An alarming global trend and how to disrupt it | By Jan Edwards

From Hotel Yearbook 2018

Read article

Hotel for sale: Motel 6, Greensboro, N. C.

Property offering

MOTEL 6 (former Landmark Inn)
2838 SOUTH ELM-EUGENE STREET
GREENSBORO, N. C.  27406

Listing broker: Vinit Mody, MTEL Consultants, via Loopnet

TripAdvisor reviews: Bubble score 1.5

Property website:

• Motel 6 Greensboro -- Motel 6 child site

The facility:

This property (formerly the LandMark Inn) has had some renovations, was recently accepted as a Motel 6 franchise, has glaring security problems (not the least of which was three homicides in a two month period some years back), and still has a long way to go. But its location can be its salvation if it is upbranded to a mid-market product, a complete renovation occurs, some product differentiation is implemented to go along with that, and some corporate marketing is implemented. Also, quite a bit of acreage is included.

It's a voodoo hellhole, but you should buy it anyway.

Asking price	$2,100,000.00	Given
Number of rooms	61	Given
Annual gross	$654,457.41	Calculated
Occupancy	71.00%	Given (see note)
ADR	$41.40	Given
REVPAR	$29.39	Calculated
Room revenue multiplier	3.21	Calculated
Year built	1967	Given
Last renovated	2016	Given
Last sold	2005	Guilford County GIS
Lot size	11.88 acres	Guilford County GIS

Occupancy and REVPAR are based on the current inventory of 61 rooms. There are three guestroom buildings, each having 32 rooms (one seems to have three room bays knocked out for an apartment), for a total of 96 rooms. Let's try it again with the actual number of rooms:

Asking price	$2,100,000.00	Given
Number of rooms	96	Given
Annual gross	$654,457.41	Calculated
Occupancy	43.31%	Given (see note)
ADR	$41.40	Given
REVPAR	$18.68	Calculated
Room revenue multiplier	3.21	Calculated
Year built	1967	Given
Last renovated	2016	Given
Last sold	2005	Guilford County GIS
Lot size	11.88 acres	Guilford County GIS

Military town markets: Why a catastrophic natural disaster, that would wipe out most of Fayetteville, North Carolina, would be for “Fayettenam’s” own good.

A 2015 New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell -- and several other publications -- suggested that the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 culminated in an ultimate, net benefit to many of those affected, and evacuated from the city following the storm.

Why? Because life in New Orleans was already so dysfunctional for so many of those people, and opportunities were so scare, to begin with – even before the storm – that they were better off nearly anywhere they could have been sent. The only reason they hadn’t left already was because even if they could afford to move to another city, they could never have imagined that things might be better somewhere else.

Many of course decided to stay wherever they happened to be evacuated as a result of the storm (Houston, Texas, in a lot of cases, which is above-average in terms of where your chances would be best, if you wanted to go to a strange big city, start your life over from scratch, and seek your fortune), and New Orleans permanently lost a lot of its population.

The only place they could have been sent, where they would have been worse off, the article noted prominently, would have been . . . Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Congratulations, Fayetteville. 

Not too many cities in the country – not even Detroit – can claim that the best thing that could happen to so many of the people of who live in them would be to be displaced by a catastrophic natural disaster. Fayetteville, like New Orleans prior to Katrina, is overpopulated. 

It could be said that they literally need to run off some people.

Sales: What are some best responses to "Sell me this hotel room"?

"I see you have no idea whatsoever how to successfully market a hotel, or how to find or identify candidates who might, nor would you know how to work with and properly supervise someone who could perhaps help you in that area; so I won't waste any more of your time. Good day."

Hotel sales and marketing people do not sell hotel rooms, they market the hotel. You might point out a unique design or uncommon amenity item in the rooms; but as far as 'selling a hotel room' goes, there is very little differentiation between hotel rooms found within the same class of hotels, even between competing hotels, unless you're selling a recently renovated Class B or economy property.

Why in every hotel in U.S. there is a Bible in each guest room?

In most hotels, the Gideons supply them. This is an interdenominational Christian organization that exists to get the Bible into the hands of as many people as possible. So, they print up lots and lots of cheap ones, and give them out as gift items. (The next time you're in a hotel, steal it. It's okay. You won't burn in hell. They actually want you to.) 

Out of that commitment, when I was a kid in grade school in the '60's, they also used to come around and give a little New Testament to each of the kids: needless to say, they had to cut that out after some people protested to the school districts about the implied breakdown of 'separation of church and state' in the public schools and messed it up for everybody, even the kids who liked getting the little New Testament every year or two.

The Gideons are a pretty large, widespread organization, so having a Bible in every hotel room is pretty much a norm, but it's their doing, not that of most hotel owners or managers. Many of those wouldn't bother, unless a franchise requires it, although nearly all permit the Gideons to do so. 

The Bibles do see their share of misuse. For years, back in the past, scribbled into a nightstand Gideon Bible was the unspoken, usually-agreed-upon place where the local call girls left their name and number, and the men who would book them would know to look for it. We had a convention of Jehovah's Witnesses one weekend, and a man brought one to the desk to turn in that had quite a few blasphemous scrawlings and Satanic symbols drawn into the inside cover pages -- apparently someone had sat up in that room one night getting pretty bored. So we do have to have the housekeepers check them from time to time.