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no 13th floor(Image source)


Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13.
But do (western) hotels cater to this phobia by skipping/omitting the 13th floor?


This USA Today article (2007) quotes J.W. Marriott Jr., chairman of Marriott International:

"It was one of the first things I learned: Don't go to 13. "

also from the article:

Hotels without a designated 13th floor are so much the norm that fire departments generally assume it to be the case.

"Changing now would be the issue, and cause confusion," says Alejandra Castro-Nuñez, spokeswoman for Miami-Dade's fire rescue and homeland security department.


Dilip Rangnekar, spokesman of the Otis Elevator Company (2002):

"Based on records of buildings with Otis brand elevators, as many as 85% of the high rises in the world don't have a 13th floor." (source)


My question:
Are there statistics on how many hotels omit the 13th floor?
Is it just a minority or actually a widespread phenomenon?



On a side note:
Apparently there are airlines (e.g. Air France, Lufthansa, Continental) that don't have a 13th row.

no row 13
(Image Source)

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  • 2
    Wouldn't surprise me. A lot of buildings in China don't have a 4th floor cause 4 rhymes with death in Chinese
    – Samuelson
    May 8, 2011 at 14:29
  • From personal experience, I have been to few that do not omit it. However in their defense, sometimes they omit other numbers too.
    – picakhu
    May 8, 2011 at 14:30
  • The last hotel I stayed in did not have rooms numbered 13. Straight from 612 to 614.
    – apoorv020
    May 8, 2011 at 18:57
  • 1
    @stickman - Actually the 4 doesn't just rhyme with death it is pronounced exactly the same!
    – going
    May 8, 2011 at 22:29
  • 1
    It's not just hotels. I have been in a major hospital in St. Louis that skips the number 13 in at least one of its towers.
    – fred
    May 9, 2011 at 16:04

1 Answer 1

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Not about hotels, but an analysis about all closed co-op and condo sales in Manhattan, in 2009.

Jonathan Miller

did an analysis by floor level of Manhattan co-ops and condos, which illustrated the market phenomenon of the missing 13th floor in Manhattan.

Older buildings are more likely to be missing the 13th floor than new ones.

...

13th floor – data suggests only 18.4% of buildings with a 13th floor actually call it that.

building market share


Real Deal Magazine:

Miller's analysis [...] found quantitative evidence that, yes, apartments on the 13th floor are statistically unusual (note that floor's small market share for 2009 sales). That superstition, it seems, dies hard.

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  • It would be interesting (but off-topic on Skeptics) to see if/how this depends on when the highrise was built.
    – gerrit
    Oct 14, 2014 at 19:23
  • I've observed quite a number of building exteriors where the amount of space above the twelfth row of windows and the next one up is somewhat greater than for other floors, suggesting that perhaps the "thirteenth floor" might be a utility crawlspace.
    – supercat
    Oct 14, 2014 at 19:50

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