Did Corporate Spying Doom Denizen Hotels?

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Apr 23rd 2009 at 9:02AM

It looks like corporate espionage has sunk the fledgling Denizen Hotels brand. Hilton Hotel Corp. has announced that it has received a federal grand jury subpoena for documents regarding two former employees of Starwood hotels who switched camps and brought their trade secrets with them. Starwood has sued Hilton saying that Hilton used privileged information in the development of the Denizen brand. The employees, Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani have been placed on paid administrative leave pending review. The Denizen Hotel website is down and Hilton has announced that the development of the brand has been "temporarily suspended." Will the brand be resurrected after the case sorts itself out? My guess is that Hilton will rebrand the hotels as something else.

Tags: denizen, denizen hotels, DenizenHotels, espionage, hilton, hotels, starwood