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John Plankinton (March 11, 1820 – March 29, 1891) was an American businessman. He is noted for expansive real estate developments in Milwaukee, including the luxurious Plankinton House Hotel designed as an upscale residence for the wealthy. He was involved with railroading and banking. The Plankinton Bank he developed became the leading bank of Milwaukee in his lifetime. He was involved in the development of the Milwaukee City Railroad Company, an electric railway.

Plankinton was a Milwaukee-based meatpacking industrialist. He started this trade as a butcher for his general store operating in the center part of the city. He was the city's leading meat packer after his first year in the grocery business. He expanded this industry and eventually became acquainted with the meatpacking industrialist Philip D. Armour forming a company with him that lasted for 20 years. (Full article...)

The New York Marriott Marquis is a Marriott hotel on Times Square, in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Designed by architect John C. Portman Jr., the hotel is at 1535 Broadway, between 45th and 46th Streets. It has 1,971 rooms and 101,000 sq ft (9,400 m²) of meeting space.

The hotel has two wings, one on 45th Street and one on 46th Street, connected by a podium at ground level. The first two stories contain retail space, while the Marquis Theatre was built within the building's third floor. The hotel's atrium lobby is at the eighth floor and also includes meeting space and restaurants. Thirty-six stories of guestrooms rise above the lobby, overlooking it. The top three stories contain the View, one of New York City's highest restaurants. An architectural feature of the hotel is its concrete elevator core, which consists of a minaret-shaped structure with twelve glass elevator cabs on the exterior. (Full article...)

The Beverly Hills Hotel, also called the Beverly Hills Hotel and Bungalows, is located on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California. One of the world's best-known hotels, it is closely associated with Hollywood film stars, rock stars, and celebrities. The hotel has 210 guest rooms and suites and 23 bungalows and the exterior bears the hotel's signature pink and green colors.

The Beverly Hills Hotel was established in May 1912, before the city itself was incorporated. The original owners were Margaret J. Anderson, a wealthy widow, and her son, Stanley S. Anderson, who had been managing the Hollywood Hotel. The original hotel was designed by Pasadena architect Elmer Grey in the Mediterranean Revival style. From 1928 to 1932, the hotel was owned by the Interstate Company. In 1941, Hernando Courtright, the vice president of the Bank of America, purchased the hotel with friends including Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, and Harry Warner. Courtright established the Polo Lounge, which is considered to be one of the premier dining spots in Los Angeles, hosting entertainers ranging from the Rat Pack to Humphrey Bogart and Marlene Dietrich. The hotel was first painted its famous pink color during a 1948 renovation to match that period's country club style. The following year, architect Paul Williams added the Crescent Wing. (Full article...)

Sauganash Hotel (originally Eagle Exchange Tavern) is a former hotel; regarded as the first hotel in Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1831, it was located at Wolf Point in the present day Loop community area at the intersection of the north, south and main branches of the Chicago River. The location at West Lake Street and North Wacker Drive (formerly Market Street) was designated a Chicago Landmark on November 6, 2002. The hotel changed proprietors often in its twenty-year existence and briefly served as Chicago's first theater. It was named after Sauganash, an interpreter in the British Indian Department. (Full article...)

The Waldorf-Astoria originated as two hotels, built side by side by feuding relatives, on Fifth Avenue in New York, New York, United States. Built in 1893 and expanded in 1897, the hotels were razed in 1929 to make way for construction of the Empire State Building. Their successor, the current Waldorf Astoria New York, was built on Park Avenue in 1931.

The original Waldorf Hotel opened on March 13, 1893, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, on the site where millionaire developer William Waldorf Astor had previously built his mansion. Constructed in the German Renaissance style by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, it stood 225 feet (69 m) high, with fifteen public rooms and 450 guest rooms, and a further 100 rooms allocated to servants, with laundry facilities on the upper floors. It was heavily furnished with antiques purchased by founding manager and president George Boldt and his wife during an 1892 visit to Europe. The Empire Room was the largest and most lavishly adorned room in the Waldorf, and soon after opening it became one of the best restaurants in New York, rivaling Delmonico's and Sherry's. (Full article...)

Claudius Charles Philippe, also known as Philippe of the Waldorf or The Host of the Waldorf, (10 December 1910—24 December 1978) was a British-born French-American restaurateur, catering director, hotelier and businessman, who was the hotel banquet manager of the prestigious Waldorf Astoria New York hotel in the 1940s and 1950s. From 1961 until 1963 he worked as executive vice president of Loews Hotels, and was responsible for the planning and building of six new New York hotels.

Philippe is best remembered for founding the April in Paris Ball at the Waldorf Astoria in 1951, which he ran with Elsa Maxwell until his sacking from the hotel in 1959. The balls were major events in the US socialite calendar, and raised millions of dollars for American and French charities over the 28 years of its existence. His Lucullus Circle dinners also attracted some of the wealthiest businessmen of the day to feast on six to eight course meals. During his career at the Waldorf Astoria it has been estimated that Philippe was responsible for his clients spending $150 million alone on banquets, which led him to be referred to as "one of the truly great men this industry has ever produced" by George Lang. (Full article...)

The Landmark was a hotel and casino located in Winchester, Nevada, east of the Las Vegas Strip and across from the Las Vegas Convention Center. Frank Caroll, the project's original owner, purchased the property in 1961. Fremont Construction began work on the tower that September, while Caroll opened the adjacent Landmark Plaza shopping center and Landmark Apartments by the end of the year. The tower's completion was expected for early 1963, but because of a lack of financing, construction was stopped in 1962, with the resort approximately 80 percent complete. Up to 1969, the topped-off tower was the tallest building in Nevada until the completion of the International Hotel across the street.

In 1966, the Central Teamsters Pension Fund provided a $5.5 million construction loan to finish the project, with ownership transferred to a group of investors that included Caroll and his wife. The Landmark's completion and opening was delayed several more times. In April 1968, Caroll withdrew his request for a gaming license after he was charged with assault and battery against the project's interior designer. The Landmark was put up for sale that month. (Full article...)

The Hôtel d'Alluye is an hôtel particulier in Blois, Loir-et-Cher, France. Built for Florimond Robertet when he was secretary and notary to Louis XII, the residence bears the name of his barony of Alluyes. On Rue Saint-Honoré near Blois Cathedral and the Château de Blois, it is now significantly smaller than it was originally as the north and west wings were destroyed between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

Built between 1498 (or 1500) and 1508, the hôtel particulier is one of the first examples of Renaissance architecture in Blois. Its façades consist of Gothic, French Renaissance and Italian Renaissance architecture. The Hôtel d'Alluye was owned by the Robertet family from 1508 until 1606 before undergoing frequent changes in ownership; since 2007, it has been divided into ten apartments and a large office. (Full article...)

Hotel Valley Ho is a historic hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona. Also called the Valley Ho and, for 28 years, the Ramada Valley Ho, the hotel was originally designed by Edward L. Varney. It first opened in 1956 with a forward-looking and futuristic design. Movie stars and famous baseball players stayed, and the building quickly became known for its trendsetting guests and its fashionable atmosphere. The success of the venture resulted in expansion in 1958, with two additional two-story wings of guest rooms extending to the north. Though initially proposed by Varney, a central tower of guest rooms, rising over the lobby, was not built.

The property was bought by the Ramada hotel chain in 1973, and was redecorated to cover the 1950s design, seen at the time as outdated. No longer in vogue, but centrally located, the hotel remained prominent for years, and hosted conferences, business meetings, and vacationers. Under Ramada management, however, the property began to show a lack of maintenance, and its popularity declined. It closed in 2001 and its demolition was considered when no purchase offers were received. Admirers of the hotel's exemplary architecture and its local history rallied to save it, and it was placed on the Scottsdale Historic Register. (Full article...)

The Trump International Hotel and Tower, originally the Gulf and Western Building, is a high-rise building at 15 Columbus Circle and 1 Central Park West on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. It was originally designed by Thomas E. Stanley as an office building and completed in 1970 as the headquarters of Gulf and Western Industries. In the mid-1990s, a joint venture composed of the General Electric Pension Fund, Galbreath Company, and developer Donald Trump renovated the building into a hotel and residential tower. The renovation was designed by Philip Johnson and Costas Kondylis.

The Trump International Hotel and Tower is 583 ft (178 m) tall and has contained 44 physical stories since it was built. The building originally had an aluminum-and-marble facade and was surrounded by a public plaza on Broadway and Central Park West. There was a theater and shops in the basement as well as a restaurant on the top floor. After the building was renovated, a glass facade was installed. The lower portion of the tower is used as a hotel, while the upper floor is a residential condominium. (Full article...)

The Desert Inn, also known as the D.I., was a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, which operated from April 24, 1950, to August 28, 2000. Designed by architect Hugh Taylor and interior design by Jac Lessman, it was the fifth resort to open on the Strip, the first four being El Rancho Vegas, The New Frontier, Flamingo, and the El Rancho (then known as the Thunderbird). It was situated between Desert Inn Road and Sands Avenue.

The Desert Inn opened with 300 rooms and the Sky Room restaurant, headed by a chef formerly of the Ritz Paris, which once had the highest vantage point on the Las Vegas Strip. The casino, at 2,400 square feet (220 m²), was one of the largest in Nevada at the time. The nine-story St. Andrews Tower was completed during the first renovation in 1963, and the 14-story Augusta Tower became the Desert Inn's main tower when it was completed in 1978 along with the seven-story Wimbledon Tower. The Palms Tower was completed in 1997 with the second and final renovation. The Desert Inn was the first hotel in Las Vegas to feature a fountain at the entrance. In 1997, the Desert Inn underwent a $200 million renovation and expansion, but after it was purchased for $270 million by Steve Wynn in 2000, he decided to demolish it and build the Wynn Las Vegas resort and casino where the Desert Inn once stood, and later, Encore. The remaining towers of the Desert Inn were imploded in 2004. (Full article...)

The Monbar Hotel attack was carried out by the Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL), a Spanish state-sponsored death squad, on 25 September 1985 in Bayonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France. The targets were four members of the Basque separatist terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), whom the Spanish government believed to be senior figures in the organization, itself proscribed as a terrorist group in Spain and France. All four people were killed, with a fifth person, apparently unconnected to ETA, injured in the shooting. This represented the deadliest attack carried out by the GAL. Although two of the participants were apprehended shortly after the shooting, controversy surrounded the possible involvement of senior figures in the Spanish police.

This attack, and similar attacks carried out by the GAL, became a major issue during the 1996 Spanish general election after a supreme court trial established that the Spanish Interior Ministry had provided clandestine funding for the GAL. Spanish Interior Minister José Barrionuevo and his security chief, Rafael Vera, were jailed for ten years for sanctioning a kidnapping and misappropriation of public funds to finance the group, and the GAL scandal is seen as a key factor in the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) losing the election, though more senior figures in the PSOE, such as Felipe Gonzalez, denied knowledge and involvement. (Full article...)

The Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan (originally the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Manhattan) is a hotel at 1601 Broadway, between 48th and 49th Streets, in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The hotel is operated by third-party franchisee Highgate and is part of the Intercontinental Hotels Group's Crowne Plaza chain. It has 795 guest rooms.

The hotel was designed by Alan Lapidus and is 480 feet (150 m) tall with 46 floors. The facade was designed in glass and pink granite, with a 100-foot-tall (30 m) arch facing Broadway. The hotel was designed to comply with city regulations that required deep setbacks at the base, as well as large illuminated signs. In addition to the hotel rooms themselves, the Crowne Plaza Times Square contains ground-story retail space, nine stories of office space, and a 159-space parking garage. The hotel's tenants include the American Management Association, and Learning Tree International; in addition, New York Sports Club was a former tenant. (Full article...)

The Paramount Hotel (formerly the Century-Paramount Hotel) is a hotel in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. Designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb, the hotel is at 235 West 46th Street, between Eighth Avenue and Broadway. The Paramount Hotel is owned by RFR Realty and contains 597 rooms. The hotel building, designed in a Renaissance style, is a New York City designated landmark.

The hotel is 19 stories tall and is H-shaped in arrangement, with light courts to the west and east. The north and south faces of the hotel contain numerous setbacks. The facade is made of brick, stone, and terracotta; most of the decorative detail is concentrated on the south facade, along 46th Street. The hotel building contains a double-height colonnade at street level, as well as several terraces above each of the setbacks. The building has a double-height hip roof flanked by mansard roofs. The basement contains an event venue named Sony Hall, which has historically been used as a nightclub and theater. The double-height lobby's design dates to a 1990 renovation by Philippe Starck. (Full article...)

The Shamrock was a hotel constructed between 1946 and 1949 by wildcatter Glenn McCarthy southwest of downtown Houston, Texas next to the Texas Medical Center. It was the largest hotel built in the United States during the 1940s. The grand opening of the Shamrock is still cited as one of the biggest social events ever held in Houston. Sold to Hilton Hotels in 1955 and operated for over three decades as the Shamrock Hilton, the facility endured financial struggles throughout its history. In 1985, Hilton Hotels donated the building to the Texas Medical Center and the structure was demolished on June 1, 1987. (Full article...)

Burj Rafal (Arabic: برج رافال) is a skyscraper hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It opened in January 2014, its 70 floors constructed on an exclusive 20,000 sqm plot. (Full article...)

Choice Hotels International, Inc. is an American multinational hospitality company based in North Bethesda, Maryland. The company, which is one of the largest hotel chains in the world, owns several hotel brands ranging from upscale to economy. As of the third quarter 2023, Choice Hotels franchised nearly 7,500 hotels, representing nearly 630,000 rooms, in 46 countries and territories. (Full article...)

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas (commonly referred to simply as The Cosmopolitan or The Cosmo) is a resort casino and hotel on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. It is owned by The Blackstone Group, Stonepeak Partners, and Cherng Family Trust and operated by MGM Resorts International. The resort includes a 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m²) casino and 3,033 rooms across two towers, as well as a 3,200-seat performance theater and various restaurants.

The project was announced in 2004, by a joint venture that included real estate developer Ian Bruce Eichner. Construction on the hotel towers began in April 2007, following excavation work for an underground parking garage. Deutsche Bank helped finance the project, and eventually took over ownership in September 2008, after the original developers defaulted on a loan. The resort's interior underwent several redesigns, and plans to include a condo hotel component were ultimately scrapped.

The Cosmopolitan opened on December 15, 2010, and at $3.9 billion, it was the most expensive Strip resort built up to that point. The resort proved to be popular, although casino revenue lagged behind other amenities. Deutsche Bank sold the resort to The Blackstone Group in 2014, for $1.7 billion. Blackstone made numerous changes which improved gaming revenue, and the company also negotiated a deal with the Culinary Workers Union, whose members had protested at the resort over the lack of a union contract. The resort operations were sold to MGM in 2022, while Cherng and Stonepeak joined Blackstone as owners. (Full article...)

Oscar Tschirky (1866 – November 6, 1950) was a Swiss-American restaurateur who was maître d'hôtel of Delmonico's Restaurant and subsequently the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, New York, United States. He was widely known as "Oscar of the Waldorf" and published a large cookbook. (Full article...)

The Hôtel Mercure Lyon Centre Château Perrache, originally Hôtel Terminus, then Pullman Perrache, then Château Perrache, is a hotel of the AccorHotels group built in 1906. It is located on cours de Verdun in the 2nd arrondissement of Lyon. The hotel was the headquarters for the Gestapo in Lyon during the Second World War. (Full article...)

Blakes Hotel is a 5-star hotel in London, and considered one of the world's first boutique hotels. It is at 33 Roland Gardens in South Kensington. It was established by London hotelier and designer Anouska Hempel, and contains eclectic artifacts collected by Hempel during her international travels. Known for protecting its clients's privacy from the paparazzi, it often accommodates celebrities. Regular guests have included Princess Margaret; Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York; actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Lindsay Lohan; and supermodel Kate Moss..

The hotel is also home to a Mediterranean-style restaurant and an exclusive lounge named Blakes Below, which debuted in 2016.

The film was mentioned as a plot point in Sofia Coppola's 2020 film On the Rocks. (Full article...)

Roy's Motel and Café is a motel, café, gas station and auto repair shop on the National Trails Highway, the former U.S. Route 66, in the Mojave Desert town of Amboy in San Bernardino County, California. It has been defunct for years, but is now being restored. The historic site is an example of roadside Mid-Century Modern Googie architecture. The entire town of Amboy—including the Roy's complex—is owned by and under the stewardship of a private preservationist. (Full article...)

The Gobbler was a motel, supper club, and roadside attraction in Johnson Creek, Wisconsin, United States. It was designed in the late 1960s by Fort Atkinson architect Helmut Ajango for local poultry processor Clarence Hartwig and opened in 1967. The menu featured turkey, prime rib and steak. It included a rotating circular bar that completed one revolution every 80 minutes. The Gobbler was at the intersection of Wisconsin Highway 26 and I-94, halfway between Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin. It closed in 1992. The original restaurant building reopened as the Gobbler Theater in late 2015. (Full article...)

The Coral Court Motel was a 1941 U.S. Route 66 motel constructed in Marlborough, Missouri (a St. Louis suburb) and designated on the National Register of Historic Places in St. Louis County in 1989 as a valuable example of the art deco and streamline moderne architectural styles. It expanded to 77 rooms in the heyday of automobile tourism on US 66, only to decline after the highway was bypassed by Interstate 44 in the 1970s and close its doors forever in 1993. Despite strong local efforts advocating historic preservation, it was demolished in 1995 for a suburban housing development now known as Oak Knoll Manor. (Full article...)

Room service or in-room dining is a hotel service enabling guests to choose items of food and drink for delivery to their hotel room for consumption. Room service is organized as a subdivision within the food and beverage department of high-end hotel and resort properties. It is uncommon for room service to be offered in hotels that are not high-end, or in motels. Room service may also be provided for guests on cruise ships. Room service may be provided on a 24-hour basis or limited to late night hours only. Due to the cost of customized orders and delivery of room service, prices charged to the patron are typically much higher than in the hotel's restaurant or tuck shop, and a gratuity is expected in some regions. (Full article...)

Juan Quintana Urra (1891-1974) was a Spanish hotelier, bullfight businessman, and activist in the Spanish Republic. He was the basis for the character Juanito Montoya in Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises. (Full article...)

The Hydro Majestic Hotel is located in Medlow Bath, New South Wales, Australia. The hotel is located on a clifftop overlooking the Megalong Valley on the western side of the Great Western Highway.

The hotel is heritage listed and is notable for its unusual mix of architectural styles, including Art Deco and Edwardian. One key feature is the Casino dome (pictured). The dome was bought in Chicago and shipped to Australia, before being shipped to the Blue Mountains by bullock train and reassembled at the site. (Full article...)

The Carrington Hotel is a heritage-listed former spa, hotel and power station and now hotel and public bar located at Katoomba Street, Katoomba in the City of Blue Mountains local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by John Kirkpatrick and Bosser in 1882; and by Edward Hewlett Hogben with Goyder Brothers in 1911–13; and built from 1882 to 1913 by F. Drewett in 1882; and by Howie, Brown and Moffit in 1912–13. It is also known as Great Western Hotel. The property is privately owned. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.

The Carrington is the only 19th century grand resort hotel still in use in New South Wales. It also retains much of the fabric of its major phases of development and continues to occupy the commanding position in Katoomba that it has done since its construction. It was built in 1883 by Harry George Rowell, a large hotel owner from Sydney, and was owned by a series of prominent families over the next century. Today it is still operating as a hotel. (Full article...)

The New Yorker Hotel is a mixed-use hotel building at 481 Eighth Avenue in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1930, the New Yorker Hotel was designed by Sugarman and Berger in the Art Deco style and is 42 stories high, with four basement stories. The hotel building is owned by the Unification Church, which rents out the lower stories as offices and dormitories. The upper stories comprise The New Yorker, A Wyndham Hotel, which has 1,083 guestrooms and is operated by Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. The 1-million-square-foot (93,000-square-meter) building also contains two restaurants and approximately 33,000 square feet (3,100 m²) of conference space.

The facade is largely made of brick and terracotta, with Indiana limestone on the lower stories. There are setbacks to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution, as well as a large sign with the hotel's name. The hotel contains a power plant and boiler room on its fourth basement, which was an early example of a cogeneration plant. The public rooms on the lower stories included a Manufacturers Trust bank branch, a double-height lobby, and multiple ballrooms and restaurants. Originally, the hotel had 2,503 guestrooms from the fourth story up. The modern-day hotel rooms start above the 19th story.

The New Yorker was built by Mack Kanner and was originally operated by Ralph Hitz, who died in 1940 and was succeeded by Frank L. Andrews. Hilton Hotels bought the hotel in 1954 and, after conducting extensive renovations, sold the hotel in 1956 to Massaglia Hotels. New York Towers Inc. acquired the New Yorker in 1959 but surrendered the property to Hilton in 1967 as part of a foreclosure proceeding. The hotel was closed in 1972 and sold to the French and Polyclinic Medical School and Health Center, which unsuccessfully attempted to develop a hospital there. The Unification Church purchased the building in 1976 and initially used it as a global headquarters. After the top stories of the building reopened as a hotel in 1994, the lower stories were used as offices and dormitories. The hotel rooms have undergone multiple renovations since the hotel reopened. The New Yorker joined the Ramada chain in 2000 and was transferred to the Wyndham brand in 2014. (Full article...)

Norbreck Castle Hotel is a large seafront hotel on Queens Promenade, in the Norbreck area of Blackpool, Lancashire, England. The hotel has 480 bedrooms and 22 conference suites, including the Norcalympia Conference Centre. (Full article...)