Fairmont Hotels & Resorts

Canadian Pacific Hotels

Canadian Pacific Hotels (CP Hotels) began as a division of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) hotel department. The division operated a series of hotels along CPR's rail lines as early as 1886. Many of these resort hotels were built and operated by the railway's hotel department, while a few were later acquired from Canadian National Hotels, a hotel division of the Canadian National Railway. Over the years, a collection of grand railway hotels was assembled throughout Canada, in both rural and urban areas. By the 1980s, CP Hotels' collection included the Chateau Lake Louise, the Banff Springs Hotel, the Château Frontenac, the Empress Hotel, the Palliser Hotel, the Fairmont Royal York, and others. In addition to its properties in Canada, the hotel chain operated a few hotels outside Canada, with properties in Germany, Israel, Mexico, and the United States.

CPR's rival, the Grand Trunk Railway, and later the Canadian National Railway, copied Van Horne's approach by building hotels such as the Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper, Alberta, and the Château Laurier in Ottawa. CPR purchased Canadian National Hotels, the Canadian National Railway's hotel division, in 1988, making CP Hotels the nation's largest hotel owner. In the 1990s, CP Hotels expanded and purchased the Canadian Delta Hotels chain and the international Princess Hotels chain in 1998, which became wholly owned subsidiaries of CP Hotels. In 1999, CP Hotels purchased the San Francisco-based Fairmont Hotels & Resorts chain.

Fairmont Hotels

During the 1890s, James Graham Fair bought the land where the Fairmont San Francisco now stands, the first hotel to bear the Fairmont namesake. 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. In 1926, the Penthouse Suite was created with three secret passageways to access it.

In 1945, the Fairmont San Francisco was acquired by Benjamin Swig. Beginning in the 1960s, the Swig family developed Fairmont into a small chain of luxury hotels throughout the United States. Operating as Fairmont Hotels Management, the hotel chain acquired, and built a number of hotel properties. The chain acquired the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans in 1965, renaming it the Fairmont Roosevelt, and then Fairmont New Orleans. The Fairmont San Jose was opened by the hotel chain in 1987. The company assumed management of the Plaza Hotel in New York in 1995 and purchased the Copley Plaza Hotel in 1996, renaming it The Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel. By 1998, the company managed seven properties in the United States.

In addition to those properties, the company also operated the Colony Square Hotel in Atlanta as Fairmont Colony Square Hotel from its opening in 1974 to 1977, and The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia as Fairmont Philadelphia from 1979 to 1980.

Merger (1999–2001)

In April 1999, Canadian Pacific Hotels, Kingdom Hotels International and Maritz Wolff & Co. bought Fairmont Hotels Management L.P., with Canadian Pacific Hotels holding the majority of the shares (67%).

In 2001, Canadian Pacific Limited, the parent company of both Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts, and Canadian Pacific Railway, was reorganized. During this reorganization, Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts was renamed to Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, using the name of the company it had purchased in 1999. The newly re-organized Fairmont company transferred several properties to its Delta Hotels subsidiary, although it retained most of the "signature" hotels and resorts under the new Fairmont banner.

Later that year in October 2001, Canadian Pacific Limited spun off all of its subsidiary companies into separately traded "independent" companies, including Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Companies like Fairmont Hotels & Resorts were split into smaller companies in a 2001 "starburst" move designed to increase the valuations of its individual divisions.