The Great American Guest
Abstract
CHRAQ News & Reviews May 1991 H&TI survey The typical guest in American hotels is hardly typical anymore. That guest is more likely to be traveling for leisure purposes than business, more likely to be a couple than a single man or woman, and more likely to be staying at a mid-price hotel. But that picture is just a broad-brush statistical one. Hotels are being used as vacation spots, weekend escapes, and sightseeing locations. Traditional business travelers are still a large segment of the market, but conference travel is also a large segment, and there's still a fair number of traveling sales people staying at hotels. That profile of hotel guests comes from an extensive survey recently released by Hotel & Travel Index. The "1990 U.S. Hotel- Guest Study" was conducted on a statistically reliable sample of 28,589 U.S. households by the research firm Market Facts, Inc. In a mail survey, respondents were asked to report on all hotel visits by household members during April, May, and June of 1990. Strong in the middle. The survey found that reports of the death of the mid-market hotel have been greatly exaggerated. Forty- two percent of all stays were in