Ellsworth Milton Statler:
Hotel Man of the Half Century
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: