The Hilton Worldwide hotel group has been in business for over 100 years and with 4,875 hotels in 97 countries, is one of the largest hotel businesses in the world. While the flagship brand Hilton is probably the best known one, the largest brand is Hampton Hotels. Find out all the details about the Hilton brands, the price categories and where to find them below – updated based on the latest financial statement!
Regions: Of all the hotel groups I have reviewed so far, Hilton is the most focused on the Americas. With 4,036 hotels in the US and another 237 hotels in the rest of the Americas, has 88% of their properties in the Americas, giving it an even higher concentration than IHG or Marriott! While Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing region, it’s of a very low base, accounting for only 3.7% with 181 properties. Hilton has 421 hotels in Europe (with a heavy focus on the UK), the Middle East and Africa for a total of 8.6%. With that distribution, Hilton works best for anybody traveling mostly in the US, UK and the rest of the Americas. If your travels take you to Europe or Asia, it’ll be a lot harder to find a Hilton property!
Brands: Similar to the other large hotel groups, Hilton has a plethora of brands, with 10 established brands. And while they have made fun of Marriott for having 30 brands, Hilton did launch four new brands recently: “Tru” is a new-build, mid mid-scale brand at the bottom of their portfolio, while “Curio”, “Tapestry” and “Canopy” are conversion brands in the upscale segment. The midscale, limited service Hampton brand (Average Daily Rate (ADR) $121) is by far the largest brand with 46% of the hotels. Hilton Garden Inn (ADR $133) is the next biggest brand at 15%. It’s position as a (barely) upscale, full-service brand and also focused heavily on the US. The flagship Hilton brand (ADR $167) is a truly upscale, full-service brand at 12% of properties and really global with more than 50% of the hotels outside the US! Conrad (named after the founder) is a luxury brand with an ADR of $252, while Waldorf Astoria is positioned at the top with an ADR of $302. Hilton also has more than 500 extended stay hotels in the Homewood Suites (ADR $134) and Home2 Suites (ADR $117) brands!
Price: With regards to price categories, Hilton Worldwide is mostly focused on the mid-scale and upscale segments, with roughly 50% of their properties falling into each category. Only 1.1% of hotels are considered luxury – they belong to the Conrad and Waldorf Astoria brands! And the Hilton group doesn’t have any brands that fall into the economy or budget brands, but the new Tru brand will fit in at the bottom of the portfolio at the lower end of midscale hotels.. That gives you a lot of choices for midscale and upscale hotels when traveling on business or leisure, but a very small selection of true luxury hotels for the use of hotel rewards for aspirational hotels or special occasions – Marriott and IHG offer many more aspirational properties to redeem your rewards at! Do keep in mind that the brands show significant differences between continents, for example while Hampton hotels in the US fall into the “mid-scale” category based on their average prices, they compete with economy brands like ibis in Europe and some of the Hilton hotels, especially in Asia, can compete with luxury properties!
Bottomline: If most of your travel is in the US, you will have a lot of choices in the Hilton group for both leisure and business travel with hotels everywhere. If you are traveling a lot outside the US and especially if you plan to use reward points earned in the US at luxury hotels abroad, your choices are somewhat limited and you’ll probably want to look at other hotel programs as an additional option. Accor and Carlson have a lot of hotels in Europe and Asia and would be a good “match” in terms of complementary hotel coverage!
All the data referenced is from the 2016 Financial Statement of Hilton Worldwide and you can see a summary below.