Once again another seemingly obscure concept becomes in reality a great fun game, and an insight, albeit downplayed, into what is involved in running a hotel. Played vertically you control a hotel, with a selection of floors and rooms. Guests arrive in smaller or larger parties and you assign them rooms and care to their lodging needs.
Sounds almost pointless right? But it’s actually unexpectedly addictive and quickly involves a great deal of forward thinking, strategy and timing. Acting as hotel owner, bell-boy, waiter and receptionist, tap in order where you need to go; from room 109 to serve food, to the laundry room with 209’s load back to 104 for payment. You can assign many different tasks in order to work as efficiently as possible and before you know it you can handle to chaos and drama involved in a real hotel management…probably.
Now this certainly shouldn’t be considered formal training for opening the next chain of Hiltons, but it will mentally train you too think ahead, multi-task and optimize your movements. Your prospective customers will not like to be kept waiting, resulting in lower tips and unhappier customers. The more macho men among us may not be attracted to what seems a quite feminine game; and before you feminists scream at me for making such a stereotype in the first place, the game only offers a female character, so who makes the stereotypes here? But men and women alike can enjoy the comforting feeling of happy guests; full bellied and well rested.
Overall Hotel Dash is fast paced, addictive and fun; another interesting and different game which is perfectly suited for the iPad.
I believe Play First is the best at these “time management” style games. Hotel Dash offers only a female playable character because she is Flo, Play First’s well-branded heroine of the Diner Dash series of games, launched in 2005 for the PC and now offered in multiple formats, including mobile and social. Diner Dash is also available for iPhone/iPad, for when you conquer the hotel industry.