Hilton began in 1919 when Conrad Hilton bought the 40-room Mobley Hotel in Cisco, Texas, to house workers in the oil boom. He bought more Texas hotels, opened a Waco property in 1927 with air-conditioned public areas and cold running water, and in 1943 took over the Roosevelt and bought the Plaza in Manhattan, making Hilton the first hospitality company to span the contiguous U.S. The Roosevelt became the first hotel with televisions in guest rooms in 1947, a 1955 program put air conditioning in every room, and in 1959 Hilton opened an airport hotel at San Francisco International. In 1954 it created the first central reservations office, HILCRON, where eight agents worked a chalkboard 30 feet long and six feet high to track all 28 hotels, handling over 6,000 bookings in 1955.

In 1964 Hilton spun off its foreign operations as Hilton International, and for decades the two companies could not compete in each other’s territories, so the U.S. company used the name Conrad abroad and the international company used Vista in the U.S. Hilton International passed through TWA, United Airlines and the British gambling firm Ladbroke before Hilton bought it back in 2005 for $5.71 billion. Blackstone took Hilton private in July 2007 for $26 billion with $20 billion in debt, injected $800 million in a 2010 restructuring, and returned it to the public market in 2013. After spinning off its timeshares and real estate in 2017, Hilton owns or leases just 51 of 7,530 properties.

• The piña colada is said to have been invented by a barman at the Caribe Hilton in Puerto Rico, opened in 1949.
• John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their 1969 bed-in for peace at the Amsterdam Hilton.
• Tina Turner sought refuge at the Statler in Dallas in 1976 after leaving Ike Turner.
• In January 2026 Hilton stripped the franchise from a Minneapolis owner who tried to block ICE agents from lodging, prompting boycott calls and protests.
• In September 2025 a night at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives rose from 190,000 to 250,000 Hilton Honors points.