When the chain was acquired, he was its president for France. However, a new team came in and took control of the group. “I did not give up, since that very weekend, the head of a British group called and offered me a post managing Berniers', a traditional luxury hotel in London in the most pure Edwardian style”. He immediately moved to London with his wife and children, leading a new career at the head of this monument of the English hotel industry. A new experience, a new challenge, though Raymond Pierre Chigot felt a bit restrained. He wanted to once again work for an international chain, to be able to use all his talent.

It would be the Hilton Group, where in 1991 he joined as vice president of development for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The chain had just been acquired by the Ladbroke Group, and had a high degree of ambition for expansion. “It was a kind of pinnacle. I was finally able to achieve the synthesis between operation, finance, and hotel creation strategy for the most symbolic brand in the international hotel industry”, he continued.

In the 1990s, Raymond Pierre Chigot set out on his career as a developer, which would lead him to around thirty countries, often as a pioneer, in the pure tradition of the brand. “I discovered my true calling. That of bringing Hilton to new countries and to participate in expanding it throughout the world. It was the mission that was given to me”. Each of the fifty hotel locations that he creates was a unique and different adventure, with often a good dose of risk for the epoch. “Have certain level of responsibility; someone who is not able to assume the risk necessary for the conclusion of a project is not hi his place”. This philosophy still drives him today.

“The most important aspect in the field of development is to transform vision into reality. Conrad Hilton himself said, ‘If you want to be capable of doing great things, you must be able to have immense dreams'. This corresponded perfectly with my personal ambitions”. A veritable orchestral conductor, he constantly worked with all the partners of a project: owners, investors, architects, builders, and decorators, to give birth to new hotels. “Personal involvement is capital”, he often repeats. “The good developer will know how to transmit his charisma, his vision of the project, and convince investors of the project's feasibility. Negotiation is foremost an affair of human relations. Of course, you are judges on the profits and the values that they represent, but also, and almost as importantly, on your personal credibility to lead the project to fruition. Fortunately, personal relations still plays a valuable role, this is one of the main interests of this profession”.

To successfully carry out his projects, Raymond Pierre Chigot applies a general rule of thumb that he learned at the very beginning of his career and which fits in the five letters of the word “pride”: Perseverance, Responsibility, Integrity, Discipline, and Enthusiasm. Each word has its importance and it is their combination that allows one to end up with a result that one may be proud of. The formula has not aged.

The most passionate is to allow Hilton to set foot on new territory, a procedure that has always been part of the Hilton culture. “I connected right away with this pioneer philosophy. It was daring to open a hotel in Hanoi in 1997, create 800 rooms in Prague in the 1990s, and to acquire Athenee Palace in Bucharest just after the chaos left by the Ceausescu presidency”.