About Westin Hotels & Resorts Egypt
In 1930, Severt W. Thurston and Frank Dupar of Seattle, Washington met unexpectedly during breakfast at the coffee shop of the Commercial Hotel in Yakima, Washington. The competing hotel owners decided to form a management company to handle all their properties, and help deal with the crippling effects of the ongoing Great Depression.[3] The men invited Peter and Adolph Schmidt, who operated five hotels in the Puget Sound area, to join them, and together they established Western Hotels.[3] The chain consisted of 17 properties – 16 in Washington and one in Boise, Idaho.[3] Its headquarters and executive offices were located in its flagship property, the New Washington Hotel in Seattle. Western Hotels expanded to Vancouver, British Columbia and Portland, Oregon in 1931, to Alaska in 1939, and then to California in 1941, assuming management of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Western added properties in Utah in 1949 and Montana in 1950.[3] Western Hotels executive Edward Carlson convinced Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron to open his first franchised Trader Vic's location in the chain's Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Seattle in 1949. Originally a small bar named The Outrigger, it was expanded into a full restaurant in 1954 and renamed Trader Vic's in 1960.[4] Due to the restaurant's success, Bergeron worked with Western Hotels to open Trader Vic's locations in a number of its hotels.
