Bellhop's Paradise

Hotel managers gulped last week at news unprecedented in their business since the '20s. Washington was to get two big new hotels: an $8,500,000 building announced by Hotels Statler Co., a $15,000,000 mammoth (including a shopping centre and movie theatre) planned by a company whose name remained undisclosed.

In most cities, residents would be hard put to remember when the last hotel went up; since 1935 the number of big hotels in the U. S. has increased not at all. The nation already has so many that the average occupancy rate is only 64%. But Washington, thanks to defense activities, is the best hotel town in the U. S. Since September its 28 first-class hotels (6,500 rooms) consistently have had an occupancy rate of 80% or better. Five had every room taken last week. Bellboys were getting rich on tips. New guests stood around lobbies in the morning waiting for old guests to clear out. The swank Carlton offered its regular morning waiting list of new arrivals in Washington the use of basement stalls where they could take showers if they had to go to early appointments.

Hotel business was even better than it was in 1933, when industrialists flocked to the Capital to work out NRA codes, and 1933 was some year. ("It was wonderful," one manager recalled. "Two businessmen who stayed at my hotel wandered around the Department of Commerce for two weeks before they found out they should have been in Agriculture.")

Vegetable growers predict a spinach shortage by 1942. Reason: shipments of spinach seed from The Netherlands (source of over 90% used in the U. S.) have been cut off by war.

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