American Hotel and Lodging Association
Serving the hospitality industry for more than a century
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| Abbreviation | AHLA |
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| Predecessor |
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| Formation | January 1, 1953 |
| Type | NGO |
| Legal status | Trade association |
| Purpose | Hospitality industry resource |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Location |
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| Coordinates | 38°54′04″N 77°01′42″W / 38.901023°N 77.028464°WCoordinates: 38°54′04″N 77°01′42″W / 38.901023°N 77.028464°W |
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Official language
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English |
| Website | AH&LA |
The American Hotel and Lodging Association (formerly American Hotel and Motel Association, and before that American Hotel Association) is an industry trade group representing organizations of hotel owners. Its role at various times has included the publication of hotel directories, market research, support of standardisation efforts, public or political advocacy for the interests of hotel owners and the establishment or promotion of training programmes and facilities for hotel personnel.
Among other tasks, the American Hotel and Lodging Association operates the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute, which provides educational training to the hotel industry (including several textbooks used in American hospitality schools). The Institute is based in Orlando, Florida.
The American Hotel Protective Association, founded 1910 as a regional trade association in Chicago, became the American Hotel Association in 1917. The AHA's first president, Frank Dudley, identified rapid expansion of the US hotel industry as vulnerable to a shortage of trained personnel which could not be filled by the then-common practice of recruiting European hotel workers. With the backing of Ellsworth Milton Statler and of the Federal Board of Vocational Training, the group promoted college-level training in hotel management and the creation of the Cornell Hotel School at Cornell University under dean Howard Meek.
Hôteliers thrived during the Roaring Twenties; in 1928, the AHA Red Book listed 25,900 hotels with 1,525,000 rooms distributed widely across the US, with fewer hotels in the confederate South because racial segregation excluded many travellers from the facilities. Properties were forced to adapt to the newfound popularity of the motorcar, adding parking and establishing locations on main highways; the number of rooms in each newly constructed hotel was increasing. Prohibition hurt the hotel trade by cutting into revenue from food and beverage operations, but the Great Depression would prove disastrous for business. Overexpansion during the 1920s left excess inventory in the Depression era. The 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act, which sought to employ nationwide trade organisations to regulate wages and prices to halt a deflationary spiral, drew strong opposition from hotel owners (who saw it as a prelude to unionisation) and from the association. Fewer people were travelling overall and hotels were losing market share to less expensive "tourist courts", a new pattern of small clusters of hastily constructed cabins which were the predecessors of the early roadside motels. Two out of three US hotels went into receivership.
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