Word: hiltonization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Hilton's U.S. hotels are generally good commercial hotels, but the Hiltons abroad are luxury tourist hotels that are more like resorts than hostelries. Hilton has sited on some of the finest hotel locations in the world-looking up at the Parthenon in Athens, near the Diet Building in Tokyo, overlooking the Vatican in Rome and the Queen's private garden in London, on the Nile in Cairo and above the Bosporus in Istanbul, at the foot of the Elburz Mountains in Teheran. All of the hotels glisten and glitter, with an architecture that ranges from international slab...
Susceptible to Flattery. As the force that created this empire, Conrad Hilton might be expected to be as calculating, as antiseptic and as glossily sophisticated as his hotels. The surprise about Hilton is that he is so much like the guests he caters to. Boyish, candid, trusting, he never fails to be amazed and pleased-even astonished-by the world around him. He cannot get over the speed of jet planes or his possession of a $100 Texas-style Stetson, whose price he mentions to anyone who will listen. He is susceptible to even the most transparent flattery. "You know...
...Hilton refuses to comprehend bad news or business reversals ("Don't bother me about that," he says), and his top aides instinctively try to protect him from the harsh realities of the world. Says one: "For all his financial genius, he's the kind of man who can't catch a plane by himself." He is essentially a lonely man, and his closest friend is neither a businessman nor one of his four children, but his personal secretary for 21 years, Olive Wakeman, fiftyish, who acts as his chief buffer against the outside world...
...Hilton has all the trappings of the very rich, but they hang indifferently about him. He has four cars, a private plane, a pro football team (San Diego Chargers) and a 61-room mansion in Bel Air, Calif., which, with Hearstian grandeur, he has named Casa Encantada. He lives there alone and, with 19 servants at his call, does nothing for himself; he will not even buy his own clothes. While his hotels like to proclaim their appeal to gourmets, Hilton is indifferent to fancy food, preferring to dine on corned beef hash, tuna-fish casserole and tea served...
Courtly Charm. Twice divorced, the last time after a tempestuous marriage to Zsa Zsa Gabor ("If I had waited one hour more, I never would have married Zsa Zsa," Hilton regretfully told a friend), Hilton now prefers the company of younger women-mostly airline stewardesses in their early 20s. He treats them with courtly charm, asks nothing of them except that they be attractive and pleasant companions for dinner and dancing. More often than not, he stays home alone and goes to bed after an evening of television. His favorite show is Sing Along with Mitch, and Hilton explains...