Hotels that started as accommodations for flight attendants
Intercontinental. Le Meridien. Westins. Radisson Blu. Swisshotel. All the protagonists of the modern hotel sector fit the profile of being global franchises with unique identities, as well as a legion of loyal guests. And they all have the same origin: before being multinational brands, they were airline subsidiaries that worked like accommodations for your crew and travelers.
western , for example, was the sister company of what is now United Airlines. Radisson Blue was linked to SAS Airlines and Swisshotel was born from the hand of Swissair. Le Meridien , instead, was operated by Air France and whose first property, which is still in operation near the Charles de Gaulle Palace in central Paris, is where the CDG bus to the airport still stops.
The idea that airlines should operate hotel chains was born not from the inventiveness of an entrepreneurial CEO, but from Franklin Delano Roosevelt , and, in the 1940s, it came out as an effort to promote the american tourism across the ocean after World War II. The president went to one of the most successful businessmen in the country, Juan Trippe, owner of Pan Am , to suggest that his airline should expand beyond flying. The result? Intercontinental Hotels, a company that was formed as a subsidiary of the airline in 1946 (the first hotel was opened in Belém, Brazil, in 1949).
"It was the earliest definition of a brand trying to create a relationship with its customers," says Bjorn Hanson, a retired NYU professor and founder of PricewaterhouseCoopers. This also streamlined travel organization, making it easier to book a flight and a hotel at the same time . Without the internet or even the Yellow Pages, finding a hotel in a faraway destination was easy for the pioneering globetrotting tourists of the 1950s and 1960s. There was also another benefit: airline-owned hotels could act as crew residences on the other side of the world, especially for those armies of glamorous hostesses who needed lodging for long periods of time. Or with stopovers that could last between three or four days and even long-term trips to different destinations that lasted for weeks.
The stewardesses , the epitome of the glamor of the jet set of the time, were received as regular guests, with all the services at their disposal and meals included and always encouraged to interact with other travelers. At a time when travel was an unaffordable luxury, hotels became an extension of the experience at 9,000 meters above sea level and the presence of the cabin crew emphasized the experience, always very well received by guests.
It is what Sheila Riley tells, former Pan Am stewardess that she worked as part of the crew in 1960. After striking up a poolside conversation at the Intercontinental Hotel in Beirut with an American admiral's deputy on an aircraft carrier, her day only got better. “They sent us the admiral's barge, an incredibly fast and very special ship. When we got back to the flight deck we found that there was an orchestra with Count Basie playing,” she says. "Imagine, we saw the sunset in the middle of Beirut bay mounted on an aircraft carrier!".
Beirut Intercontinental
Carol Brown, another former Pan Am worker, also remembers the pool scene. The hotel bar , located in a city considered one of the least glamorous in the world in the 1960s, was Under water , turning the pool into an aquarium through which customers could gawk at the swimmers.
“A lot of the passengers were staying there and the businessmen used to know us and come to party with us,” she tells us. “But we were always on the lookout for who was walking through the lobby to meet the crew when we arrived. They were in every city, not just Beirut, and all they were looking for was a date with a flight attendant.”
Brown's other favorite Intercontinental was in Tehran , a highly sought-after destination at the time due to the oil boom that preceded the revolution. "The iranian royal family I was flying Pan Am. They knew us pretty well so some of the crews were invited to special events,” she says. “The American crews were always invited to whatever party there was because we were the ones we had the alcohol . At that time, the pistachios They were only grown in Iran, so we would order up to five kilos when we arrived to take them back home. There were always shells in the cabin on that flight."
For many, Pan Am hotels set the tone of a certain type of international travel. “The Intercontinental hotels were the best and they taught us what the epitome of a hotel had to be. luxury hotel ”, says Rebecca Sprecher, another of the Pan Am stewardesses and co-author of Flying. "We didn't have money to eat anywhere other than the cafeteria and still the service was wonderful and the team was perfectly trained." The stewardess also remembers the parties that were set up, as long as the rule of not drinking 12 hours before a shift was followed. “If you organized a party you asked for ice, you left the door open and everyone came with the glass that was left for you in the bathroom. If you weren't wearing it, it was a clear sign that you were new."
Thierry Benloulou was stewardess of air France him for more than 30 years and spent several of his stopovers in airline hotels. “The first time I stayed there it was so wonderful that i felt i didn't fit . I slept on the floor because I felt like I couldn't use the bed,” he says. There were many crew members on the property and, according to Benloulou, Le Méridien did a separate check-in for all of them on the first floor of the hotel so that the lobby would not be overcrowded. The airline team always occupied the same floor and everyone had their own room. A lounge was also enabled for them to socialize or so they could eat at any time of the day.
The security was also a priority. "In some destinations, access to these hotels was not easy and that is how they managed to keep us safe." Even so, at the end of this reign of the airlines, the pilots stayed at the Le Méridien hotels in any city while the crew was demoted to other less renowned establishments.
The change was a sign of the inherent problems with the idea of interleaving airlines and hotels Hanson says. business were too complementary and although they rose like foam they were also vulnerable to the same recessions. Moreover, the capital outlay required by the hotels was much more intense than that of the airlines due to the renovations that had to be done every five or seven years, which had an impact on their profitability. The arrival of affordable alternatives like Marriott, which eventually gobbled up Westin and Le Méridien, also led to the downfall of those pairings.
Soon the airlines started saying goodbye to your hotels : UAL got rid of its 50 Westin properties in 1985, four years later Pan Am was forced to sell nearly a hundred Intercontinental hotels to a British chain. Even so, the airlines did not pull out entirely. Today, some have opted to make their own crew residences in key hubs like C athat Pacific Headland Hotel , adhering to its premises in Hong Kong. Built just for the team, it's where you'll find their pilots and stewardesses lounging between layovers, a reminder of what was once one of the aviation's most glamorous eras.
This report was originally published in Condé Nast Traveler USA.