#169: Hilton – Unlucky???

Conrad Hilton, despite being unlucky, created what we now know to be the hotel experience. Always improving customer experience. Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [Tommy Cool HVAC Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back To the Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple, and we're telling the stories of empires, people that started with a little idea that ended up being huge. And as we got started here, Stephen whispered in my ear that we're going to talk about Hilton. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: And we're not talking about Conrad's granddaughter Paris Hilton who made a big name what in the '90s? Stephen Semple: I was wondering if you were going to go there. Dave Young: She's like chapter three of this story, I think. Stephen Semple: We don't have time for that story. Dave Young: For her to have that lifestyle, grandpa's got to make a lot of money. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Well, Conrad Hilton, I mean, Hilton is huge. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: They now have over a million rooms. They have like 7,500 locations in 124 countries. But the interesting thing is Conrad Hilton really invented how we look at hotels today. Dave Young: Okay. Stephen Semple: He really is the founder of that idea. And as we go through this story, one of the things that really captivated me about this story, a lot of times when we're covering these things, yes, people have an observation, and yes, they're brilliant. But there's always this bit of element of luck. There's a little bit of this catching lightning in a bottle. Conrad Hilton was terribly unlucky and it's amazing the things that he had to overcome. Dave Young: Oh wow. Stephen Semple: This guy did not have luck on his side. So I want you to keep that in mind as we go through this story, which makes me admire him more actually. Dave Young: Sure. And as I think about what that brand means to me, before I know the story. I don't think in my youth I had a whole lot of experience staying at a Hilton hotel, but there were certain hotel brands that meant something, that people understood. Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: If you knew if you were staying at a Holiday Inn on an interstate highway, if it had the word Holidome on it, you're in for a nice swim and a good time in an air-conditioned big space. Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: And if you had the money and you were traveling for business or something, you knew that the Hilton brand- Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: Would be a consistently better experience than most one-off hotels. Most. But there was always, every downtown always had one grand hotel. Stephen Semple: Yes. Dave Young: But then if they had a Hilton too, you'd say, "Oh, well the Hilton, right?" Because the other ones have their quirks. Stephen Semple: Yeah. And I think- Dave Young: The Hilton was always going to be a traveler, a business traveler's hotel. Stephen Semple: I travel a fair bit and I like staying in Hiltons, but I think before we go into the story, I think there's one mistake though that the, and hopefully somebody from Hilton listens to this and calls us and we can help them clean this up for them. They have one mistake that I think they've all done because they all now have all sorts of different brands. Hilton's got like 24 different labels or whatever. Here's the thing that they need to do. They need to look at each one of them and make them ...