Pullman Hotels and Resorts is a French multinational upscale hotel brand owned by Accor. Pullman has 145 hotels and resorts in 42 countries spread across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle-East and Oceania.[1]
History
Railroad origins
The name Pullman was indirectly inspired by George Pullman (1831–1897), founder of the Pullman Company, a prosperous 19th-century, Chicago-based railroad manufacturer. The Pullman Company was famous for launching the first sleeping trains in the United States and developing upscale services for railroad travelers. Belgian Georges Nagelmackers (1845–1905) traveled to the United States in 1867-1868 and came back with the plan to build the equivalent of the Pullman Company in Europe, the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL).
The fast-growing railroad networks led the rail industry to invest in the construction and management of hotels alongside railroad tracks. In 1894, the CIWL created the Compagnie Internationale des Grands Hotels