Behind the Scenes in a Hotel

The labor force required to furnish service in the modern hotel has necessarily increased enormously since the day when the host of the old-time hostel and his family personally cared for the needs of their guests. The following extract from a hotel manager’s pamphlet on the running of big hotels gives some idea of the problems of labor management: “The operation of a single metropolitan hotel is too complex an undertaking to be likened to a gigantic piece of housekeeping.

When it comes to running a group of six of the largest hotels in the world ... the performance becomes of colossal size. The idea of employing 510 men just to cook food and another 925 just to wait on table, finding need at the same time to call in an average of 3000 waiters a month to help out on banquets, requiring 380 chambermaids to make beds and so on, must strike one pretty much as indicative of doing business on a wholesale scale.”