While sounds of cowboy campfire songs and the aroma of food from an authentic chuck wagon drifted across the parking lot of the Dude Rancher Lodge on Saturday after five days of filming by a national television crew, the real show was going on behind the scenes.
“We really had some ideas of what might happen this week but we really weren’t prepared for what actually happened,” said Virginia Karlsen, the hotel’s owner. “We had the opportunity to learn from a hotel master.”
That hotel master is Anthony Melchiorri, host of the Travel Channel’s “Hotel Impossible,” who spent most of last week at the Dude Rancher, 415 N. 29th St., with a film crew for the show.
The show brings Melchiorri into struggling hotels and has him work on turning them around with owners and management while crews renovate a handful of areas.
Karlsen, who’s owned the hotel since 1991, said that the biggest issue facing the Dude Rancher was keeping up with modern amenities while maintaining its historic, rustic Western theme.
“During the filming, I had several old-timers come up who said that for years, the Dude Rancher was the place to stay in Billings,” she said. “We’re not going to stop now until everybody in Montana is saying that again.”
From the Billings Gazette