It’s incredible to think that, in 1959, when Hilton opened the world’s first airport hotel, Hilton San Francisco Airport Bayfront, it was a real revelation. The man behind the launch was Barron Hilton, and the hotel’s opening combined his then-position as vice-president of Hilton Hotels with a lifelong fascination with aviation. As a child living in Dallas, Texas, he’d ride his bicycle to a nearby airfield and watch the planes take off and land. “I’d go and stare at those planes, trying to figure out when I’d be able to fly one,” he said later.
And, as soon as he could, he did. While stationed with the US navy at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, during the second world war, the 17-year-old Hilton took flying lessons at a civilian air base on the north shore of Oahu. Having earned his twin-engine pilot’s licence in 1946, at the age of just 19, he attended the University of Southern California aeronautical school. Perhaps only a pilot, regularly travelling back and forth to an airfield, could come up with the concept of a hotel situated close to the airport, for the convenience of travellers.
