Hotel

by Arthur Hailey

Traveller, pray lodge in this unworthy house. The bath is ready. A peaceful room awaits you. Come in! Come in! —TRANSLATION OF A SIGN AT THE DOORWAY OF AN INN, TAKAMATSU, JAPAN

All they want is people to check in, check out, and pay the bill; that’s all.” “Those are sausage factories. A real hotel is for hospitality; and succor if a guest needs it. The best ones started that way. Unfortunately too many people in this business have forgotten.”

inefficiencies within the hotel which he lacked authority to change. In a normally run establishment, with clearly defined lines of command, there would be no such problem. But in the St. Gregory, a good deal of organization was unwritten, with final judgments depending upon Warren Trent, and made by the hotel owner in his own capricious way.

It had, however, taken three minutes to start the generators and bring them to full power, with the result that every one of the St. Gregory’s electric clocks—some two hundred all told—was now three minutes slow. The tedious business of resetting each clock manually would take a maintenance man most of the following day.

“Hotels like yours are out of favor, Warren. A lot of people think the day of the big independents is over, and nowadays the chain hotels are the only ones which can show reasonable profit.

Mistakes were dealt with piecemeal after they happened, with little or no attempt to correct their root cause.

“We had a full house last night,” Warren Trent said. He added, “In this business it’s either feast or famine.

we’ve moved into another age and he doesn’t know it. Nowadays it isn’t sufficient to be a good innkeeper; you must become a cost accountant too.”