Business: Bugles in the Lobby

Hotels

The hotel business—long the red-eyed child of misfortune—is as happy as a room clerk with a waiting list. From Horwath and Horwath, famed bookkeepers of the bed-&-bottle business, comes statistical confirmation: Not alone in fabulous Washington, but in Chicago, Philadelphia and many another city, August hotel business was up 20% over last year. Room sales were up 16%, total restaurant sales zoomed 24%. Room occupancy, significant index of hotel prosperity, averaged 75%—highest since October 1929.

Washington, the bellboy’s paradise, showed a gain even over last year’s whopping totals—up 25% in room sales, 40% in food and 33% in beverage consumption. But Philadelphia boasted the biggest gains: 29% in rooms, 35% and 58% for food and beverages. Manhattan and Detroit were both up 25% in room and restaurant business.

Businessmen, traveling to expedite war industry, account for a good deal of the increase, especially in manufacturing centers. Weekend trade is up because servicemen meet relatives in town to make the most of short leaves. In good part the stacked bags at the front desk are also due to war workers checking in for a good time, to fuel rationing, to the servant problem, to the breakup of families when husbands go to war—and to the Government, which has reduced competition in the hotel business.

To the Government, hotels are just buildings easy to visualize as barracks, training schools, offices and hospitals. Last week the Navy clumped into the Cavalier, at Virginia Beach, bringing to 300 (with some 35,000 rooms) the hotels now serving the Government.

Most of the hotels thus taken over for government use are in such pleasure centers as Miami Beach (150) and Atlantic City (44) but some are downtown landmarks such as the Stevens and the Congress in Chicago, the Empire in San Francisco (bought for Treasury Department offices), the staid old Victoria in Boston, now being made shipshape for the WAVES. Some have been bought outright, others leased for the duration.

Each deal is handled separately and privately. Hotelmen say the Government is “fair and cooperative.” But the Government is not bailing out steady losers, and war occupancy does not mean war profits in the hotel business. Example: Government rental for the Ambassador in Atlantic City cover no current obligations.

Whatever the arrangement, when the Government moves in, the hotel—as the guest sees it—moves out. A thousand vanloads of beds, lounges, bric-a-brac, tinted etchings and potted palms were carted away from the Stevens. Army guests live up to eight in a room, according to barracks regulations requiring 60 sq. ft. of floor space and 720 cu. ft. of air space per man. Army cots go into the rooms, Army chow lines with scrubbed tables replace silver & linen in banquet halls. All the Army wants is the bare walls—sometimes the hard-to-get big kitchen utensils.