Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is a global chain of
luxury hotels that operates more than 70 properties worldwide, with a strong presence in Canada.
The company originated from two hotel businesses established in the late 19th century, the
Canadian Pacific Limited
Canadian Pacific Limited was created in 1971 to own properties formerly owned by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), a transportation and mining giant in Canada. In October 2001, CPR completed the corporate spin-offs of each of the remaining business ...
-owned
Canadian Pacific Hotels & Resorts, and Fairmont Hotels. In 1999, Canadian Pacific Hotels acquired a majority interest in Fairmont Hotels; with Canadian Pacific Hotels later renaming its entire hotel portfolio under the Fairmont Hotels & Resorts banner in 2001. Shortly after the hotel division was renamed, Canadian Pacific Limited was split into several smaller companies in a
starburst
MicroPro International Corporation was an American software company founded in 1978 in San Rafael, California. They are best known as the publisher of WordStar, a popular early word processor for personal computers.
History Founding and early su ...
move, with Fairmont becoming a separately-traded company.
In 2006, Fairmont was acquired by
Colony Capital, who subsequently entered into a joint partnership with the
Kingdom Holding Company
The Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) ( ar, شركة المملكة القابضة) is a Saudi conglomerate holding company, based in Riyadh. The KHC is a publicly listed company on the Tadawul (Saudi stock exchange). The KHC consists of a select ...
; consolidating Fairmont with their other hotel brands,
Raffles and
Swissôtel to form
Fairmont Raffles Hotels International
FRHI Hotels & Resorts (previously known as Fairmont Raffles Hotels International) is a global hotel management company that is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. FRHI is the parent company that manages three brands of hotels: Fairmont, Raffles ...
(FRHI). Fairmont became a subsidiary of
AccorHotels
Accor S.A. is a French multinational hospitality company that owns, manages and franchises hotels, resorts and vacation properties. It is the largest hospitality company in Europe, and the sixth largest hospitality company worldwide.
Accor op ...
in 2016, after the sale of FRHI to AccorHotels was completed.
History
Predecessors (1886–1999)
Canadian Pacific Hotels
![The Field Hotel below Mount Stephen, British Columbia](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/The_Field_Hotel_below_Mount_Stephen%2C_British_Columbia.jpg)
Canadian Pacific Hotels (CP Hotels) began as a division of the
Canadian Pacific Railway
The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadi ...
(CPR) Hotels department. The division operated a series of hotels along CPR's rail lines as early as 1886. Many of these resort hotels were built and operated by the railway's hotel department, while a few were later acquired from
Canadian National Hotels, a hotel division of the
Canadian National Railway
The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States.
CN i ...
. Over the years, a collection of
grand railway hotels was put together throughout Canada, both rural and urban. 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
The Fairmont Royal York, formerly and still commonly known as the Royal York, is a large historic luxury hotel in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located along Front Street West, the hotel is situated at the southern end of the Financial District, in ...
, and others. In addition to its properties in Canada, the hotel chain operated a few hotels outside Canada, with properties in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
,
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
,
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
, and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
CPR's rival
Grand Trunk Railway and later
Canadian National Railway
The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States.
CN i ...
copied Van Horne's approach by building hotels such as the
Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper, Alberta, and the
Château Laurier
The Fairmont Château Laurier is a hotel with 429 guest rooms in the downtown core of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, located near the intersection of Rideau Street and Sussex Drive and designed in a French Gothic Revival Châteauesque style to comple ...
in Ottawa. CPR purchased
Canadian National Hotels, Canadian National Railway's hotel division 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
Delta Hotels by Marriott is a four-star brand of hotels and resorts located primarily in North America.
Canadian institution Beginnings
In June 1962, William Pattison and his business partners opened the 68-room Delport Inn in Richmond, BC. Tha ...
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.
Fairmont Hotels
During the 1890s,
James Graham Fair
James Graham Fair (December 3, 1831December 28, 1894) was an Irish immigrant to the United States who became a highly successful mining engineer and businessman. His investments in silver mines in Nevada made him a millionaire, and he was one o ...
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
At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sh ...
. 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.
![BostonCopleySquareMusician26June07](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/BostonCopleySquareMusician26June07.jpg)
In 1945, the Fairmont San Francisco was acquired by
Benjamin Swig
Benjamin Harrison Swig (born November 17, 1893 - October 31, 1980) was a real estate developer and a philanthropist active in Jewish and non-Jewish communities.
Biography
Taunton, Massachusetts-born Benjamin Swig was the son of banker and poli ...
. Beginning in the 1960s, the Swig family developed Fairmont into a small chain of luxury hotels throughout the United States. Operating as Fairmont Hotels Management, the hotel chain acquired, and built a number of hotel properties. The chain acquired the
Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans in 1965, renaming it the Fairmont Roosevelt, and then Fairmont New Orleans. The
Fairmont San Jose
The Signia by Hilton San Jose is an 805-room high-rise hotel at 170 South Market Street in San Jose, California, located on the Plaza de César Chávez in Downtown San Jose. Opened in 1987 as the Fairmont San Jose, the hotel closed on March 5, ...
was opened by the hotel chain in 1987. The company assumed management of the
Plaza Hotel
The Plaza Hotel (also known as The Plaza) is a luxury hotel and condominium apartment building in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is located on the western side of Grand Army Plaza, after which it is named, just west of Fifth Avenue, a ...
in New York in 1995 and purchased the Copley Plaza Hotel in 1996, renaming it
The Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel. By 1998, the company managed seven properties in the United States.
In addition to those properties, the company also operated the
Colony Square Hotel in Atlanta as Fairmont Colony Square Hotel from its opening in 1974 to 1977, and
The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel
The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel is a landmark building at 200 S. Broad Street at the corner of Walnut Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Constructed in 1904 and expanded to its present size in 1912, it has continued as a well-known ...
in Philadelphia as Fairmont Philadelphia from 1979 to 1980.
Merger (1999–2001)
In April 1999, Canadian Pacific Hotels,
Kingdom Hotels International and Maritz Wolff & Co. bought Fairmont Hotels Management L.P., with Canadian Pacific Hotels holding the majority of the shares (67%).
In 2001,
Canadian Pacific Limited
Canadian Pacific Limited was created in 1971 to own properties formerly owned by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), a transportation and mining giant in Canada. In October 2001, CPR completed the corporate spin-offs of each of the remaining business ...
, the parent company of both Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts, and Canadian Pacific Railway, was reorganized. During this reorganization, Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts was renamed to Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, using the name of the company it had purchased in 1999. The newly re-organized Fairmont company transferred several properties to its Delta Hotels subsidiary, although it retained most of the "signature" hotels and resorts under the new Fairmont banner.
Later that year in October 2001, Canadian Pacific Limited spun off all of its subsidiary companies into separately traded "independent" companies, including Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Companies like Fairmont Hotels and Resorts were split into smaller companies in a 2001 "
starburst
MicroPro International Corporation was an American software company founded in 1978 in San Rafael, California. They are best known as the publisher of WordStar, a popular early word processor for personal computers.
History Founding and early su ...
" move designed to increase the valuations of its individual divisions.
[
]
Fairmont Hotel and Resorts (2001–present)
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
Dubai (, ; ar, دبي, translit=Dubayy, , ) is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the capital of the Emirate of Dubai, the most populated of the 7 emirates of the United Arab Emirates.The Government and Politics of ...
. The Fairmont Dubai property was the first Fairmont branded hotel in the Middle East. In 2003, Fairmont introduced Fairmont Heritage Place, a chain of timeshare
A timeshare (sometimes called vacation ownership) is a property with a divided form of ownership or use rights. These properties are typically resort condominium units, in which multiple parties hold rights to use the property, and each owner ...
hotels, with the first opening in Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
.
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, a cluster of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was sold for US$3.9 billion to Colony Capital, LLC.[globeinvestor.com: "Fairmont lagged others in CP 'starburst'"]
31 Jan 2006 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 Hotels & Resorts (previously known as Fairmont Raffles Hotels International) is a global hotel management company that is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. FRHI is the parent company that manages three brands of hotels: Fairmont, Raffles ...
(FRHI), though the four chains still operate under their individual names.
In April 2010, Kingdom Hotels sold 22% of its shares of FRHI (from 58% to 35%) to Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment, giving them 40% of FRHI and became the second largest shareholder of the company. The remaining 60% belonged to a private shares holding in Sweden, trusted in ACCOR hotels, and other investors. The Middle East became Fairmont's new target market, where Fairmont opened in the Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel
The Clock Towers ( ar, أبراج الساعة, ʾAbrāǧ alsaa'a "Towers of the Clock") is a government-owned complex of seven skyscraper hotels in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. These towers are a part of the King Abdulaziz Endowment Project that aims ...
in 2010 and at the Palm Jumeirah in 2012. In Asia, Fairmont reopened the Peace Hotel in Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
in 2010, opened in Baku
Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
’s Flame Towers
Flame Towers ( az, Alov qüllələri) is a group of three skyscrapers in Baku, Azerbaijan. The height of the tallest tower is . The three flame-shaped towers are intended to symbolize the elements of fire, and are a reference to Azerbaijan's nickna ...
in 2011, and opened its first hotel in India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
in 2012. In the USA, Fairmont acquired the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
in 2014.
In 2015, AccorHotels, with the approval and support of the external party, announced the acquisition of FRHI, thus adding Raffles Hotels and Resorts
Raffles Hotels & Resorts is a chain of luxury hotels which traces its roots to 1887 with the opening of the original Raffles Hotel in Singapore. The company started to develop internationally in the late 1990s. From 2015, Raffles is part of Accor. ...
, Fairmont and Swissôtel to its Luxury Hotel Brands portfolio. Acquiring Fairmont Hotels & Resorts enabled the French hotel group to gain greater access to the lucrative North American market.
In 2015, Fairmont stated it would invest in two new hotels in Egypt, in addition to its existing Fairmont hotel located in Cairo.
In 2017, Fairmont opened the Fairmont Quasar Istanbul, its first hotel in Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
.
In 2019, Fairmont opened its first South American hotel in Brazil.
Properties
The list includes selected properties.
Future properties
See also
*
Notes
References
External links
Official website
{{Authority control
Hotel chains in Canada
Companies based in Toronto
Hotels established in 1886
Multinational companies headquartered in Canada
Canadian brands
1907 establishments in California
2016 mergers and acquisitions
Accor