HOTELS kicks off its 50th anniversary celebration by using a very current and social publishing style called Throwback Thursday (TBT, or the hashtag #throwbackthursday). Each Thursday throughout the year, HOTELS will dip into its archive and harken back to some of the historic, funny and defining moments chronicled on the pages of what for many years was only a print magazine.
Today, we look at a cover from 1969 with an issue that focused on resorts and analyzed just what made one resort successful over another. Evidently, the formula was “selective location + development plan = profits.” Some things never change. We write about the likes of John Paul Getty’s Pierre Marques resort outside Acapulco, Mexico, and the Aga Khan IV’s Cost Smeralda in Sardinia, Italy, and even floating hotels such as the US$24 million T.S. Hamburg luxury liner with 324 cabins.
It was in 1966 when founder Fergus McKeever published the first issues of what was then known as Service World International (SWI) – in many ways ahead of its time as a globally circulated publication writing about the early days of worldwide travel and the development of some of the first global brands like Sheraton Hotels and Motor Inns, a worldwide service of ITT. Full commissions were paid promptly for reservations sent by telex.
In its early days, SWI had a much broader focus, not only covering the emerging global hotel scene but also food service, including stand-alone restaurants, as well as broader tourism trends. Publisher McKeever would lead tours to expos and conventions anywhere from Paris and West Berlin, to Sydney and Osaka. While a big part of the hotel business was just adopting automated processes and systems, some of the headlines back then still ring true today: “Problems: Labor, Land, Lack of Systems.”
In January 1982, having just crowned its first “Man of the World,” Sir Charles Forte, executive chairman of Trusthouse Forte, SWI changed its name to Hotels & Restaurants International (H&RI) with many new departments and features. Today, the award lives on and for many years has been known as the Hotelier of the World.
Then, in 1989, H&RI become HOTELS, the magazine of the worldwide hotel industry, placing an even sharper focus on the hotel business.
The simple HOTELS name has been following our nomadic readers ever since and only last year did we change our tagline to “Passion for Hospitality.” After 50 years, the passion of the editorial and publishing teams still burn bright.
We look forward to sharing our history every TBT this year, and we also plan special reports and issues for our print publications. So stay tuned as we start making history for what we only hope will be another 50 years.