Any place, any time, anywhere, the chances are the bathroom will be on the left of your room.

Travellers get off long-haul flights and receive a carefully prepared welcome at the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney. Receptionists offer refreshments suitable for the time zone which guests have just come from. It is early afternoon in Sydney’s high summer, but they greet British businessmen suffering from jetlag with a breakfast of toast, marmalade and cornflakes.

The hotel chain even checks its database of guests to anticipate which newspaper each customer takes, in order to offer a ‘local equivalent’.

The hotel industry is becoming more and more globalized. International chains are encircling the world, taking over local operators. In the US, 75% of hotels have a well-known brand, compared with just 25% in Europe. Size is becoming more important as customer expectations rise. International business travellers want Internet connections, widescreen televisions and push-button blinds in every room. They want faxes delivered to their rooms at all hours of the night and the ability to order foie gras at four o’clock in the morning. This means employing more staff than most independent operators can afford.

Between a third and half of hotel revenues comes from food and drink, but these only contribute 20% to 30% of profit. The real profits come from the rooms, so for most operators the principle objective is to improve occupancy. Loyalty card schemes are becoming increasingly elaborate. They can record guests’ preferences for well-cooked steak, ground-floor rooms or feather-free pillows.

However, there are limits to the internationalisation of Europe hotels. It’s much simpler to build hotels in the US than in Europe because there is so much space in the US. If you want a hotel, you can just build it. In Europe there are fewer opportunities for construction, so there are more conversions. Converted buildings are as easy to adapt to the US chain model as new buildings because the rooms are different shapes and sizes, so the standard ‘template’ doesn’t work.

It is difficult to turn a seventeenth century castle into a Holiday Inn, so some independent operators still prosper. That is bad news for an ideal guest of a multinational chain. He likes to wake up anywhere in the world in the knowledge that the bathroom is on the left, the blinds are blue and the phone is on the wall, six and a half inches above the bedside table.

3. a) Find words in the article which mean:

a long distance journey by plane

b area of the world with the same time

c tiredness caused by travelling long distances by plane

d be able to pay for

e income

f do well economically

b) complete the sentences with the words from a).

1. When travelers arrive here from the USA, they often suffer from _______ .

2. Most families can ___________ two cars.

3. To get here from the UK you have to take a _____________________ .

4. The __________________ from tourism is important for the economy.

5. We are in the same _____________ as Prague.

6. The agricultural and food processing industries _____________ because of the good climate.

c) Are the sentences in b) true for Russia? Change the sentences which are not true.

Complete the sentences using the correct form of the words in brackets.

a) Some international hotel chains have a ________ database with information about their guests’ preferences. (world)

b) If you call room service, they will __________ meals to your room. (delivery)

c) We can’t afford to _________ any more staff. (employer)

d) A lot of our revenue comes from food and drink but our rooms are more ______. (profit)

e) Hotel guests from the USA __________ a standard room layout. (preference)

f) You can __________ old buildings into hotels but there is a limit to what you can do. (conversion)

g) We have to meet our customers _________. (expect)

h) Multinatonal companies often expand by taking over smaller _______. (operate)

5. Look through the article again and find all examples of how things are compared.

Compare hotels in Russia and in Europe (the USA). Write some sentences using different grammatical structures of comparison.

Hotel facilities

1. What things are the most important when choosing a hotel for business? Choose five and range them (1 = the most important, 5 = the least important).

· 24-hour room service · widescreen TV · high-speed Internet connections · historic architecture · beautiful surroundings · convenient location

· fitness rooms · sauna · good service and polite staff · good business centre · health centre · good restaurant · swimming pool