Key Concepts of Ch. 3

HA210 : The Class : Hotel Industry : Structure : Key Concepts

Key Concepts of the Chapter:

The Bath. The hotel bath – that's the room, not the tub -- has a split personality. In the low and mid-priced hotels, it serves as a basic necessity. In upscale hotels the bath has become an amenity: large in square footage, as much as 100-120 square feet, with many extras from hair dryers to Jacuzzi baths.

The Old Design and the New. There are many reasons behind the rise in room rates. The changing design of hotels and hotel rooms is one major contributor. Hotel rooms are much larger today than efore World War II, and rooms of that era (1920s to 1950s) were larger than those of the late 19th Century. Furthermore, the open design of today's hotels requires far more land – has a larger footprint – than their predecessors. More square feet per room and larger footprints in design add immensely to construction costs, and hence to the room rate needed to recover the investment. We discuss room rates in chapter 9.

The Hotel, Its Desk and the Market. The organizational structure presented in this chapter is, of necessity, a composite picture. Chapters 1 and 2 emphasized that hotels differ as to size, plan, type, purpose, markets and so on. As they differ, various organizational structures emerge. Large hotels differ from small ones. Hotels soliciting discounted packages structure reservations, registration and billing differently than hotels pitched toward, say, conventions. Even the physical design of the lobby and the desk may differ. In turn, the organization and design of convention hotels differ from that of hotels selling individual FITs at high ADRs. The configuration of the resort is certainly not that of an urban high rise. Casino hotels differ quite dramatically from traditional houses both in organization and physical design. Obviously then, the structure of the desk is a reflection of the hotel's market.

From Host to Executive. Without question the host-guest relationships that one likes to picture in the colonial tavern has not existed for sometime, if ever. Managing facilities with hundreds or thousands of employees, with capital investments of hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars restructures the priorities of management. The shift has moved the hotel executive into the role of chief operating officer and away from the role of Mine Host.

Once you have finished you should:

Go on to Outline for Ch. 3
or
Go back to The Structure of the Hotel Industry

E-mail Gary Vallen at Gary.Vallen@nau.edu
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