Hilton Group marks 100 years

PAPUA New Guinea has always been a market that the Hilton Group wanted to get into, says Port Moresby Hilton general manager John Lucas.
Lucas said this following the Hilton’s worldwide 100th year celebration last Friday.
“Hilton globally, we have just celebrated our 100th year anniversary and that stems back to a small hotel our founder Conrad Hilton opened in 1919 in Cisco, Texas, and since then the company has been building on to the point where it has 5,700 hotels, globally,” Lucas said.
“When we opened the Port Moresby Hilton back in October last year, it was just a couple of weeks before PNG hosted the Apec Leaders’ Summit.
“At that point, PNG became the 107th country in the world to have a Hilton hotel.
“PNG has been a market that Hilton has wanted to get into for a while.
“It is a very important market, and we can certainly see from a company point of view, the level of growth and opportunity now and into the future is immense.
“So it was very important that we had a presence here in PNG, ready for whenever the next business boom happens.”
Lucas said the team in Port Moresby celebrated by donating items to the St Theresa clinic, Cheshire Disability House and Port Moresby General Hospital.
“We had a week-long celebration where we had cultural presentations put on by our team members,” he said.
“We have team members from PNG, some from the Cook Islands, Fiji and even Indonesia, all celebrating with dances which were performed in our amphitheatre.
“We also did some work in the community by donating to local women’s groups, hospitals and also visiting sick children at the hospitals.”
The 212-room hotel has 280 staff, which, 265 are Papua New Guineans.