Estimate the number of hotels in NYC.

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Estimate the number of hotels in NYC.

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thisisnani · Answer 1 · 2025-05-21T18:29:44+0000

Step 1: To understand the question with the interviewer to ensure we are solving for what is asked for

We want to estimate the total number of Hotels located in NYC. What would be considered as hotels - Large and Small boutiques? Business hotels, Motels? (Clarify that Air Bnb will not be counted as a Hotel for this calculation)

Step 2: Break down the problem into smaller parts

Total number of Visitors to NYC Annualy (To normalize any trends)
Average length of stay per visitor
Average number of guests per hotel room
Average number of rooms per hotel

Step 3: Make Logical assumptions and Hypothetical Estimates. Come up with a Equation which will calculate the total number of hotels

Total Number of Hotels = Total Rooms/Avg Rooms Per hotel

Total Rooms needed per year = (Total Visitors * Avg Stay)/Avg guests per room

Total Rooms Per day = Total rooms per year/365

Lets Assume for NYC:

Vistors per year = 50 million

Average Stay per visitor = 3 days/nights

Average number of guests per room = 2

All hotels (Small, Large, Business) serve same number of room

Average number of rooms per hotel ~ 100

Total Rooms Needed per year = (50 * 3)/2 = 75 million

Total Rooms per day = 75 million /365 ~ 205,480

Total Number of hotels ~ 205,480/ 100 ~ 2055 hotels

anonymous · Answer 2 · 2021-02-11T21:32:36+0000

Hey there,

so first of all I would like to ask the following questions

including hostels and/or AirBnBs? - Lets assume no
only the NYC city or Metropolitan area? - Lets, only NYC City

Approach

# Hotel = [# Tourists] / [# Beds per Hotel]

# Tourists = ( [Leisure Traveller] + [Business Traveller] ) /2

Leisure Traveller = [Ppl in the City] x [Ratio of Tourists]

Business Traveller = [Ppl in the City] x [white color worker] x [Ratio of Tourists]

# Beds per Hotel = [# Floor] x [# Rooms per Floor] x [# Beds per Room]

Ppl in the City = 8 Mio

I know that there are around 8M ppl Living in NYC City

Ratio of Tourists = every 10th person is a tourist (w/o covid)

I would have guessed that every 10th person you meet in NYC is a tourist (days where there is no covid)

white color worker = 75% are white color worker

(In NYC you have 3/4 of every person working as a white color worker I would assume)

Leisure Traveller = 8M / 10 = 800k

Business Traveller = 8M x 75% / 10 = 600k

# Tourists = (800k + 600k) / 2 = 700k

Since we took the same tourist ratio of Business and Leisure Travellers we have to still split the overall number of tourists by 2

# Floors = 5 Floors

I think on average there are 5 floors in every hotel

# Rooms per Floor = 6 Rooms

I would say based on my own exp that there are around 6 rooms per floor on an average hotel

# Beds per Room = 2 Beds

There are always 2 beds per room

# Beds per Hotel = 5 x 6 x 2 = 60 Beds

# Hotel = 700k / 60 Beds = 11k

Taken together, I would argue that there are 11k hotels in New York City.

The numbers in this equation where I have the lowest confidence, is probably the average number of tourists that are in New York on a given day.

If you take that 1/3 of people live together in households you arrive at around 2.6M households in New York.
That means that hotels would only make up around 2% of all the apartments that are in New York.

Which seems to be pretty low.

So that could still be accurate.