as Wyndham. The Renaissance brand itself remained with Marriott and was folded into what Marriott describes as its lifestyle collection. As of the 31st of January 2023, the brand operates in more than 170 hotels worldwide. Between 2015 and 2023, the Asia-Pacific region grew from 31 to 45 properties, reflecting the original rationale for the acquisition.

• 6. Historic Buildings

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  Renaissance Cleveland Hotel carries the longest documented history in the chain, tracing its origins to 1918 as Hotel Cleveland. The building is part of the Tower City Center complex and was operated by Sheraton from 1958 to 1977 before Renaissance took over in 1993. Among its recorded guests were The Beatles, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dwight D. Eisenhower. In London, the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel occupies the former St Pancras Chambers railway offices, a building that began life as the Midland Grand Hotel in 1873 and closed as a hotel in 1935. The building forms the frontispiece of St Pancras railway station and reopened under the Renaissance brand in 2011. The Renaissance Providence Hotel has a different kind of history: it was an unfinished Masonic Temple whose construction was abandoned during the Great Depression. It was rehabilitated and reopened as a Renaissance in 2007.

• 7. Unusual Properties

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  The Ilikai Hotel and Luxury Suites in Honolulu holds the distinction of being the first luxury high-rise hotel in Hawaii. Renaissance managed it between 2000 and 2006, and the property is known for appearing in the opening credits of the television series Hawaii Five-O. In Mobile, Alabama, the Renaissance Riverview Plaza Hotel is the tallest hotel in the state, while the nearby Battle House Hotel is one of the earliest steel-frame buildings in Alabama. The current Battle House structure dates to 1908, built after the original was destroyed; the site's history predates the American Civil War. It was reflagged as The Battle House Renaissance Mobile Hotel and Spa in 2007. In Schaumburg, Illinois, the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel attracted a different kind of attention in July 2014, when it hosted DashCon, a Tumblr-inspired convention that became widely noted for disputes between its organizers, attendees, and allegations of non-payment of the venue fee to the hotel itself.