Hilton Hotels Corp. will manage the Grand Wailea Resort Hotel & Spa under its new luxury hotel line, The Waldorf-Astoria Collection, Hilton announced yesterday.

Beginning Jan. 31, Hilton will rebrand the Grand Wailea on Maui, the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix, and the La Quinta Resort & Club in California. The resorts, which will keep their names while adding "The Waldorf-Astoria Collection" designation, will see little change in operations, said Hilton President Matt Hart.

Hilton said it is acquiring management contracts for the three hotels from California-based KSL Resorts.

Hilton, based in Beverly Hills, Calif., plans to expand the Waldorf-Astoria line by building hotels, as well as adding more resorts and some existing Hilton and Conrad properties to the Waldorf-Astoria Collection.

Using the Waldorf name gives Hilton another luxury brand as demand for high-end travel increases. Room-rate growth for luxury hotels has been faster than any other price segment since 1997, according to New York-based consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Hart says it's too early to estimate the number of properties that will bear the Waldorf name. "We haven't taken advantage fully of the brand name," he says. "A lot of customers have affinity to (it)."

The industry has seen several efforts to exploit the cachet of a single hotel by making it a chain — St. Regis, Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont among them. Re-creating "the Waldorf experience" could be tricky since it is a singular Park Avenue hotel with "so many unique characteristics," says Lee Aldridge of Landor & Associates, a brand-consulting company. Any strategy of expanding such hotels into a chain must involve "not over-promising" the original experience, he says.