Starting Thursday, Hilton’s Doubletree brand will put its signature chocolate chip cookie on a cross-country road show with a special truck in honor of the cookie’s 25th anniversary.

The “welcome” cookie caravan and social media campaign are also designed to promote Doubletree news, including a new longer name (“Doubletree by Hilton”) and a hotel property makeover that’s been in the works for years. The chain has 252 locations in 18 countries.

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The chain has been reinventing itself for the last five years, with $3 billion going into flat-screen TVs, improved bedding and new amenities. Instead of Neutrogena, the chain’s bathrooms are now stocked with Crabtree and Evelyn’s new “Citron” soaps and shampoos.

The addition of “by Hilton” in the name and logo happened in February, with the formal changing of signs on all hotels, DoubleTree global chief Rob Palleschi told me recently.

It costs real money to change logos, marketing materials and building signs. The changes cost about $125,000 per hotel, Palleschi said; Hilton Worldwide capped owners’ costs at $25,000.

Unlike most upscale brands in recession-plagued 2009 and 2010, Palleschi says the chain had the chance to grow, opening up almost 50 hotels in those two years.

“We were still able to continue. We’re known as a conversion vehicle so during the economic down cycle when a lot of there’s a lot of real estate trading, people wanted a safe harbor,” he told me. “We were the beneficiary.”

So, those cookies?

Doubletree expects to give away more than 250,000 chocolate chip cookies this summer. You can find out more about the marketing campaign on the chain’s special Facebook site, which also details prizes such as tins of cookies, Hilton Hhonors bonus points and more extravagant prizes.

Dubbed the “Cookie CAREavan Tour,” it will hit cities over 10 weeks including Atlanta, Austin, Minneapolis and Seattle.

Cookie factoids: Each cookie weighs more than two ounces and has an average of 20 chocolate chips each. The chain hands out more than 21 million freshly baked cookies each year.

Readers: Have you noticed a difference in recent years at Doubletree “by Hilton” hotels? Have you noticed the name change? Finally…how about those cookies?