Hyatt Hotels history

1961: Pritzker has expanded Hyatt into a chain of six hotels.

In 1969, Hyatt opened its first hotel outside the United States, when it was awarded the management contract for the President Hotel in Hong Kong.

Pritzker's brother Donald and his oldest child, Nancy, died in 1972.

Management went awry, however, when it was discovered in 1977 that Fr iend had spent $300,000 of company money on personal expenses.

Jay Pritzker was a trustee of the University of Chicago and in 1979 endowed the Pritzker Architectural Prize, sometimes called architecture's Nobel Prize, which carries a $100,000 award.

Then in 1981, two skywalks at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel collapsed, killing 114 people and injuring 229 in what the National Bureau of Standards called the most devastating structural collapse ever to take place in the United States.

Most notable was the 1983 purchase of the troubled Braniff airline through Dalfort, a Hyatt subsidiary.

1987: Classic Residence by Hyatt is launched.

Also in 1989, Hyatt introduced the Camp Hyatt program to attempt to attract more families to its somewhat business-oriented facilities.

Starting in 1994, the company moved cautiously into franchising for the first time.

Hyatt also entered, again cautiously, the crowded time-share property market with the opening in June 1995 of a resort known as Hyatt's Sunset Harbor Key West.

Also in 1996 Hartley-Leo nard left the company in order to continue running a Hyatt affiliate that he had founded, Regency Productions, which specialized in sports events production.

Scheduled to open in 1997 was a third franchised Hyatt, the Hyatt Regency Wichita, a new downtown convention hotel.

By mid-1998 Hyatt had already purchased the Grand Hyatts in New York and San Francisco as well as the Hyatts in Deerfield, Illino is, and Miami.

At the end of 1999 Geoga left Hyatt Hotels to take charge of a new financing venture for the Pritzker fa mily.

The timing for this diversification, h owever overdue, turned out to be quite auspicious as Hyatt and the en tire luxury lodging market, already feeling the effects of the econom ic slowdown, was further depressed by the travel downturn that follow ed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In June 2004, substantially all of the hospitality assets owned by Pritzker family business interests, including Hyatt Corporation and Hyatt International Corporation, were consolidated under a single entity called Global Hyatt Corp.

In December 2005, Hyatt acquired limited service company Summerfield Suites from the Blackstone Group.

Hyatt launched its first lifestyle brand, Andaz, in April 2007.

In August 2009, it was reported that Hyatt Hotels Corporation filed plans to raise up to $1.15 billion in an initial share sale.

On September 1, 2011, Hyatt acquired Hotel Sierra, which had 18 properties in 10 states.

Along with Hyatt Summerfield Suites hotels, several of these properties were rebranded as Hyatt house in January 2012.

In November 2013, Hyatt introduced their first all-inclusive resort brands, Hyatt Ziva and Hyatt Zilara, with the first resorts being opened in Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos and Rose Hall, Montego Bay, Jamaica.

As of 30 November 2015, Hyatt had over 627 hotels worldwide.

On November 14, 2016, Hyatt and Bahria Town Group signed an agreement for construction of four properties in Pakistan, combined worth US$600 million.

On December 6, 2018, Hyatt signed a contract with Kastrati Group to manage MAK Albania Hotel in Tirana, Albania.

In March 2021, Hyatt announced the official opening of Hyatt’s 1,000th hotel worldwide, Alila Napa Valley in St Helena, California.