It is said that the Swiss are the world's Innkeepers. Probably, they still are, because the Americans now are just investors, keepers of the assets, passers on of the properties, cash-in, cash-out, profits in the till, employees to the street.
Once-upon-a-time in a time now gone, hospitality was an industry where the soup ladle was taken seriously in the back-of-the-house (kitchen), and the front desk was operated with the skill of a war-room. "Service" was a trained art and skill at the higher and lower end of hotels and resorts around the country.
No more.
"Investors" now buy 'assets' with beds and restaurants that hopefully gain value in their market place. Old adages fly high here, buy-low, sell high, and if you can't raise the bridge you lower the water. A.K.A - fire the highest paying layer of staff: i.e. gentlemen, warm up your resumes.
I once worked at a Denver hostel where within one year the same hotel was bought and sold four times within twelve months and the color of my paycheck changed four times. I got an ulcer waiting to get canned and never was. Finally, after threats from the management, I hired an attorney, found a better job in the Pacific Northwest and left quietly.
Funny, how the heat cools off when you mention, LAWYER. My wife had died in a hospital up the street, I fell to pieces, so did my work, and my employer started backing me out the door. Lawyers in concert with my doctors banded together and protected me until I could recover and get a better job elsewhere.
The 'investors' finally sold that dump to somebody else with the increased value received while I was there. Investors made millions, I left penniless, due mostly to cancer bills from the local hospital, mind you.
The owner of that hotel had also built a sleep-cheap property in the Seattle Tacoma area and hadn't even opened it yet when someone made him an offer "he couldn't refuse" at twice his construction cost, so he sold it. Staff hired and trained, the new owner blasted them right out the door, hired his relatives, and that, as they say - was that.
Another resort I can think of in Chekotah, Oklahoma was built by the state and later bought by a couple from Arkansas. The husband lost it to the wife in a divorce settlement and she "decorated" it - every one of the 250 rooms. Due to a lack of money, they opened the doors to the locals who trashed the rooms at $29 a night, smoked up the property and cooked pigs in outdoor cookers and balconies. Okies.
A management company was hired to forestall bankruptcy, minimal funds were raised for a cosmetic overhaul. The General Manager quipped he could spend a half million and the public would "never see it." The owner, I'll call her "Daisy Mae" flew in from shit-creek Arkansas and demanded high priced food for a re-grand opening, something we couldn't afford to do. We lost money.
The biggest event in downtown "Chekotah," in the past five years was the opening of a Walmart where the citizenry showed up in Tuxes.
Last I heard, she still owns it and the new General Manager was found inebriated on the lobby couch at nine in the morning. Such is the "Hospitality" industry in central Oklahoma these days. One of their sales people was arrested in the middle of the night, naked in the lobby. Details were sketchy as to how he got there.
Industry reports that most of the high-priced world-class resorts in sunny Tucson, Arizona are either in receivership or are filing for bankruptcy. In the language of the investor class, things are NOT panning out at the bank. The ONLY downtown Tucson convention hotel of any consequence is so bad
it is being used as a pin-cushion by the daily morning newspaper. About 20% of it's available rooms are not even in working order, they reported.
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