BAD TIME FOR HOTELS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12070, 13 September 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

BAD TIME FOR HOTELS.

HALF EMPTY IN LONDON MOST OF

THE YEAR. Are there too many hotels in Loudon, and are they over-reaching themselves in the matter of luxury? These are questions which are being discussed in hotel circles in the- light of two recent incidents, and some good authorities answer "Yes." Mr. Paul Cremieu-Javal, vice-chairman of Messrs. Spiers and Pond. Limited, said at the meeting of the company the other day that he could remember the time when nobody thought of putting a. carpet down in a London restaurant which cost more than 2s 6d to os 6d a yard, while nowadays 18s to £1 a yard was Frequently paid. lb was the same with cups, saucers, plates, ami everything else. In'the second place the repoit of the Gordon Hotels, Limited, for the year just closed shows a decline of profits to the extent of nearly £36,000, and a. reduction in the dividend of 2 per cent. As to the latter a representative of the Gordon Hotel,'; attributed the, deficiency to the period of mourning for the late Sovereign : the smallpox scare, which made country visitors write and say that they would not come up while smallpox was "raging so badly," the war, and the slump in hotel business for two months preceding the Coronation, everybody deferring visits to London till June.

Said Mr. A. Judab, the manager of the Hotel Cecil: "There can he no doubt but. that with an increased number of hotels, increased expenditure, and increased luxury, the hotel business is not by any means what it used to be. London has certainly a very large floating population, but from August to May the hotels are. no more than half full.

"There are really only two months of the year when the}' are full. Yet such is the state of affairs that it is necessary to keep practically a full staff all the year round, and to incur nearly full expenditure in the way of lights, fuel, etc. "Again, in the old days a man who stayed in an hotel was satisfied with an ordinary bedroom, an ordinary dining-room, and a little smoking-room. But competition between hotels has educated him up to a nice point. Now he must have magnifi-cently-furnished apartments, majestic din-ing-rooms, a grand library, a lordly smokingroom, drawing-room, and so on. "The hotels which cannot offer there luxuries must stand aside. But the patron will not pay more, especially as the war has cut his income down, and those, who used to have their fifteen-shilling bottle of champagne at dinner now take whisky-ancl-soda. "There is one satisfactory item in the situation. The American habit of living in hotels instead of keeping up a home in' London is on the increase. Householders find it very much more convenient, and often quite as cheap. The habit is becoming very popular here, and naturally it is welcomed by the hotel proprietor, who has in this his only solid all-the-year-round trade."