Hilton Punished By Fashion Police

I have a question that keeps me up at night.

With boutique hotels now going mainstream, what will the new boutique be? Will there be a new word for a small, independent, one-off design hotel?

Dash's line from Disney's Incredibles comes to mind: "If everybody's special, then no one really is."

I read in the Wall Street Journal this afternoon that Hilton paid an undisclosed amount to Starwood Hotels & Resorts for stealing super secret information about W Hotels, Starwood's boutique-chic brand. What is surprising is that  the court ordered Hilton to suspend planning, development and launch of its own boutique brand for the next two years. Sure, W's are great, but what proprietary information could Hilton have gleaned that is not open to anyone spending the night in a W?:

Hilton Worldwide Inc will be banned for two years from creating a luxury "lifestyle" hotel chain under an agreement to settle a corporate-espionage lawsuit. the settlement stems from a suit filed last year by rival Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, which accused Hilton officials of stealing confidential Starwood documents to develop a new boutique-style chain that would appeal to modern tastes.

Boutique is big biz; getting bigger all the time. It's a magic formula, really. Guests pay more money to romp about in verifiable cleanliness and style. And it's just not Helvetica lovers and "The Gays" any more. Who would have guessed that boutiques were on to something with those crisp white duvet covers and hard surfaces?

Starwood was the first mega chain to launch a mass-market boutique with its W brand back in 1998. It took Marriott until 2010 to come up with a comparable product in its Edition brand (pictured above), and  I suppose Andaz is Hyatt's brassy response to mass-boutique.

With all this boutique design vernacular open to the public, why punish Hilton? They are already the loser among the big chains for being so late to develop their own.

As I see it, the real loser here is Starwood Hotels & Resorts. They seem afraid; very, very afraid. They must be out of innovative ideas. Time to buy Hilton.