Hilton will celebrate its 100th anniversary on May 31 and the company, which calls itself “the first global hospitality company,” marked the occasion with an event in New York where it looked to the past, present and future of the brand.

Today, Hilton has 17 brands, more than 5,600 properties and more than 2,300 properties in its pipeline; one of every five hotels opening in the world is a Hilton. The company started in 1919 when Conrad Hilton bought a small hotel in Cisco, Texas. The first with the Hilton name came along in 1925 (the Hilton Dallas) and by the 1950s, Hilton became the first coast-to-coast hotel chain in the U.S.

It also opened the first hotel outside the continental U.S, the Hilton Caribe in Puerto Rico and soon opened the Hilton Istanbul, the first modern hotel built from the ground up in Europe after WWII. Conrad Hilton became the first hotelier to appear on the cover of Time magazine.

Hilton has had many lodging firsts, according to Karla Starr, author of “The Hilton Effect,” a history of the company: room service, televisions in rooms and lobby shopping among them. She said Conrad Hilton was the first to recognize business travelers as a distinct market and targeted them initially.

In addition, Conrad Hilton invested heavily in air conditioning in the 1950s, creating the possibility of year-round convention business, said Dr. Mark Young, archivist and historian for Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Houston.

Pablo Torres, general manager of the Caribe Hilton, which was heavily damaged by Hurricane Maria two years ago, said the property will reopen May 15 after extensive renovations to rooms, public space and the beach. That property was the site where the piña colada was invented.

Discussing Hilton today Mark Weinstein, senior vice president and global head of customer engagement, said Hilton’s Honors loyalty program now has 85 million members. Hilton Honors now offers a “slider” option where travelers can choose any combination of money or points to redeem awards and that the option to choose experiences like concerts is growing rapidly.

Tripp McLaughlin, global head of the newest brand, Motto, said it is a micro-hotel concept that offers smaller but highly designed rooms with an active lobby and extensive local partnerships.

Looking ahead, Hilton aims to shrink its environmental footprint through its Travel With Purpose program, according to Katie Fallon, executive vice president and global head of corporate affairs. Calling itself the first major hotel chain to institute science-based carbon emission targets, the company has the goal of cutting its environmental footprint in half and doubling its social impact by 2020.

Ian Carter, president of global development, architecture, design and construction, said more than half of the company’s pipeline is overseas with a special focus on the Middle East, Africa, China and all-inclusive hotels in the Caribbean and northern South America.

Noelle Eder, chief information and digital officer, said the Connected Room continues to be rolled out, enabling guests to use an app to control the heating and cooling in their rooms, entertainment on their devices, lights and more. “And we’re just getting started,” said Eder.

A new feature, said Eder, is called “Explore the Neighborhood” and offers suggestions from hotel staff about what to do in the destination. The mission, said Eder, is to focus on flexibility and speed to enhance the guest experience through technology.

HONOLULU — Last year, much of Hawaii was shocked to learn a Chicago restaurant chain owner had trademarked the name “Aloha Poke” and wrote to cubed fish shops around the country demanding that they stop using the Hawaiian language moniker for their own eateries. The cease-and-desist letters targeted a downtown Honolulu restaurant and a Native Hawaiian-operated restaurant in Anchorage, among others.

Now, Hawaii lawmakers are considering adopting a resolution calling for the creation of legal protections for Native Hawaiian cultural intellectual property. The effort predates Aloha Poke, but that episode is lending a sense of urgency to a long-festering concern not unfamiliar to native cultures in other parts of the world.

“I was frustrated at the audacity of people from outside of our community using these legal mechanisms to basically bully people from our local community out of utilizing symbols and words that are important to our culture,” said state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, a Native Hawaiian representing Kaneohe and Heeia.

The resolution calls on state agencies and Native Hawaiian organizations to form a task force to develop a legal system to “recognize and protect” Native Hawaiian cultural intellectual property and traditional cultural expressions. It also seeks protections for genetic resources, such as taro, a traditional crop that legend says is an ancestor of the Hawaiian people and that scientists have tried to genetically engineer in the past.

The task force would be commissioned to submit its recommendations and any proposed legislation to lawmakers in three years.

The resolution has passed House and Senate committees. The full Senate is scheduled to vote on it Monday.

The Aloha Poke incident echoes past disputes, like when a non-Hawaiian photographer claimed copyright over an image of a woman dancing hula and Disney copyrighted a modified version of a Hawaiian chant used in a movie.

Chicago’s Aloha Poke Co. chose as its battleground the word “aloha” — a term meaning love, compassion, kindness as well as hello and goodbye. It’s a term central to how Native Hawaiians treat others and how many in Hawaii — Native Hawaiian or not — try to live.

“It’s traumatic when things like this happen to us — when people try to take, modify or steal what’s been in our people’s world view for generations,” said Healani Sonoda-Pale, chairwoman of the Ka Lahui Hawaii political action committee, who testified in support of the resolution.

Aloha Poke CEO Chris Birkinshaw didn’t return messages seeking comment left at his West Madison store in Chicago and on the company’s website. The company has stores in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Aloha Poke Shop in Honolulu initially ignored the Chicago company’s letter, said co-founder Jeff Sampson. When the issue burst into the news, he and his partners had an attorney write their Chicago counterpart saying they wouldn’t change their name. They explained there would be no confusion between their businesses because they operated far from the mainland company’s stores.

But Tasha Kahele, who is Native Hawaiian, has spent nearly $10,000 so far changing her Anchorage store’s name to Lei’s Poke Stop after receiving one of the letters.

Native Hawaiian experts note there’s a cultural clash underlying much of this. Modern European-based traditions use trademarks, copyright and patents to create economic incentives and rewards for creating knowledge and culture. Indigenous culture, on the other hand, is often passed on through generations and held collectively.

“They’re never going to sit nicely together in a box,” said Kuhio Lewis, the CEO of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement.

It will be difficult to determine who would decide who can use Native Hawaiian culture and who would be able to use it. Limits may violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The task force will have to explore who can do what, Lewis said.

“At the least, they need to have some cultural sensitivity about how it’s used. And they need to know you can’t be telling Native Hawaiian businesses they can’t use their own language,” Lewis said.

The resolution points to potential models in New Zealand and Alaska, which both created signifiers that indigenous people may place on their art as a mark of authenticity.

Marie Texter of Anchorage said her late father Andy Makar — who drew, made carvings from tusks, cottonwood and horns, and sewed animal skins — was a strong believer in the Silver Hand seal for Alaska Natives.

“He said this is a great program because so many times the Native artwork gets commercialized or used by someone else,” she said.

He had to fill out proof of his Indian blood — he was mostly Yup’ik but his mother was Athabascan — to apply.

But Rosita Worl, president of Juneau-based Sealaska Heritage Institute, said not all Alaska Native artists apply for or use the emblem. Nor does the program deter the sale of bogus Native art made overseas, she said. It also lacks enforcement and publicity, she said.

Charles E. Colman, a University of Hawaii law professor, said such programs hold up under federal law because they don’t prohibit people from making work that resembles indigenous art. They merely won’t allow people to say their work is produced by an indigenous person if it’s not.

Colman believes the Aloha Poke situation, on the other hand, could be addressed within existing trademark law.

He believes the Chicago company’s trademark could be cancelled if challenged because it’s not so well-known that its name has developed a secondary meaning the way the words in the retailer name “Best Buy” have, for example.

“You can’t just register a descriptive phrase unless you’ve achieved a certain amount of public recognition,” he said.