"Inventing the Hotelmen and their Industry"

When the Covid-19 pandemic brought most features of the hospitality industry to a halt, millions of people suddenly realized how important rented beds were to the global economy and the developed world’s sense of normalcy. This complex industry emerged over the course of the twentieth century, fostered by events in global development, but also shaped by a collective effort of individuals acting in what they thought was the public’s best interest as well as their own. These self-identified ‘hotelmen’ emerged in the early twentieth century as new figures in American economic culture. The hotelmen were a loose affiliation of American hotel owners and general managers who forged professional connections and established operating norms. Despite its folksy sound, the name represented a move to professionalize the provision of temporary lodging, transitioning from the innkeeper who was popularly stereotyped as dishonest and unfriendly, to the efficient man of business who provided a reliable, high quality product. By bonding the place and the person, the hotelmen established norms of commitment and influence and also clearly of gender, despite the many women involved in the business in diverse roles. American Innkeeping became the ‘hospitality industry’ not just because new markets drew larger investments but because the hotelmen insisted on this term. In this paper I explore the construction of the hotelman as a character in American business culture. From early industry journals, memoirs and materials relating to the establishment of college courses in hospitality, I uncover the concerted invention of a collective persona that has fundamentally shaped how hotels operate and what their role is in society.