The fastest start in Hotel Director is to lease a Standard hotel in outer London, keep it in good repair, run a press campaign, and lease a second hotel as soon as the first is making money. Leases need no deposit, so your starting cash goes into making the hotel earn rather than into a down payment.
Choose a difficulty
You open in London, which is free to play in full. Difficulty only changes how much cash you start with:
| Difficulty | Starting cash |
|---|---|
| Easy | £1.2 million |
| Normal | £600,000 |
| Hard | £300,000 |
You start with no hotels. The Portfolio sends you to the Property Market, where your first listings are all in outer London. There is no game clock: each turn is one week, and nothing moves until you tap End Week.
The first year is gentle. Bad news such as strikes and recessions comes far less often in year one, and guest incidents only start after week 8.
Lease, don't buy
On Normal, buying a hotel outright is out of reach. A 40-room Standard hotel in Stratford costs about £3.2 million, and a mortgage needs a 25% deposit, which is more than you have.
A lease has no deposit. You pay weekly rent for 52 weeks, and the hotel's profit is yours. That's the way in.
Pick Standard over Budget
Budget and Standard hotels in outer London are both two-star, so they cost the same to staff and run per room. But a Standard room sells for about £81 a night against about £50 for Budget. In our test runs, a 40-room Standard lease in Stratford made about four times the weekly profit of a Budget one.
Your first weeks
- Check the staff. Hotels come with their minimum team, but every star rating needs more people. A two-star hotel needs a receptionist for every 30 rooms and a housekeeper for every 20.
- Hire a Maintenance Tech. Without one, the building's condition falls every week. With one, it slowly recovers, and things break far less often.
- Fix anything broken at once. A broken boiler, plumbing or electrical system stays broken until you pay to repair it, and costs you 15 to 25 points of occupancy every week until you do. Consider insurance: it repairs breakdowns the same week for a 30% excess.
- Add the cheap amenities. Free Wi-Fi, Express Checkout, an In-Room Safe, Blackout Blinds and Satellite TV each cost £3,200 to £14,000, lift guest satisfaction and add a little occupancy.
- Run a Press Campaign. It is the strongest of the five campaigns, because its reputation boost repeats every week. Add a Guest Loyalty Drive alongside it.
- Renew the fire certificate. It costs £1,500 a year. Let it lapse and you risk fines.
Read the weekly report
Every week opens with a report: where the money went, what happened, and each hotel's result. Look at three numbers before anything else:
- Cash. Three weeks in a row in the red ends the game.
- Occupancy. If it's falling, check condition, staffing and your rate.
- Satisfaction. It drives reputation, and reputation drives demand.
Get a second hotel fast
Two hotels grow much faster than one. In our test runs on Normal, a player with one Standard lease reached the £1 million net worth that opens Inner London at a median of week 87. With two leases, it was week 42.
There's a catch: leased hotels don't count towards net worth. Only cash and the hotels you own do. So the profit from your leases is what gets you there.
Inner London unlocks at £1 million net worth, Central at £4 million and Prime at £20 million. Hotels in the better zones earn far more per room.
Common first-year mistakes
- Letting a lease run out. Leases last 52 weeks. If you don't renew, the landlord takes the hotel back three weeks later.
- Ignoring the building. Below 60% condition maintenance costs double, and breakdowns come more often.
- Hiring a local manager too soon. At £2,800 a week, a manager only pays off once a hotel is big enough to earn it back.
- Forgetting the tax bill. Corporation tax is charged in week 52, with a warning in week 49. Keep cash for it.
Next, read how to set room rates, then how to grow without running out of cash.