An extremely short-lived soap opera, Hotel Story was set in a luxury hotel, and was filmed (in addition to Crawford Productions' studios) at the Melbourne Hotel. According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian Television Series, 'The serial, which was intended as a replacement for The Box, was rumoured to have cost $200,000 for the seven episodes that had been produced, but not put to air, when the network decided to cancel the serial'. When the first four episodes were later aired as two two-hour specials, viewer reaction was positive, but could not affect the cancellation decision.