User:K7L/Motel (version 2)

For the music group, see The Motels.

For other uses, see User:K7L/Motel (version 2) (disambiguation).

A motel in Bjerka, Norway

A motel is a hotel designed for motorists, and usually has a parking area for motor vehicles. Entering dictionaries after World War II, the word motel, coined as a portmanteau contraction of "motor hotel", originates from the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo, which was built in 1925 by Arthur Heinman. The term referred initially to a type of hotel consisting of a single building of connected rooms whose doors faced a parking lot and, in some circumstances, a common area; or a series of small cabins with common parking. Motels are often individually owned, though motel chains do exist.

As large highway systems began to be developed in the 1920s, long-distance road journeys became more common, and the need for inexpensive, easily accessible overnight accommodation sites close to the main routes led to the growth of the motel concept. Motels peaked in popularity in the 1960s with rising car travel, only to decline in response to competition from the newer chain hotels which became commonplace at highway interchanges as traffic was bypassed onto newly constructed motorways.

Architecture

The Star Lite Motel in Dilworth, Minnesota is a typical American 1950s L-shaped motel

Motels differ from hotels in their location along highways, as opposed to the urban cores favoured by hotels, and their orientation to the outside (in contrast to hotels, whose doors typically face an interior hallway). Motels almost by definition face onto a car park, while older hotels were not usually built with motorcar parking in mind.

Because of their low-rise construction, the number of rooms which would fit on any given amount of land was low compared to the high-rise urban hotels which had grown around train stations. This was not an issue in an era where the major highways became the main street in every town along the way and inexpensive land at the edge of town could be developed with motels, car dealerships, fuel stations, lumber yards, amusement parks, roadside diners, drive-in restaurants, cineparks and countless other small roadside businesses. The motorcar brought mobility and the motel could appear anywhere on the vast network of two-lane highways.

Layout

Motels are typically constructed in an "I"-, "L"-, or "U"-shaped layout that includes guest rooms; an attached manager's office; a small reception; in most motels, a swimming pool; and in some cases, a small diner. A motel was typically single-story with rooms opening directly onto a parking lot, making it easy to unload suitcases from a vehicle. A second story, if present, would face onto a balcony served by multiple stairwells.

Room types

In some motels, a handful of rooms would be larger and contain kitchenettes or apartment-like amenities; these rooms were marketed at a higher price as "efficiencies" as their occupants could prepare food themselves instead of incurring the cost of eating all meals in restaurants. Rooms with connecting doors (so that two standard rooms could be combined into one larger room) also commonly appeared in both hotels and motels. A few motels (particularly in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where a motel strip extending from Lundy's Lane to the falls has long been marketed to newlyweds) would offer "honeymoon suites" with extra amenities such as whirlpool baths.

History

The first campgrounds for motorists were constructed in the late 1910s. Before that, tourists who couldn't afford to stay in a hotel either slept in their cars or pitched their tents in fields alongside the road. These were called auto camps. Modern camp sites of the 1920s and 1930s provided running water, picnic grounds, and water closet facilities. They also kept those pesky "tin can tourists" out of the farmer's fields.

During the Great Depression, farmers would often construct cabin courts on vacant roadside land as a source of extra income; these facilities were initially primitive, but a step up from the campgrounds. These facilities were designed for motorists; some provided carports or individual garages. While development ground to a halt during World War II with rationing of fuel and tyres limiting travel, by the 1950s the modern design of a motel or "motor hotel" as a series of rooms in one building with doors facing directly onto a car park became commonplace with tens of thousands opening on major highways.

Heyday

The 1950s and 1960s were the heyday of the independent, roadside motel. While motel chains existed as early as the 1939 establishment of the Travelodge brand and the 1952 establishment of Holiday Inn, the decline of the independent motel largely is a phenomenon of the 1970s, after freephone toll-free telephone numbers and computerised reservation systems began to favour centralisation of operations under national banners.

Tens of thousands of small, individual motels sprang up on major two-lane highways to serve motorcar traffic coming into towns and cities. Before the proliferation of motorways, these lodgings could locate anywhere on relatively inexpensive roadside land at the edge of town.

Market segmentation and decline

In the 1970s and 1980s, independent motels were losing ground to chains such as Motel 6 and Ramada, existing roadside locations were increasingly bypassed by motorways, and the development of the motel chain led to a blurring of motel and hotel.

While family-owned motels with as few as five rooms could still be found, especially along older highways, these were forced to compete with a proliferation of Economy Limited Service chains. ELS hotels typically do not offer cooked food or mixed drinks; they may offer a very limited selection of continental breakfast foods but have no restaurant, bar, or room service.

Journey's End Corporation (founded 1978 in Belleville, Ontario) built two-story hotel buildings with no on-site amenities to compete directly in price with existing motels. Rooms were comparable to a good hotel but there was no pool, restaurant, health club, or conference center. There was no room service and generic architectural designs varied little between cities. The chain targeted "budget-minded business travellers looking for something between the full-service luxury hotels and the clean-but-plain roadside inns", but largely drew individual travellers from small towns who traditionally supported small roadside motels.

International chains quickly followed this same pattern. Choice Hotels created Comfort Inn as an economy limited service brand in 1982. New limited-service brands from existing franchisors provided market segmentation; by using a different trademark and branding, major hotel chains could build new limited-service properties near airports and motorways without undermining their existing mid-price brands. Creation of new brands also allowed chains to circumvent the contractual minimum distance protections between individual hoteliers in the same chain. Franchisors placed multiple properties under different brands at the same motorway exit, leading to a decline in revenue for individual franchisees. An influx of newly concocted brands became a key factor in a boom in new construction which ultimately led to market saturation.

By the 1990s, Motel 6 and Super 8 were built with inside corridors (so were nominally hotels) while other former motel brands (including Ramada and Holiday Inn) had become mid-price hotel chains. Some individual franchisees built new hotels with modern amenities alongside or in place of their former Holiday Inn motels; by 2010 a mid-range hotel with an indoor pool was the standard required to remain a Holiday Inn.

Decline

Abandoned Grand West Courts in Chicago

In many once-prime locations, independent motels which thrived in the 1950s and 1960s were being squeezed out by the 1980s as they were forced to compete with growing chains with a much larger number of rooms at each property. Many were left stranded on former two-lane main highways which had been bypassed by motorways or declined as original owners retired and subsequent proprietors neglected the maintenance of buildings and rooms. As these were low-end properties even in their heyday, most are now showing their age.

In Canada the pattern was most visible in the densely populated Windsor-Quebec Corridor, both in urban locations like Toronto's Kingston Road motel strip and in awkward rural locations formerly on the main road. Many remote stretches of the Trans-Canada Highway remain unbypassed by motorway and some independent motels survive.

In many towns, maintenance and renovation of existing properties would stop as soon as word was out that an existing highway was the target of a proposed bypass; this decline would only accelerate after the new road opened. Attempts by owners to compete for the few remaining clients on a bypassed road by lowering prices typically only worsened the decline by leaving no funds to invest in improving or properly maintaining the property; accepting clients who would have been formerly turned away also led to crime problems in cities.

By 1976 the term "cockroach motel" was well-established; a slogan for Black Flag's trademark "Roach Motel" bug traps would be paraphrased as "they check in, but they don't check out" to refer to these declining properties.

An abandoned room

In declining urban areas (like Kingston Road in Scarborough, Ontario), the remaining low-end motels from the two-lane highway era are often seen as seedy places for the homeless, prostitution, and drugs as vacant rooms in now-bypassed areas are often rented by social-service agencies to house refugees, abuse victims, and families awaiting social housing. Conversely, some areas which were merely roadside suburbs in the 1950s are now valuable urban land on which original structures are being removed through gentrification and the land used for other purposes. Toronto's Lake Shore Boulevard strip in Etobicoke was bulldozed to make way for condominiums.

Modernisation

Amenities have changed, with motels that once touted colour television as a luxury now emphasizing wireless Internet, a flatscreen telly, pay-per-view or in-room pictures, microwave ovens, and minibar fridges in rooms which may be reserved online using credit cards and secured against intruders with key cards which expire as soon as a client checks out. Many independent motels add amenities simply to remain competitive with franchise chains, which are taking an increasing market share. Long-time independent motels which join existing low-end chains to remain viable are known as "conversion" franchises; these do not use the standardized architecture which originally defined many franchise brands.

Most of these establishments, previously called motels, may still look like motels but are now called hotels, inns, or lodges.

Revitalization and preservation

Preservationists have sought to list endangered properties on various federal or state historic registries, although in many cases a historic listing gives a building little or no protection from alteration or demolition.

The Oakleigh Motel in Oakleigh, Victoria, Australia, constructed using Googie architecture during the 1956 Summer Olympics as one of the first motels in the state, was added to the Victorian Heritage Register in 2009. The building was gutted by developers in 2010 for a row house development; only the outer shell remains original.

International variations

The early motels were built in the southwestern United States as a replacement for the tourist camps and tourist cabins which had grown around the U.S. highway system. In Australia and New Zealand, motels have followed largely the same path of development as in Canada and the United States. The first Australian motels include the West End Motel in Ballina, New South Wales (1937) and the Penzance Motel in Eagle Hawk, Tasmania (1939).

Motels gained international popularity in countries such as Thailand, Germany, and Japan but in some countries the term "motel" now connotes either a low-end hotel (such as Hotel Formule 1 in Europe) or a no-tell motel.

United States of America

Main article: Motels in the United States

The Milestone Motor Inn (1925) was the first motel in the United States; most similar establishments would bill themselves as camps, cabins or courts through the Great Depression era. What little new construction took place during World War II was typically near military bases and designed for immediate wartime needs, housing soldiers or their families. Motels grew rapidly along United States Numbered Highways through much of the post-war era, only to decline as the two-lane main street was bypassed by the Interstate Highway System. Many international hotel chains owe their start to the 1950s and 1960s motel era in the United States; name brands like Holiday Inn and Ramada originated as motels but are now mid-range to expensive hotel operators who have abandoned the motel format.

Canada

The Mid-Trail Motel & Inn in Pleasant Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2010

As in the U.S., the initial 1930s roadside accommodations were primitive tourist camps, with over a hundred campgrounds listed in Ontario alone on one 1930 provincial road map. While most of these provided access to the most basic of amenities (like picnic tables, playgrounds, toilet facilities and supplies), fewer than a quarter offered cottages in the pre-Depression era, and the vast majority required travellers bring their own tents. In Canada's climate, these sites were effectively unusable outside the high season.

Because cabins and camps were ill-suited to a Canadian winter, the number and variety of motels grew dramatically after World War II, peaking just before freeways such as Ontario Highway 401 opened in the 1960s. By the 1980s, motels were losing ground rapidly to franchises such as Journey's End Corporation and the U.S.-based chains. Due to Canada's climate and short tourist season (which begins at Victoria Day continuing to Labour Day or Thanksgiving) any outdoor swimming pool would be usable for little more than two months of the year and independent motels would operate at a loss or close during the off-season.

Much of Canada's population is crowded into a few small southern regions. While the Windsor-Québec corridor was bypassed by motorways relatively early, in more sparsely populated regions (including much of Northern Ontario) thousands of kilometres of mostly two-lane Trans-Canada Highway remain undisturbed as the road makes its lengthy journey westward through tiny, distant and isolated communities.

Europe

The original concept of a motel as a motorist's hotel which grew up around the highways of the 1920s is of American origin. The term appears to have initially had the same meaning in other countries, but has since been used in many places to refer either to a budget-priced hotel with limited amenities or a love hotel, depending on the country and language. The division between motel and hotel, like elsewhere, has been blurred, so many of these are low-end hotels.

In France, motel-style chain accommodations of up to three stories (with exterior hallways and stairwells) are marketed as "one-star hotels". The Louvre Hôtels chain operates Première Classe (1 star) as a market segmentation brand in this range, using other marques for higher or mid-range hotels. The use of "motel" to identify any budget-priced roadhouse hotel (Rasthaus, Raststätte) also exists in the German language; some French chains operating in Germany (such as Accor's Hotel Formule 1) offer automated registration and small, Spartan rooms at reduced cost.

In Portuguese, "motel" (plural: "motéis") commonly refers not to the original drive-up accommodation house for motorists but to an "adult motel" or love hotel with amenities such as jacuzzi baths, in-room pornography, candles and oversize or non-standard-shaped beds in various honeymoon-suite styles. These rooms are available for as little as four hours, and minors are excluded from these establishments. (The Portuguese-language term "rotel" had brief usage in 1970s Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for a similar concept, ro- for rooms through which clients rotate in a matter of hours instead of overnight.)

A similar association of "motel" to short-stay hotels with reserved parking and luxury rooms which can be rented by couples for a few hours has begun to appear in Italy, where the market segment has shown significant growth since the 1990s and become highly competitive.

South America

In Central and South America, a "motel" (in Mexico, "Motel de paso") is an establishment often associated with extramarital encounters and rented typically for a few hours (15 minutes to 12 hours). In Ecuador, any establishment with the title "Motel" is related to extramarital encounters; in Argentina and Peru these hotels for couples are called "albergue transitorio" ("temporary shelter") and offered for anything from a few hours to overnight, with décor based on amenities such as dim lights, a jacuzzi and a king-size bed. In other Spanish-speaking countries these establishments have other slang names like "mueble", "amueblado" ("furniture", "furnished rental") or "telo".

In the Dominican Republic, "cabins" (named for their cabin-like shape) have all these amenities (such as jacuzzi, oversize bed and HDTV) but generally do not have windows, and have private parking for each room individually. Registration is handled not in a conventional manner but, upon entering the room, by delivering a bill with the registration through a small window that does not allow eye contact to ensure greater discretion.

The connotations of "motel" as adult motel or love hotel in both the Spanish and Portuguese languages can be awkward for U.S.-based chains accustomed to using the term in its original meaning, although this issue is diminishing as chains (such as Super 8 Motels) increasingly drop the word "motel" from their corporate identities at home.

See also

• Motels in the United States
• List of motels
• List of hotels
• List of defunct hotel chains – includes motels

External links

[[Category:Motels| ]] [[Category:Hotel types]] [[Category:Tourist accommodations]]