Home at Last

So that he would be sure to open his "100th" hotel--a nice, round, significant number--in Boston, Sheraton Hotels' Chairman Ernest Henderson designated recent acquisitions 99A and 99B. The subterfuge is excusable. Though he and a partner began the Sheraton chain in Boston 28 years ago, Henderson has kept so busy building hotels elsewhere that he never did get around to opening a new Sheraton in New England, contented himself with buying up other hotels (such as Boston's venerable Copley Plaza) and rechristening them.

This week Henderson finally gets what he wants. The $30 million, 1,012-room Sheraton-Boston opens its doors as one of the main attractions of the city's new Prudential Center. There will be no movie-starred gala of the kind that Connie Hilton goes in for; instead, serious, art-loving Ernest Henderson, 68, scheduled a forum on "The Free Society and Its Posture in World Affairs, 1965." "I think," said he, "that it will leave a more lasting impression."

The new hotel has a 40-room VIP penthouse, Louis XVI furniture, murals painted on silver tea paper from Hong Kong, three kinds of crystal in the ballroom chandelier, five restaurants that range from old New England to the French provinces, and balcony rooms overlooking a swimming pool. The new 29-story building is also a good example of how the modern hotel is becoming a cross between a convention hall and a garage, with bedrooms upstairs. It has free parking in its basement garage and a separate lobby for guests who come by car, offers doorways leading directly into the adjoining War Memorial Auditorium; it also provides a translation room equipped with earphone connections to handle ten languages simultaneously. Even before its opening, the Sheraton-Boston had booked $14 million in convention business through 1975.

This is the way, Henderson believes, that downtown hotels can win back the customers who deserted them for the motel. Henderson expects to build no more hotels himself. His chain, which has surpassed Hilton as the world's largest in number of hotels, has an overall occupancy rate 12% higher than the U.S. average of 63%, and for fiscal 1964 will hike its sales 8% to about $250 million. Henderson would rather manage new hotels for someone else--Prudential Insurance owns his Boston hotel--or franchise the Sheraton name and services. Of 102 hotels that stretch from Tel Aviv to Taxco, Mexico, Sheraton now owns only 46; ten others under construction or in the planning state will all be franchises. Company funds, meanwhile, will be channeled into modernizing Sheraton's sometimes less than satisfactory lobbies, elevators and 10,000 bathrooms.

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