It's amazing how the year can start off with anticipation of a major new hotel brand launch from Hilton, and then not even 6 months into the year the brand can be assumed dead.
Back in April, Starwood Hotels sued Hilton Hotels, and two of their employees – Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani for taking trade secrets and confidential information to build the Denizen hotel brand. At the time Hilton came back with their standard boiler plate response to a lawsuit "we feel this suit has no merit and will vigorously defend it" – but I think it was clear that they really had no leg to stand on.
Since that lawsuit was filed Hilton was ordered to stop all further development or marketing of the Denizen brand and they put the majority of employees within Hilton's Prestige Portfolio on paid administrative leave – the same employees who had worked at Starwood's Luxury Brands Group under Ross Klein.
Hilton has pretty much removed all references to Denizen from their websites and press releases and taken down the Denizen Hotels website – but no official word from Hilton or Starwood has come out about Denizens actual fate.
For a comparison – Hilton has already integrated their Home2Suites brand into the brand bar at the bottom of all Hilton Family webpages.
Most likely Starwood & Hilton will do an out-of-court settlement which will force Hilton to scrap anything having to do with the Denizen brand, start from scratch on a new boutique brand, and fire the employees who used to work at Starwood then moved over to Hilton. The alternative is a long and protracted legal battle that Starwood is almost definitely going to win.
Hilton was dumb, they put themselves in a precarious position and because of that will end up having a black-eye within the industry and end up even further behind in creating a boutique hotel brand. At this point Marriott's Edition is looking better than Denizen, even though Denizen apparently had more contracts under negotiation and more work done Edition did in less time. Then again – Denizen's development was sped up by the use of Starwood's confidential documents.
It also leaves to question the status of the projects which were expected to include a Denizen – first and foremost, the Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino in Vegas. That project has seen more high-profile problems and issues than anything I've ever seen before. I suspect yet another delay in the project and yet another hotel brand (perhaps W?!).
My friends over at HotelChatter have also been following the Denizen saga, so you might want to read up on it over there as well.
Andrew Calvo is a Commercial Real Estate Advisor in New Jersey. I live in Tinton Falls, NJ. This blog is about my passions - primarily hotels, commercial real estate, and development, etc.Since I have been in High School Iäą«ve had numerous jobs, but the field which has always interested me is Real Estate, Hotel Development and Construction. I consider myself a zealot in that area - I try to absorb as much as I possibly can, take the experiences that I learn, or read about and use them in my life. www.passionsofazealot.com 
