LONDON Perhaps the United Kingdom’s foremost hotelier, Lord Charles Forte, died in his sleep at his London home on February 28. He was 98.

The Italian-born Forte got his start running a London milk bar in 1934 before getting into the catering business, winning the first catering contract at the new Heathrow Airport. In 1959, his Forte Holdings Ltd. set up Britain’s first chains of fullservice roadside restaurants known as Little Chef and Happy Eater. But that year was an important one in his life for another reason—it marked his company’s first hotel acquisition, London’s Waldorf Hotel. Hotels would prove to be Lord Forte’s calling, and his worldwide empire would at one point boast 940 properties and 95,000 guestrooms.

Colleagues and competitors alike were saddened upon learning of Forte’s death. Former Hilton Hotels CEO David Michels remembered Forte as a great innovator. “He invented TraveLodge, group hotelkeeping and was not far short of a genius,” Michels says. “He always had time to stop and be pleasant.”

Phlippe Rossiter, CEO of the Hotel & Catering International Management Association, which counted Forte as an honorary life member, says Forte was “an inspiration to many people in the industry.” And Willie Bauer, former general manager of the Savoy, called Forte “the greatest hotelier Britain has ever had.”

Following the acquisition of the Waldorf in 1959, Forte’s next purchases were a trio of 5-star Paris properties: George V, Plaza Athénée and Hotel de la Tremoille. By 1970, his company controlled 43 hotels totaling 12,500 beds, making it an attractive merger partner for Britain’s venerable Trust Houses Ltd. The combined concern was named Trusthouse Forte, or THF, and Forte eventually emerged as chairman.

Under Forte’s leadership, THF acquired a controlling stake in the U.S.-based economy franchise chain TraveLodge, introducing it to the U.K. market in 1985. Forte spent much of the decade attempting a takeover of the Savoy hotel group, and despite amassing more than two-thirds of Savoy’s shares, his voting capital never exceeded 42%, and his bids were rebuked. Forte retired as head of THF in 1992, naming his son, Rocco, as successor. The |company was a hostile takeover target by media giant Granada Group three years later; Granada’s successful tender offer topped £3.8 billion. By all accounts, the takeover was a bitter one, and in 2003, as a gesture of good faith, Granada relinquished the rights to the Forte hotel name. Today, the Rocco Forte Hotels group, under the direction of Forte’s 63-year-old son, owns 10 European luxury properties, with three more in the pipeline. Lord Forte was knighted in 1970 and attained life peerage in 1981, but his was an unusual road to English nobility. As a native of Italy, Forte was interned during World War II for three months at the Isle of Man, before being released at the behest of officials within the Ministry of Food.