What Happened to Hilton’s Denizen?

It’s amazing how the year can start off with anticipation of a major new hotel brand launch from Hilton, and then not even 6 months into the year the brand can be assumed dead.

Back in April, Starwood Hotels sued Hilton Hotels, and two of their employees – Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani for taking trade secrets and confidential information to build the Denizen hotel brand. At the time Hilton came back with their standard boiler plate response to a lawsuit “we feel this suit has no merit and will vigorously defend it” – but I think it was clear that they really had no leg to stand on.

Since that lawsuit was filed Hilton was ordered to stop all further development or marketing of the Denizen brand and they put alot of the employees within Hilton’s Prestige Portfolio’s development team on paid administrative leave – the same employees who had worked at Starwood’s Luxury Brands Group under Ross Klein.

Hilton has pretty much removed all references to Denizen from their websites and press releases and taken down the Denizen Hotels website – but no official word from Hilton or Starwood has come out about Denizens actual fate.

For a comparison – Hilton’s other recently announced brand – Home2Suites has already been integrated into the brand bar at the bottom of all Hilton Family web pages.

Most likely Starwood & Hilton will do an out-of-court settlement which will force Hilton to scrap anything having to do with the Denizen brand, start from scratch on a new boutique brand, and fire the employees who used to work at Starwood then moved over to Hilton. The alternative is a long and protracted legal battle that Starwood is almost definitely going to win.

Hilton was dumb, they put themselves in a precarious position and because of that will end up having a black-eye within the industry and end up even further behind in creating a boutique hotel brand. At this point Marriott’s Edition is looking better than Denizen, even though Denizen apparently had more contracts under negotiation and more work done Edition did in less time. Then again – Denizen’s development was sped up by the use of Starwood’s confidential documents.

It also leaves to question the status of the projects which were expected to include a Denizen – first and foremost, the Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino in Vegas. That project has seen more high-profile problems and issues than anything I’ve ever seen before. I suspect yet another delay in the project and yet another hotel brand (perhaps W?!).

My friends over at HotelChatter have also been following the Denizen saga, so you might want to read up on it over there as well.

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Related posts:

1. Work Is Suspended on Hilton’s Denizen Brand
2. Hilton Has Serious Issues To Get Through With This Starwood Lawsuit
3. Hilton Ad from 2008 – “Family Value. Without Family Drama”
4. Cosmopolitan Las Vegas Just Can Never Catch A Break

Tags: amar lalvani, amar lalvani lawsuit, amar lavlani, amar lavlani lawsuit, denizen, denizen hotels, hilton, hilton prestige portfolio, ross klein, ross klein lawsuit, starwood denizen, starwood hilton lawsuit, Starwood Hotels, w hotels

Category: branding, denizen, design, hilton, Hotel Development, Hotels, marketing, ross klein, Starwood Hotels, w hotels