Author's Notes

On Monday, 17 May 2004, five minutes past nine, a taxi pulled up in front of the Hilton. Seconds later, a man entered the lobby. Cautiously, he approached the reception and asked: ‘Do you have, by any chance, a room for me?’ ‘We do,’ the receptionist answered with a smile, ‘to be precise, we have 579 brand-new rooms for you.’
Within seconds, Claus Steiner, the hotel manager, was in place to explain. ‘Dear Sir, you are our first guest since we reopened after 14 months of renovation. And we literally opened just seconds before you arrived. Welcome!’
The guest was thrilled. Having just flown into Vienna directly on a 14-hour flight from San Francisco, all he had done was to instruct a taxi driver at the airport: ‘Take me to the Hilton.’
One week later, the reopened hotel was in full swing. It was the opening night of Joe Zawinul’s Jazz club, Birdland. Excitement was in the air. Both the retiring and the designated presidents of Austria were present in the basement when Joe played the first tunes in his fine new club. It was also the night of a Bobby McFerrin open-air concert in the gardens of Schönbrunn Castle, at the foot of the hills of the ‘Gloriette’. Bobby was conducting the Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra and 90,000 had flocked to listen. Once, after countless encores, McFerrin had safely tucked away the conductor’s baton in his dread-locked hair, he was on stage with Joe Zawinul at the Birdland just after midnight. That much about priorities. At Schönbrunn, he had issued the driver of his limousine one, famous sentence: ‘Take me to the Hilton!’
Several weeks later, we checked in to complete our research on the hotel. In its relatively short lifespan the Hilton has become a thriving hub of Viennese society and international celebrities. Our work was coming to an end. We had been through approximately 2,000 photographs of events and celebrities, from 1975 (including the laying of the foundation stone – actually, in 1972!) up to date. We had met, with the exception of the late Roman O. Rickenbacher, the former general managers, who shared with us their personal memories of the Hilton Vienna. We had spoken to retired and still working staff members, all of them Hilton Vienna people of the very first hour. They were all very much a part of the special atmosphere and the international flair that have come to epitomise this city.
More and more, it became evident that Vienna and its Hilton have inspired one another so successfully that, in the course of events, the Hilton has become a very Viennese hotel, while over the past decades Vienna has retrieved its original position as a very international city.
As you may imagine, we were very much taken by the Hilton.

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