In 1950, the hotel industry picked the late E. M. Statler as the “Hotel Man of the Half Century.”
By then, Statler had been dead for 22 years, but his impact on the art and science of innkeeping
was so great that no one else even came close. In order to make this selection official, the
magazine Southern Hotel Journal held a contest. Out of one hundred and four hotel executives
polled, one hundred and two named E.M. Statler as the “Hotel Man of the Half Century.”
While Ellsworth Milton Statler was considered by many to be the premier hotel man in the
industry, he did not look or sound like a successful executive. He was a plain, rugged self-made
man who started to work at the age of nine. Even after he became successful, he still wore
twenty dollar suits and four dollar shoes. Someone said that Statler looked more like Will
Rogers than Rudolph Valentino.
When Statler began in the hotel business, the following practices were commonplace:
▪ Some hotels embarrassed nonpaying male guests by cutting off their trousers at
the knees and making them parade in the lobby with sandwich signs that
proclaimed them as “deadbeats.”
▪ One hotel specifically forbade guests from spitting on the carpets, lying in bed
with their boots on, or driving nails into the furniture.
▪ Even the better hotels had shared bathroom facilities. Bathtubs were usually built
on a platform, and hot water cost 25 cents extra.
▪ About 90 percent of hotels were American plan, with cheap, unlimited food
included in the room rate. 2
▪ Believe it or not, smoking was usually not permitted in dining rooms, bars
allowed no women, and more wine and beer were sold than liquor.
▪ Rooms were heated with stoves or open fireplaces. There were usually signs to
remind guests not to blow out the gas jets.
▪ No hotel owner called his house full until all double beds were fully occupied,
often by bedmates who were complete strangers. Talk about yield management.