This book is about the hotel business and the economic contexts in which it has evolved. Now in its second edition, it is fully updated throughout and incorporates the monumental changes in the economic landscape of recent years and their effects on the hotel business. It also includes a new chapter which examines the options for the world economies, their implications for the hotel business and their impact on hotel chains in the decade to 2020. Slattery illustrates that over the past 250 years the structural ascent of economies has driven the economic ascent of the hotel business to reach a global replacement cost of $3 trillion. As the structure of the world economies ascend from agriculture through the industrial, public service, service business and experience business segments so hotel demand and supply grows and diversifies and hotel chains emerge and grow to dominate the business.