Motel 6 Operations

When I wrote before, I told how I ended up with Motel 6, but to continue from there. Sue and I were given a free apartment and utilities and a salary of $400/month. For this we ran the motel - covered the front office, rented the rooms, maintained the property, pool, grounds; hired and trained the maids, did the book keeping and record keeping and banking. The only help was the maids themselves. One of us had to be at the motel at all times, we were unable to leave the motel together. This continued for five months until we reached the point where we were training managers for the other motels and were able to get away for short periods when they could manage on their own and before they went to their own motel.

The 'bookkeeping' in those days consisted of an 8-1/2 x 11 mimeographed piece of paper with a diagram of the motel on it with squares for each room. The number of the room was printed on it and when we rented it we would write the name of the person staying. All rooms were $6.00 and there was no tax, no phone and no extra charges. To close the books at night, we added up the number of rooms with names, multiplied it by $6 and that was the bank deposit. We made the deposit, attached it to the sheet and submitted it to the main office. We did not have a cash register, so our change was kept in a coffee can. The guests had to pay on a daily basis even if they stayed a week. I couldn't stand this method, so I developed a system which could handle paid advance reservations, and direct billing and keep a running tab of the business for the whole month. We balanced to the penny each day. The standard existing system on advance reservation pay at that time was to take the money and put it in an envelope until the people checked in and then use it to pay for their room!! I showed my system to the owners and they weren't really too impressed but agreed to let me submit two reports each day for thirty days to see how it went, and they agreed to continue with it after that. A point of interest on this was that we were using a little machine that printed receipts for the guests, this was put out by NCR. The salesmen (reps) for NCR kept pushing me to patent my system as they said it was a breakthrough for the industry. They pushed me for about three months and I just laughed and said "you're kidding"!. I guess they weren't. They must have passed it up their company, for the Chicago motel supply company that handled the usual forms for motels, started printing and selling my system and it became the standard for the industry!

During the first 60 days I wrote a complete operation, policy and training manual for the motels (I used the method and approach I had learned from the CHP manual). With no experience you could take the manual and rent rooms, clean rooms, maintain the room, hire the maids, train the maids, maintain the premises and handle all phases of public relations. The owners accepted this manual from me and as we opened the next four motels, I was promoted to Operations Director with an increase in wages to $600/month, plus a new car and a new home with furniture, rent free. I had it made! And Sue had no daily duties at this time, she only had to be available to assist me when we covered time off for the other managers.

The main office was moved to a new fancy building next to the court house at Santa Barbara. It was a two story building with parking on the lower level and the offices above. The office was split into three areas - the owners and basic bookkeeping section, the construction and drafting section, and the Operations Department. My department grew with two assistants and a chain maintenance man. Sue and I were offered and we accepted the chance to purchase one of their new homes, a four bedroom/3 bath home with furniture. They had adjusted my salary several times and I was now making $17,000 a year with automatic increases every time a new motel was opened. I was well pleased with that wage - it was slightly above what an university professor received.

I was also operating three non-company owned motels for one of our future lenders. This was on a manager fee basis. We used their money, had a separate accounting system and our company got 5% of gross for my efforts. One was in Las Vegas on the strip (120 unit with bar and restaurant), one in Palm Desert (60 units) and one in Long Beach (right on the beach with 62 units and bar and restaurant). The lenders were able to sell all three properties after the we redid them and put them into a profit situation.