Historical hotels, people and things in hospitality
Josh Billings was the pen name of Henry Wheeler Shaw, a famous humor writer and lecturer in the United States during the latter half of the 19th century.
Raymond Orteig (1870-1934) was the New York City hotel owner who offered the $25,000 Orteig Prize to the first aviator to fly between New York City and Paris.
Approximately an hour and a half drive northwest of New York City, over the course of the last century, the Catskill Mountains became a resort phenomenon unlike any other.
In 1950, the hotel industry named Ellsworth Milton Statler “Hotel Man of the Half Century”, even though he had been dead for 22 years. Statler’s impact on inn-keeping was so great, no one else even came close.
On May 15, 2019, New York’s spectacular new TWA Hotel opened at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Shepheard’s Hotel history goes back 178 years when it was originally built by Englishman Samuel Shepheard in Cairo.
In 1965, the Sheraton Corporation of America, under the leadership of President Ernest Henderson, created a brilliant advertising campaign: “Keyed-up Executives Unwind at Sheraton”. It was broadly promoted all over the U.S. in print media, TV advertising and locally by individual Sheraton Hotels. Among my collection of Sheraton artifacts is a translucent plexiglass paperweight which has a small figure of a businessman with a wind-up key in his back which says “Keyed-Up Executives Unwind at Sheraton”.
The renowned Hotel del Coronado is a grand example of elegant Victorian architecture providing one of the most beautiful and popular beach resorts in the United States.
The Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) is a trade association that represents hotel owners. As of 2018, AAHOA has approximately 18,000 members who incredibly own about half the 50,000 hotels in the United States. If you bear in mind that Indian Americans constitute less than one percent of America's population, the conquest of this business niche is extraordinary. Furthermore, about 70% of all Indian hotel owners are named Patel, a surname that shows that they are members of a Gujarati Hindu subcaste.
Among the great hotelier/developers of our time, John Q. Hammons developed 200 hotel properties in 40 states. Hammons disdained standard feasibility studies when assessing potential sites for hotel development. Instead, he relied on his own experience, knowledge and intuition.