HOTEL TRADE INCOMES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17473, 23 January 1931, Page 9

HOTEL TRADE INCOMES

PORTER’S TAX RETURN £2OOO TOO LOW FOR COLLECTOR AIA N T A ( Halts \S IJ Pl 3ItIO it DEI N GS." LONDON, Dec. Rumor has been busy for many years regarding the earnings of hotel porters. Yesterday some of the facts were disclosed at the Catering Trade Inquiry by Mr. C. G. L. du Gann, appearing for the Hotels and Restaurants Association.

Mr. Du Ciinn quoted figures to show how high • the earnings in the hotel industry are. "The manager of one of these hotels,” he said, "is a superior being and receives from ,£2OOO to £4OOO a year. He is worth every penny of it, for he is a difficult man to find. The demand far exceeds the supply. "The chef of one of these large hotels will be in receipt of a salary of £2OOO a year or more. Even the hotel porter at some of these hotles makes an income which can only bn described as extremely handsome and which runs into four figures. "There was a porter of a hotel not many miles from Churing-cross who returned his annual Income to the authorities tit £2OOO a year. He received a polite note from them, inti-

mating that, unfortunately, they could not accept his low assumption of his income. RIDDLE OF TIPS. "There is another story of a hotel about 50 miles from Yeovil. At the end of the war the proprietor, having fallen on evil times, sold the iiotel and called the head waiter, a map he had had with him for 40 years, telling him. that he proposed to dispense with the man’s services.

"The waiter replied that that was not going to happen, as he had bought the hotel. ‘Oh,’ said the proprietor, ‘then I suppose you will lie the employer and I shall be the waiter,’ to which the waiter replied, 'Nothing of the kind. You are not good enough to be a waiter. You are going to be my employer, and I shall be a waiter.’ ” (Laughter.)

The value of lips could not be estimated. It was a question which bad puzzled the hotel-keepers ol London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest, for 20 years. Workers in the industry sometimes sought long hours and grumbled if they were sent off duty, for instance in the ease of a porter who might finish just as remunerative guests were beginning to arrive by motor-ear. Mr. du Gann added that their industry had never been a. “sweated’ one.