The Swan Hotel in Downingtown, Pennsylvania
The Swan Hotel stood in the center of Downingtown, Pennsylvania from the early 1800s until it was torn down in the 1960s. The hotel's ledger for the period from November 1912 to May 1913 is at the Downingtown Area Historical Society. The ledger includes the names and residences of those who stayed at the hotel for each day during this period. A database was created that counted the number of stays for each day in the ledger. While it would have been ideal to have an entire year's worth of hotel stays to analyze, the period that it does include (about 2,500 stays) shows some interesting travel patterns for this small hotel during the early 1900s.
The Swan Hotel was the type of establishment that catered to business travelers. Often, those who came to town came by train to do business and stayed over during a weeknight. Mondays and Thursdays at the Swan Hotel had the highest demand. Weekends during this period were the lowest.
The visualization below is a calendar heat map for all the days in the ledger. Dark and light green days had the lowest stays (usually on weekends) while orange and red days (usually Mondays and Thursdays) had the highest stays. It is also apparent that overall demand at the hotel dropped during the winter months and picked back up again in the spring.
