Old Style Corporate Communications
Posted by admin on January 1, 1970Milner Hotels
(As a little diversion from modern marketing)
My dad spent much of his career at Milner Hotels, a chain that started in 1900 and lasted until the mid-60’s. It was a hotel for traveling salespeople in an era in which people didn’t mind sharing a bathroom with the people in the next room. At one point, it advertised itself as being the “World’s Largest Hotel Chain” – but that was in an era in which the numbers to achieve that ranking were much smaller than today – but still a significant accomplishment .
At any rate, I am always on the lookout for Milner Hotels memorbilia (which is seldom available). I found a guest magazine published by the Milner organization from 1954 on eBay. It was a monthly publication that was distributed freely in the hotel, to employees and by mail to people who wanted a subscription. There are no ads (except Milner promotions) and is a whopping 50 pages of text! The articles are like Dale Carnegie articles about being a good friend, a better person, and loving the good old USA.
What a different world. There are also profiles of hotel guests that would be impossible to print today. Let me summarize a story from the Enid, Oklahoma, Milner Hotel: A man called “Pistol Pete”, who was 92 in 1954 had stayed in the Hotel the previous month. Decades before, he participated in the fabled Oklahoma land rush. In the article he relates how he had tracked down his father’s killers as a boy and shot them with a pistol he still carried. He presented the gun to hotel guests, but now, however, it carried 6 notches on the handle. There is a photo of him in his cowboy gear and gun in the lobby of the Milner. Overall, it’s a very admiring story for, well, a man who claims to have killed six people who might have had a different version of how his father died.
If that wasn’t enough excitement for that month’s Milner Hotel Traveller, there was also an article about a manager who found an elderly guest dying in his room. The man was taken to a hospital, but soon died. It was not usually for people to take up residence in a Milner Hotel, and he had lived in the Milner hotel room for 6 months prior to his death. The manager returned to the old man’s room to try and find some indication of relatives to contact. He found, however, a cardboard briefcase with $250,000 in securities. That is like finding $1 million or more in today’s money. Like you, at this point I’m beginning to think this is all PR. But the man is identified in the story and he’s a former state politican and there is some amount of detail. Sooo, I guess it’s possible. The manager, of course, turns in the suitcase and is given $100 reward.
Just another month at Milner Hotels. I bet my dad couldn’t wait to get to work to see what would happen next! I’ll have more from Milner Hotels in my next post.
