Hotel

Literary fiction

Print length: 408 pagesBantam Books, 1965

Description

The independent St. Gregory hotel in New Orleans is running out of time. Burdened by an urgent mortgage crisis and declining profitability, it risks being absorbed into a large chain unless management can stabilize the business. General manager Peter McDermott, an experienced hotel professional carrying a troubled past, must coordinate the response while handling emergencies among guests, staff, and local power brokers. Financial pressure intersects with racial discrimination, public scrutiny, and a violent incident involving members of the city’s elite. As crises move through guest rooms, offices, and service areas, the novel reveals how a grand hotel functions—and how quickly its polished surface can fracture when money, reputation, and human judgment fail at once.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Direct · Journalistic

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Earnest · Suspenseful · Tense

Structure

Braided · Linear

Focus

Character · Plot · World

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

ClassMoralityPowerRace and racismWealthWork

About Arthur Hailey

Arthur Hailey was a British-Canadian novelist who built popular, plot-driven fiction around the inner workings of large institutions. His professional career began in television with Flight into Danger, after which he wrote for several prominent anthology series. Hailey’s characteristic method was unusually systematic: a year of research, six months of reviewing notes, then eighteen months of writing. The result was fiction with a direct, journalistic cast, using technical and organizational detail to make complex systems legible to a general reader. In Airport, Hotel, Wheels, The Final Diagnosis, and Overload, he moved through aviation, hospitality, automobile manufacturing, medicine, and electrical power, typically following ensembles rather than a lone protagonist. Private conflicts unfold inside workplaces under strain, where errors, bottlenecks, and competing duties can widen into public emergencies. What distinguishes Hailey’s work is this fusion of procedural explanation and narrative pressure: institutions are not merely settings but active structures that shape choices, distribute responsibility, and create suspense.

Airport Apple Books

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Bantam Books
Language: English

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