I couldn’t find anything on this, so I thought I would ask here.
On average, what is the death rate amongst people (all causes from natural causes to suicide and murder) who are either guests at or work in a hotel/motel in the U.S.
I imagine that the rate would be higher pre WWII, so lets limit it to the last half century if possible.
What I would really like is some numbers that can give me a rough formula for how many deaths a hotel could expect per year with a given number of guests.
I don’t know that there are actual statistics available on that. (Most hotels keep real quiet about deaths in their hotel.)
But as a base, in the USA 8-1/3 people out of every 1,000 die per year. About 6 of those are age-related. So if a large hotel averaged 1,000 guests every night all year, they could expect 8-9 deaths. But both infants & children under 5 have a higher mortality rate, and they probably make up only a very small percentage of hotel guests. Also, elderly people (over 70) also have a higher mortality rate, but they too probably are a smaller percentage of hotel guests. Plus hotel guests are probably healthy (sick people tend to stay at home), so that too should decrease the number of deaths in hotels.
Those are all general figures, but they might help you get an approximate guess.
I’ve been in the industry for 25 years and I can think of 1 death by suicide, the guy hung himself. Another guy was found dead but he was on the picnic table and the cops said, he’d been dumped there and killed elsewhere.
I can think of three heart attacks, one was found dead and the other two died in the hospital.
Now I can think of a lot of crime, criminals, ambulance calling, etc. I had one girl tried to give herself an abortion in a room. I wound up calling an ambulance for that botched up piece of work.
Before WWII a lot of people lived in hotels as their primary residences so I agree the numbers would be a lot higher.
Hey Mark, can you give us an estimate on the number of rooms and a rough average of the number of guests you’re talking about?
Your experiences take on a completely different light if you’re talking about a hotel with 200 rooms vs a hotel with a couple dozen.
While we’re on the subject, it would be nice if you could also give us a very rough estimate on the number of guests per bed a hotel can expect (counting only occupied beds). I imagine that there’s a lot of single travelers on business, but also the standard nuclear family. My guess would be something like 1.5/occupied bed, but I absolutely bow to your expertise on the subject.