Henry Villard’s Hotel Test: Seattle Wins the Coast’s Comfort Race

When Mr. Villard was in Portland he gave orders that immigrants arriving in this city by steamer in the evening should have the privilege of remaining on board during the night without charge, and that they should be afforded every possible convenience for leaving by trains or boat the following morning. This was to save them annoyance and expense of a night in this city.

Right here one word about hotels in Seattle. Nothing else gives so good or so bad a view of a city as a good or bad hotel. It is a plain truth that out of every three tourists or travelers who visit Seattle, whom I have met, are of one mind that Seattle is the best town, and all their talk runs in its favor. When the real reason of such a preference is put down, they have lived here treated well in a hotel at Seattle and have fared badly in a poor hotel at Portland.

In the matter of first-class hotel accommodations Seattle takes the lead on the North Pacific. Even Portlanders freely admit it. Perhaps the best advertising that has lately shown itself is that of Mr. Henry Villard. He is a good liver, and can tolerate nothing in the way of a public house that is not first class. As near as we can gather, the only hotel at which he put up on the coast after leaving San Francisco was the Arlington, in this city. At Portland, we are told, he stayed at the house of a friend, and at all other places dined and lodged either on board or on the cars. It was not necessary to stay at any house here, for the most complete arrangements had been made for the entertainment of the party on the steamer North Pacific. He had been at the leading hotel here before, and his agents on this coast had always known, and they knew what to expect—and were not disappointed. Mr. Villard told them in Walla Walla a year and a half ago that he would never again put up in their city until they had a better hotel. It would, perhaps, have been better for the people there had they united in building a hotel worthy their fair town, and probably they'll do it before Mr. Villard comes again.

There are tens of thousands of persons traveling over the country who in this matter are like Mr. Villard. They are going for comfort and pleasure quite as much as for sight-seeing and information, and they consider the matter of hotel fare the chief concern. They will not of choice go to a place the public accommodations of which are notoriously bad, and when they, of necessity or accidentally, do get into such a place, they get out again at the earliest moment, and afterwards give the town a bad name wherever they go. The money that is lost to, and the injury that is done, a town in this way is greater than people generally have an idea, or than they would believe if stated in print.

Let Seattle hotels maintain their good name, and it will be a long stride forward in our race for future commercial and metropolitan supremacy.