Airport hotels fly high on ‘first’ class status
In its long “History of Firsts,” Hilton Hotels & Resorts claims to have pioneered the airport hotel concept with the opening of the San Francisco Airport Hilton in 1959.
Unfortunately, their claim is off by at least 30 years.
Aviation historians say the first hotel built at a United States airport opened its doors to the traveling public on July
15, 1929, on the grounds of what is now the North Field of Oakland International Airport.
“The Oakland Airport Inn was adjacent to the dirt runway,” said Ian Wright, director of operations at the Oakland Aviation Museum. “And the structure still stands today.”
At opening, the hotel boasted 37 rooms, a restaurant, a barbershop and a ticket office, according to Air & Space Magazine, which cites a 1931 Aviation article describing the hotel as being “almost completely devoid of patrons after a year of operations” because two airlines had shifted flights away from the Oakland airport.
To fill the rooms, the hotel instead courted pilots and students from the Boeing School of Aeronautics, which operated on the airport’s grounds from
1929 until the early 1940s.
Today the building that housed the Oakland Airport Inn is home to the Amelia Earhart Senior Squadron 188, a local unit of the Civil Air Patrol.
That Earhart homage is fitting: Amelia Earhart was a regular guest at the Oakland Airport Inn. And in May 1937 she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, set out from the airport’s North Field for their ill-fated second attempt to fly around the world.
While travelers can no longer check into a room at the Oakland Airport Inn, they are able to book rooms at the Dearborn Inn in Dearborn, Michigan near Detroit.
The hotel opened its doors July 1, 1931, and along with claiming this to be the world’s first airport hotel, the Michigan Historical Marker out front says Henry Ford built the inn to serve Detroitbound guests arriving at the Ford Airport, which opened in 1924.
Stout Air Services, run by Edsel Ford’s friend William Stout, began offering flights between Dearborn and Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1926 and in 1929 was flying daily (except Sundays) to both Chicago and Cleveland using Ford Trimotor aircraft.
“The Dearborn Inn was actually the brainchild of Henry Ford’s son, Edsel, and was intended to be the ‘ front door’ to the city of Dearborn and to the Ford Motor Company,” said Charles Sable, Curator of Decorative Arts at The Henry Ford.
Noted Detroit architect Albert Kahn designed the building for a hotel Edsel wanted modeled after the charming New England inns with Colonial-style décor he’d stay in when traveling back and forth between his homes in Detroit and Bar Harbor, Maine.
“The exterior of the hotel is vaguely a Colonial design,” said Sable, “But one feature that’s really cool is that at the tippy top there’s a ‘widow’s walk,’ or observation platform, where guests could go out and watch the planes land at the airport.”
Today the Dearborn Inn operates as a Marriott hotel featuring modern rooms that are still decorated with Colonial-style furniture and fabrics. The 231-room hotel complex also still offers guests the option to stay on “Pilots Row” – in rooms once used by airline crews.
Other ‘early’ airport hotels
Some travelers may remember a few other early airport hotels that are now footnotes in history.
Memphis International housed the Skyport Inn from about 1972 until around 2012. The in-terminal hotel had about 30 rooms and was popular with pilots and flight attendants who had early-morning flights. Many, if not all, of the rooms may have lacked windows; the Memphis Business Journal noted that each room at the Skyport Inn had its own skylight.
The Airport Mini Hotel that once operated at Honolulu International Airport closed its doors not long after 9/11. But for many years the hotel offered travelers on layovers a space to nap and freshen up for less than $10 an hour.