Hotel Impossible and Stats

I have spent the last couple days watching the show "Hotel Impossible".  The premise is that someone goes into failing hotels that in  horrible shape, figures out why it's failing and then helps it by renovating the lobby and one room, giving it professional help, all new linens, and an updated website.

Yes, its a modern day reality show with all the drama  of the unaware owners, the employees doing a job they'd never been trained for and all the rest but the one saving grace it has is the use of statistics.

At various points in each episode, the host announces the occupancy rate, often in comparison with other hotels.  Sometimes he discusses the amount of cost connected with food served in restaurants which should't run more than 30 to 35% but at one place it was a whopping 55%.  Other times, he discusses setting the price of rooms based on interpreting data.

That is a reason I'm sitting through four seasons of the show.  In just about every single show, he discusses something mathematical about the running of the hotel.  In one episode, he had someone create a graph comparing the hotel's income versus other hotels in the same area.  While every other hotel had gone down about 3%, this hotel dropped almost 80%.  A graphical representation of the information.

In another episode, he discussed increasing income by creating regular events for everyone.  Usually, the guy would connect the hotel owners with people who could put packages together to increase occupancy.  For instance, in one episode, the owners of a hotel could gain 30 weekends a year from the local Symphony which was located across the street.

This show uses industry stats, industry vocabulary so after a few episodes you know what occupancy rates are, you know what the STAR report (gives average occupancy rates), you learn how hotel's set their rates and why the rates go up or down.  You learn so much about the real life application of math in the hotel industry.

In addition, students learn so much more about what is involved in running a hotel.  Just by watching a few episodes, I learned what the General Manager's job is, what responsibilities the head of housekeeping or maintenance should have and so much more.  Yes, as I said, there is drama, lots of it and each episode follows the same script but the stats included change from episode to episode depending on what is being emphasized.

You can check out episodes for free on Amazon Prime.  I'd advise you watch some of the episodes to find one with a bit more math in it so you can spend more time discussing the statistics.  You can even go into the reason these stats are important.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.