May 01, 2013--Claude Feninger, 87, of Malvern, who built grand luxury hotels around the world for Hilton, Sheraton and Omni, died Sunday, April 28, of kidney disease at his home.

Before his retirement in the early 1990s, Mr. Feninger was president of international operations for Aramark. His responsibilities included servicing the Olympic Games for many years.

Throughout his career, Mr. Feninger brought European hotel luxury and services to the United States. On the world stage, he developed, constructed, arranged financing for, and created hotel operations at 85 properties on six continents.

An international traveler and food and wine connoisseur, Mr. Feninger spoke six languages.

"When he was in Italy, they didn't even know he was a foreigner," said his brother-in-law, Joshua Ellis.

Mr. Feninger was born in Cairo on Jan. 15, 1926, to an Egyptian father of Swiss heritage and a Neapolitan mother.

He was educated in Cairo and at the Ecole H"teliere de Lausanne, from which he graduated cum laude. Mr. Feninger began his hotel apprenticeship at Badrutt's Palace Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland. He moved on to the Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne, where haute cuisine and hotel management became his primary interests.

In 1952, when he was 25, he became the youngest manager in the history of Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, one of the world's most renowned hotels.

That same year, the hotel, built in 1841, was burned to the ground by anti-British rioters. After the fire, Mr. Feninger used great delicacy in opening the hotel's safe deposit boxes, making sure the contents were returned to the correct guests.

Next, he managed a hotel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where the future King Abdullah gave him carte blanche to do major renovations.

"I felt Prince Abdullah considered me his personal slave," Mr. Feninger wrote in his self-published 2006 autobiography, Sang Froid: Keeping My Cool in The International Hotel Business. "I realized that unless I helped myself, nobody else would, and I would be stuck in Dhahran until my old age."

Mr. Feninger moved on to Hilton Hotels International in New York. His first task was to open the Nile Hilton in Cairo in 1960. He opened hotels in 13 countries over the next decade.

When International Telephone & Telegraph acquired Sheraton Hotels, then based solely in the United States, Mr. Feninger was hired to create an international division. Under Mr. Feninger, Sheraton opened hotels in 13 countries.

In 1972, he was invited to be one of the founding executives of what would become Omni International Hotels, starting as executive vice president and rising to president in 1974.

In 1979, considering retirement to pursue interests in scuba diving, underwater photography, fishing, boating, and cooking, he received a phone call from William S. Fishman, cofounder and chief executive of ARA Services, now Aramark, the international food and service firm based in Philadelphia. Fishman wanted to enter the global market, and created a new position for Mr. Feninger -- president of international operations.

His responsibilities included overseeing the preparation of special meals for athletes and personnel at the Olympics.

"He helped build an Olympic legacy, which continues to this day with our involvement in the most recent games in London," said Aramark spokesman David Freireich.

Mr. Feninger was skilled in fencing, and played squash into his 80s.

In 2004, when Mr. Feninger was found to have pancreatic cancer, he vowed: "I will beat this." He did beat the odds, surviving almost nine years.

In addition to his wife of 26 years, the former Jill Ellis, he is survived by a son, Eric; a brother; and a grandson. He was married twice previously, to Henriette Wengler and Ruth Lee Rohlfs, both deceased.

Plans for a memorial gathering are pending.

Contributions may be made to Fox Chase Cancer Center, 333 Cottman Ave., Philadelphia 19111 or via www.fccc.edu.

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Contact Bonnie L. Cook at 215-854-2611 or [email protected].

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