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Hilton's Denizen Employees Could Face Criminal Charges

October 7, 2009 at 3:18 PM | by juliana | 0 Comments

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Hilton Hotels and its executives accused of stealing proprietary W Hotel information to create their now dead-in-the-water hotel brand Denizen Hotels, could face criminal charges.

The grand jury is part of a six-month-old Justice Department probe into allegations that Hilton, which is owned by private-equity firm Blackstone Group, used trade secrets taken by former Starwood executives, who defected to Hilton last year, to develop its own luxury brand to compete with Starwood's successful W chain.

About 30 Hilton employees and executives have either been fired or placed on leave. Ross Klein, the former president of Starwood Hotels who defected to Hilton and was in charge of the Denizen development, was initially place on paid leave with Hilton. However, he was recently replaced by John Vanderslice as Hotels magazine reported last month.

But there is a chance that even if Hilton as a corporation is not criminally charged, the individual employees could be prosecuted themselves.

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Denizen Update: Probably Gone But Not Forgotten

July 6, 2009 at 4:21 PM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

Oh Denizen. You seem to be gone — your website is dead, there's been nothing but quiet since development was suspended, which is probably the wise (and law-abiding!) thing to do — but we just like to do little updates now and then just to remind the world that, though you may be gone-ish, we haven't forgotten you.

And neither has Hilton, we suppose. While we assume legal proceedings and negotiations and possible out-of-court (and outta the press) settlements are underway, we noticed the brand is absent from the Hilton Family website — but not, it seems, absent from some of the press releases we've seen going around lately (like this one), listed among the rest of Hilton's babies ("The company owns, manages or franchises some of the best known and highly regarded hotel brands including Hilton, Conrad Hotels & Resorts, Denizen Hotels, Doubletree..." etc, etc.) Interesting, no? Well, no. Not really.

The truth is, we just don't really know what's going on and the Hilton peeps have done a damn good job of keeping the press away from what we assume is a whole lot of interesting action going on very quietly between Denizen and Starwood. We're sticking with our guess that the thing's totally dead in the water, but — like the sorta-mean frenemy who will always remind you of the time you wet your pants in 3rd grade — we are going to continue to bring it up from time to time so nobody forgets that we're watching and waiting for the outcome of this.

Or someone could just, like, tip us off.

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Can We Go Ahead and Officially Call Denizen 'Dunzo' Now?

June 15, 2009 at 1:30 PM | by Jenna | 1 Comment

Big surprise here: the Washington Post did a big ol' rundown of the Starwood-Hilton legal battle over Denizen and there is no evidence that the Denizen brand is anything but, well, dead. If you're just tuning in, the Cliffs Notes go like this: a couple Starwood employees who helped develop the W Hotels brand left S-wood to develop a similar brand for Hilton called Denizen, and those execs allegedly stole a bunch of W trade secrets in the process — now Starwood is suing Hilton for corporate espionage and it's a huge mess.

Now, several weeks after the media frenzy and initial wave of tongue-wagging that surrounded the scandal when the news broke, the smoke has cleared a little bit and Washington Post was able to sort of tell the story without any crazy legal terms from top to bottom.

Some interesting tidbits: Ross Klein's (the former Starwood-turned-Hilton-exec who is sort of at the forefront of all this) attorney, said "Starwood's complaint is in large part an exaggerated and one-sided recitation of the facts." Apparenly, Klein's thinkin' that once all the facts are out on the table, it will look like he "acted in good faith." Okay.

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Hilton and Starwood to Settle Denizen Dispute Out of Court?

June 5, 2009 at 3:45 PM | by Jenna | 2 Comments

Unsurprisingly, reports are coming in that Hilton is doing what they can to settle their dispute (otherwise known as The Great Denizen Disaster) with Starwood out of court — because, obviously, they're trying to keep the damage to their already-pretty-soiled reputation to a minimum.

In more official words, Travel Daily News printed:

Hilton Hotels is seeking a negotiated settlement in its corporate espionage case with Starwood rather than seeing the legal spat battle between two of the industry’s fiercest competitors aired in public, thereby avoiding further humiliation of its botched entry into the lifestyle hotel sector.

Uh, in cased you missed all these shenanigans (watch the drama unfold here): Starwood filed a complaint in federal court in New York claiming two former Starwood executives hired by Hilton — Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani — had stolen information about the W hotel brand to develop Hilton's Denizen luxury-lifestyle hotel concept. It was a pretty clear case of corporate espionage, and last we heard, all development of Denizen was suspended until things could get moving with this legal battle.

Um, just a guess, but this could mean Denizen is probably dunzo, right? Maybe the biggest priorities for Hilton are just minimizing and repairing the damage to the company's reputation and moving on?

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Denizen Will Not Be Making Any Progress For a While

April 24, 2009 at 2:58 PM | by Jenna | 1 Comment

We reported earlier this week that Hilton had halted development of Denizen (per a Hilton press release), but now Starwood is speaking out (i.e. issuing their own press release) saying that a judge has actually entered a Preliminary Injunction with Hilton, Mr. Klein and Mr. Lalvani — the Starwood-turned-Hilton employees who allegedly stole the Starwood documents and trade secrets to develop Denizen — enjoining them from:

· Developing further the Denizen Hotels brand. This requires that all internal and external design, branding, development, promotion, programming, staffing and marketing of the Denizen Hotels brand cease.
· Engaging in any discussions or negotiations with prospective owners, developers and/or franchisees relating to the Denizen Hotels brand.
· Using, directly or indirectly, in any way the documents and electronic information obtained from Starwood (the "Starwood Information") or any information contained in or derived from the Starwood Information.

Ugh. Now, a question: if you were a prospective owner, developer, or franchisee, wouldn't you be inclined to, oh, we don't know...talk to the folks over at Edition about perhaps making a deal? We would.

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Hilton Suspends Development of Denizen Hotels

April 21, 2009 at 11:37 AM | by Jenna | 1 Comment

We hadn't heard much from the Hilton or Starwood camps since the news broke last week that Starwood was suing Hilton for the alleged theft of "trade secrets" that Hilton used to develop their recently-announced Denizen Hotels brand.

But today, Hilton speaks: the corporation issued a press release acknowledging that they've received a federal grand jury subpoena "requesting documents relating to Hilton's employment of former employees of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. and materials which Hilton returned to Starwood in February of 2009."

These "employees," of course, are Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani — two ex-Starwood employees who migrated over to Hilton, allegedly taking sensitive information with them illegally. According to the press release, Klein, Lalvani and "their luxury and lifestyle team" have all been placed on paid administrative leave "pending Hilton's review of the situation."

And the biggie update: "At this time, further development of the Denizen Hotels brand has been temporarily suspended." Oh noes. Probably a good idea for Hilton to take a step back and clean up this mess — but could this mean Denizen will end up dead in the water?

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The Origin of Denizen: Hilton Should Have Gone With 'The Quinn'

April 17, 2009 at 11:58 AM | by juliana | 0 Comments

The hotel world is in a tizzy today about the lawsuit that Starwood Hotels has filed against Hilton Hotels, Ross Klein, Amar Lalvani and their just-announced new hotel brand Denizen Hotels. Already folks are dividing themselves into two camps: Team Starwood and Team Denizen. We expect t-shirts from Cafe Press to be ready within the hour.

In reading today's article from the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news online last night, we get the rundown of all Starwood's major complaints which allege that Klein and Lalvani stole trade secrets, brand profiles and even other Starwood employees.

The allegations are shocking and scandalous and while we do believe that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, we can't help but wonder what would have happened if Hilton Hotels had just used the rumored name The Quinn in the first place.

That's because Starwood is alleging that the name Denizen Hotels actually comes from a concept called "zen den" which was to be implemented in W Hotels. Zinger. Ouch.

Now, hearing that the brand Denizen may have come from "zen den", it makes the name seem less bizarre and a little more sensible than "denizen of the world" which is what Denizen Hotels have been touting since its announcement. But stolen goods are never cool. What about just using the name The Quinn instead? We liked that better!

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Starwood Sues Hilton for Alleged Theft of W 'Trade Secrets'

April 17, 2009 at 8:56 AM | by Jenna | 29 Comments

When Ross Klein left Starwood for Hilton, eyebrows were raised — and when Hilton's new luxury brand, Denizen, was launched in March, we got a peek at what Klein had been cooking up at his new offices all that time: a sleek, chic boutique concept aimed at the "globally conscious modern traveler." You know, a new brand meant to compete with the Thompsons, Morgans and W's of the world.

And guess who wasn't so happy about that? W.

And guess what Starwood's doing about it? Suing.

According to a Bloomberg report, Starwood filed a complaint in federal court in New York claiming two former Starwood executives hired by Hilton — Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani — stole information about the W hotel brand to develop the Denizen concept.

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Denizen Continues to Confuse With New Video

March 31, 2009 at 4:51 PM | by juliana | 5 Comments

It's been a while since we checked in with the new boutique hotel brand from Hilton, Denizen Hotels. But fortunately, they have made it easier for us to keep up with them by Twittering, Facebooking and now YouTubing anything new from the DH HQ.

This here is the latest video posted to their profile and it involves some of the cool, new agey, techno-ish lobby music. (Does anyone have an actual name for this kind of music favored amongst boutique hotels?)

The video kicks off with a slogan, "I'm a citizen of the world; I'm a Denizen of the world." Then it moves you over fast-changing cityscapes to the Denizen logo which some HC readers are not in love with. More cityscapes. Butterflies! Another slogan: "I am a denizen that never sleeps." Um, ok? But aren't you a hotel brand? Where people are supposed to go to sleep?

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Inside the Hilton Denizen 'Brand Experience'

Where: Berlin, Germany
March 17, 2009 at 9:31 AM | by Jenna | 6 Comments

This is your hotel.
This is your hotel on drugs.
And it looks an awful lot like Denizen.

Last week when Hilton Hotels announced its much-anticipated luxury lifestyle chain, Denizen — about which everyone seems to have an opinion — they dropped the news at the International Hotel Investment Forum in Berlin by setting up a "brand experience" for the 1300 conference-goers to walk through.

In a bizarrely eccentric (but perhaps fittingly offbeat) move, the big H launched its newest brand by throwing an "Age of Aquarius" party: opera singer Inva Mula-Tchako (the voice of the blue alien in The Fifth Element) sang the seventies jam from above a floor-to-ceiling installation of a deconstructed Denizen "experience" inside a recycled shipping container.

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The Aftermath of Denizen: What Are People Saying?

March 11, 2009 at 5:31 PM | by juliana | 1 Comment

Yesterday, Hilton finally unveiled the plans for their new luxury boutique brand, Denizen Hotels and now that the brand is just over a day old we thought we'd look at what other folks were saying about it.

· HotelChatter Commenters: Our readers reactions' focused mainly on the logo with one person saying "love the logo" and others calling it "a sad imitation of thompson hotels" and a reminder of "an evil headquarters plaque." Eeeee.

· Denizen Hotels on Twitter: It didn't take long for Denizen to up and Twitter their new hotel brand. We'll be watching this feed closely but for now it's just a couple of "Look at us!" tweets.

· Ross Klein Speaks: Klein, the visionary behind Denizen, told Bloomberg News that “While it’s a challenging time, it’s also a really great time to bring something fresh. We’re cautious and careful, but we’re not cringing away from moving the industry and moving our brands forward.”

· Chris Elliott Will Stay There: Consumer travel advocate (some may say hero) Chris Elliott wrote on Tripso.com that he likes the idea of Denizen but thinks the name has a Loch Ness monster type of connotation. And he goes on to tick off some other strange hotel names.

Got your own opinion about Denizen? Put it here.

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Hilton Unveils New Lifestyle Brand: Denizen Hotels

March 10, 2009 at 9:18 AM | by Jenna | 19 Comments

It's official. Last night in Berlin, Hilton Hotels unveiled their new luxury boutique lifestyle brand (otherwise known as Project Global21) spearheaded by former W Hotels godfather Ross Klein: Denizen Hotels.

After much speculation, many rumors, and a fairly serious amount of hot gossip about the name of the new chain, our money was on "The Quinn". After all, when we visited TheQuinn.com last night (prior to the announcement), we were redirected to the ProjectGlobal21.com.

But! Denizen it is, and the brand was introduced to attendees of the International Hotel Investment Forum in a less-than-standard way that emphasizes the new chain's apparent focus on sustainability: "a reconstructed vision of the brand experience" was presented in a shipping container for visitors to walk through.

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