Hilton Hotels
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40 free Hilton Hotels trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hilton began with one small-town hotel bought almost by accident in 1919 and grew into one of the best-known names in travel. Along the way its hotels picked up a remarkable number of stories: famous guests, headline-making nights, inventions every traveller now takes for granted, and a founding family that was rarely out of the gossip columns. This quiz collects the best fun facts about Hilton. Expect questions on Conrad Hilton and his heirs, the celebrities who stayed, married into the family or performed at Hilton hotels, the food and drink the hotels lay claim to, the firsts the chain is credited with, and the films and shows that put the Hilton sign on screen. A few tougher questions cover the deals and brands behind the business. It suits frequent travellers, hospitality students, Hilton team members looking for an icebreaker, and anyone who likes a good story behind a familiar name. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which rum cocktail does the Caribe Hilton claim its bartender Ramón Marrero created in 1954?
Piña colada
Piña colada is the drink the hotel says Marrero spent three months perfecting from rum, coconut cream and pineapple juice. Puerto Rico made it the island's official drink in 1978.
Q 02Which warm treat, once reserved for VIPs, does DoubleTree by Hilton hand every guest at check-in?
Chocolate chip cookie
Chocolate chip cookie dough from DoubleTree was baked in orbit in 2019 by astronaut Luca Parmitano, who used a prototype oven aboard the ISS.
Q 03Which Beatle spent his 1969 honeymoon holding a week-long bed-in for peace at the Hilton Amsterdam?
John Lennon
John Lennon and Yoko Ono invited the world's press into their suite every day for a week, turning a honeymoon into an anti-war protest staged from bed.
Q 04Which dessert does the Palmer House, now a Hilton, claim to have invented for the 1893 World's Fair?
Brownie
Brownie tradition credits socialite Bertha Palmer, who is said to have asked the hotel's pastry chef for a sweet smaller than a slice of cake that ladies could eat from a boxed lunch.
Q 05Which US president was shot outside the Washington Hilton in 1981 as he walked to his limousine?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan was seriously wounded by John Hinckley Jr. but survived, and locals sometimes call the hotel the Hinckley Hilton.
Q 06Which singer sold out 636 straight shows at the International, renamed the Las Vegas Hilton in 1971?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was booked for four weeks, but his first show was such a hit that the hotel signed him to two month-long engagements a year. He lived in a suite on the 30th floor.
Q 07Which revolutionary leader lived in suite 2324 of the new Habana Hilton for three months in 1959?
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro made the hotel his headquarters after entering Havana and gave his first press conference in its ballroom. In 1960 he nationalized it and renamed it the Habana Libre.
Q 08Which 1960s science-fiction film shows a Hilton hotel aboard a giant rotating wheel in Earth orbit?
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey seats a receptionist at the entrance to the Hilton on Space Station 5, where Dr Heywood Floyd stops over on his way to the Moon.
Q 09American prisoners in which war sarcastically nicknamed Hỏa Lò Prison the 'Hanoi Hilton'?
Vietnam War
Vietnam War prisoner Bob Shumaker was the first to write the name down, carving a welcome on a pail handle for the next captive. Future senator John McCain was later held there.
Q 10Which Hollywood ceremony did the Beverly Hilton's International Ballroom first host in 1961?
Golden Globe Awards
Golden Globe Awards night first came to the hotel six years after Conrad Hilton opened it, and became its signature event. Talk-show host Merv Griffin later bought the property for $100.2 million.
Q 11Which reality series made Paris Hilton, the hotel founder's great-granddaughter, a household name?
The Simple Life
The Simple Life paired Hilton with childhood friend Nicole Richie. Fox cancelled it after three seasons when the two fell out, and E! revived it for two more.
Q 12Which actress's 1950 marriage to hotel heir Conrad 'Nicky' Hilton Jr. lasted less than a year?
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor was 18 at the Beverly Hills wedding, the first of her eight marriages, and divorced him in January 1951 after only eight months.
Q 13Which Hungarian-born actress with nine husbands was married to Conrad Hilton from 1942 to 1947?
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Q 21Which NFL team's original owner was Barron Hilton, the son who later ran the Hilton hotel company?
Chargers
Chargers founder Barron Hilton denied naming the team to plug his new credit card business, and later helped forge the AFL–NFL merger that created the Super Bowl.
Q 22Which James Bond film used the Las Vegas Hilton's exterior as the Whyte House casino?
Diamonds Are Forever
Diamonds Are Forever has Sean Connery's Bond climb to the top floor of the building to confront its reclusive owner, the billionaire Willard Whyte.
Q 23Which company's engineer made the first handheld mobile call outside the New York Hilton in 1973?
Motorola
Zsa Zsa Gabor was Hilton's second wife. In 1944 he helped her parents flee Nazi-occupied Hungary, and the couple's daughter Francesca was born in 1947.
Q 14Which New York hotel, Hilton-run from 1949, gave its name to a salad of apples, celery and walnuts?
Waldorf Astoria
Waldorf Astoria diners first tasted the salad in 1896, at the hotel's original building. Hilton's company bought the hotel outright in 1972 and sold it in 2014 for $1.95 billion.
Q 15In which US state did Conrad Hilton buy his first hotel, the 40-room Mobley, in 1919?
Texas
Texas is where the chain began: the Mobley, in the small town of Cisco, cost $40,000. Hilton summed up his approach there as minimum cost and maximum comfort, or 'minimax'.
Q 16Which in-room fixture is the Hong Kong Hilton credited with popularising across the hotel world from 1974?
Minibar
Minibar takings lifted the hotel's in-room drink sales by 500% within months, so Hilton rolled the idea out across all its hotels the following year.
Q 17Which 2015 dinosaur blockbuster features a fictional Hilton resort on Isla Nublar?
Jurassic World
Jurassic World places the resort inside a working dinosaur theme park on the island, in a story set 22 years after the disaster of the first film.
Q 18Which singer's 1976 escape from her husband at a Hilton is retold in What's Love Got to Do with It?
Tina Turner
Tina Turner left Ike Turner mid-tour while the pair were staying at the hotel, and described that night in her memoir I, Tina.
Q 19What did Conrad Hilton set out to buy in Cisco in 1919 before settling for the Mobley Hotel?
A bank
A bank was the plan, but the purchase fell through. The Mobley was so busy with oil-field workers that it rented rooms in eight-hour shifts, so Hilton bought it instead.
Q 20Which TV drama made Conrad Hilton a recurring character who hires ad man Don Draper?
Mad Men
Mad Men cast Chelcie Ross as the hotel founder, a major character of its third season, and sent the Drapers to a Hilton in Rome, a scene actually shot in Los Angeles.
Motorola's Martin Cooper stood on Sixth Avenue with a prototype DynaTAC and dialled his rival at Bell Labs, then walked into the hotel for a press conference.
Q 24To which US state did Hilton move its headquarters in 2009, leaving Beverly Hills behind?
Virginia
Virginia's Fairfax County got the head office, which settled in Tysons, near Washington, D.C. Hilton kept an operations centre in Memphis.
Q 25What did the Hilton-run Roosevelt Hotel become the first hotel to put in its guest rooms, in 1947?
Televisions
Televisions reached the Roosevelt's rooms four years after Hilton took over the Midtown hotel, a deal that helped make his chain the first to span the United States coast to coast.
Q 26Which city's airport got the 1959 Hilton Inn credited with pioneering the airport hotel?
San Francisco
San Francisco's airport inn joined a run of 1950s Hilton firsts, including a central reservations office that could book any of its hotels by telephone, telegram or Teletype.
Q 27In which future US state, still a territory in 1887, was Hilton founder Conrad Hilton born?
New Mexico
New Mexico sent him to its first state legislature at 24, but he soured on politics. His first taste of hotelkeeping was the ten rooms his father let in the family's general store.
Q 28Which Hilton brand began in Memphis in 1984 as a budget chain from the Holiday Corporation?
Hampton Inn
Hampton Inn was the first mid-price chain to offer free continental breakfast and a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee. Hilton acquired it in 1999 when it bought the Promus Hotel Corporation.
Q 29Which Hilton brand is known for its atrium lobbies, glass elevators and nightly Manager's Reception?
Embassy Suites
Embassy Suites opened its first hotel in Overland Park, Kansas, in 1984, and still sells itself on two-room suites and a breakfast cooked to order.
Q 30Which island nation's Hilton resort opened Ithaa, billed as the world's first undersea restaurant?
Maldives
Maldives diners at Ithaa sit five metres below the surface under a clear acrylic roof. The name means mother of pearl, and the room holds just 14 people.