Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is a Canadian operator of luxury hotels and resorts. Currently, Fairmont operates properties in 22 countries: Canada, the United States, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Bermuda, People's Republic of China, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Monaco, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.
Fairmont is known in Canada for its famous historic hotels and resorts such as The Empress in Victoria, the Hotel Vancouver in Vancouver, The Palliser in Calgary, the Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton, the Château Laurier in Ottawa, The Royal York in Toronto, the Banff Springs Hotel in Alberta and the Château Frontenac in Québec. Many of these hotels were originally built by the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian National Railway in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Fairmont's portfolio also includes several other landmark and icon properties including The Plaza in New York, the Savoy Hotel in London, the Peace Hotel in Shanghai, the Makkah Clock Royal Tower Hotel in Makkah (Mecca), Saudi Arabia and recently the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.
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History
The first hotel to bear the Fairmont name is located in the city of San Francisco. The nearly completed structure survived the earthquake of 1906. Although heavily damaged by the subsequent fires, the hotel was renovated under the eye of architect Julia Morgan and finally opened in 1907. It was later acquired by Benjamin Swig in 1945.
Starting in the 1960s, Fairmont began developing a small chain of luxury hotels in major cities across the United States. The Fairmont chain consisted of seven properties in the United States when it was bought by Canadian Pacific Hotels & Resorts in 1999:
- The Fairmont San Francisco
- The Fairmont New Orleans (formerly and now again The Roosevelt)
- The Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel (Boston)
- The Plaza Hotel (New York)
- The Fairmont Chicago
- The Fairmont Dallas
- The Fairmont San Jose
In addition, the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia had operated for a time in the 1970s as The Fairmont Philadelphia.
After purchasing Fairmont in 1999, Canadian Pacific Limited split into five companies in a 2001 "starburst" move designed to increase the valuations of its individual divisions. The former Canadian Pacific Hotels division took on the name of the much smaller Fairmont chain to reflect the new global focus of the new company.
In 2004, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Inc. paid $70 million to take full control of the management company that runs its properties. Fairmont completed the acquisition of the 16.5 per cent stake in the Fairmont management company from U.S.-based Maritz Wolff & Co. for about $70 million. The management company partnership stemmed from a deal that saw Fairmont's predecessor company, Canadian Pacific Hotels, buy out the San Francisco-based Fairmont Hotels luxury hotel operator in 1999. That transaction led, in 2001, to the creation and IPO of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, a Toronto-based owner of luxury hotel properties. The new hotel management company created was 67 per cent owned by Fairmont, and 33 per cent owned by Maritz Wolff and another partner, Kingdom Hotels. Kingdom disposed of its stake the partnership in return for Fairmont parent stock in 2002, leaving Maritz Wolff as the remaining partner. Two months later, the U.S. company triggered a buyout option under the original deal that created the management company.
In October 2005, Fairmont dipped to an intraday low of $35.53-37 cents lower than its closing price on its debut in August 2001. In early 2006, after a contentious bidding war started by investor Carl Icahn. Icahn lost the bid and Fairmont agreed to be sold for $3.9 billion USD, to Colony Capital, LLC and Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Hotels International.
As a result of that purchase, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was merged with Kingdoms's Raffles Hotels and Resorts and Swissôtel to form Fairmont Raffles Hotels International (FRHI), though the four chains still operate under their individual names. At the time of the purchase, FRHI also owned Canada's Delta Hotels & Resorts; however, Delta was sold on 2 October 2007 to bcIMC, the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation.
In October 2008, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts was named one of "Canada's Top 100 Employers" by Mediacorp Canada Inc., and was featured in Maclean's newsmagazine. Later that month, it was also named one of Greater Toronto's Top Employers, which was announced by the Toronto Star newspaper.
In April 2010, Kingdom Hotels sold part of its stake in Raffles Holdings International in a deal worth about $847 million. to a group of investors, including an affiliate of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. The deal will put Kingdom's stake in the hotelier at 35 percent, down from 58 percent, when the deal closes, and give buyers Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment operating through its subsidiary, Cayman Islands-based Voyager Partners, a 40 percent stake in Fairmont Raffles, making the group the largest shareholders in the company. Kingdom and Colony Capital will become the second and third-biggest shareholders,
In December 2015, Accor purchased Fairmont Hotel & Resorts along with Raffles and Swissotel in a $2.9 billion deal.
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Source of the article : Wikipedia
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