Motels" redirects here. For the band, see The Motels. For other uses, see Motel (disambiguation).

A motel in Bjerka, Norway

A motor hotel, or motel for short (also known as motor inn, motor court, motor lodge, tourist lodge, cottage court, auto camps, tourist home, tourist cabins, auto cabins, cabin camps, cabin court, or auto court), 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 in 1925 as a portmanteau of motor and hotel or motorists' hotel, 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 privately owned, though motel chains do exist. As the provincial highways and the United States highway system began to develop in the 1920s, long-distance road journeys became more common, and the need for inexpensive, easily accessible overnight accommodation sited close to the main routes led to the growth of the motel [1] concept. Motels peaked in popularity in the 1960s with rising car travel, only to decline in response to competition from the newer chain hotelswhich became commonplace at highway interchanges as traffic was bypassed onto newly constructed freeways.
Contents
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1 Architecture

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1.1 Layout 1.2 Room types

2 History

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2.1 Auto camps and courts 2.2 Tourist homes 2.3 Early motels 2.4 Expansion 2.5 Guidebooks and referrals 2.6 Chains

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2.7 Freeway era 2.8 Market segmentation 2.9 Decline 2.10 Modernisation 2.11 Revitalization and preservation

3 International variations

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3.1 Canada 3.2 Europe 3.3 South America

4 Crime and illicit activity 5 Film, TV and stage depictions 6 References 7 External links

[edit]Architecture

Typical American L-shaped 1950s-style Star Lite Motel, in Dilworth, Minnesota

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 include a parking lot, while older hotels were not usually built with automobile parking in mind. Because of their low-rise construction (most were simple one-story buildings, anything more than two floors with outside corridors being rare) with large car parks, 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 railway stations. This was not an issue in an era where the major highways became Main Street in every town along the way and inexpensive land at the edge of town could be developed with motels, car lots, filling stations, lumber yards, amusement parks, roadside diners, drive-in restaurants and theatres and countless other small roadside businesses. The automobile brought mobility, and the motel could appear anywhere on the vast network of two-lane highways. [edit]Layout

Motels are typically constructed in an 'I'- or 'L'- or 'U'-shaped layout that includes guest rooms, an attached manager's office, a small reception and, in most motels, a swimming pool, and in some cases, a small diner. A motel could range from a small single story to two or three floors, although the hotel form of construction with inside corridors would be more suited to taller buildings due to the number of stairwells required to service multiple levels of balcony rooms. The doors to each motel [2] room typically face the parking lot, making it easy to unload suitcases from the car. The post-war motels, especially in the early 1950s to late 1960s, sought more visual distinction, often featuring eye-catching colorful neon signs which employed themes from popular culture, ranging from Western imagery of cowboys and Indians to contemporary images of spaceships and atomic era iconography. U.S. Route 66 is the most popular example of the "neon era". Many of these signs remain fully intact to this day. [edit]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 (20) to the falls has long been marketed tonewlyweds) would offer "honeymoon suites" with extra amenities such as whirlpool baths. [edit]History The first campgrounds for automobile tourists 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. The modern campgrounds of the 1920s and 1930s provided running water, picnic grounds and restroom facilities. They also kept those pesky "tin can tourists" out of the farmer's fields. [edit]Auto

camps and courts

Before the 1930s, auto tourists adapted their cars by adding beds, makeshift kitchens and roof decks. In the 1930s, the first travel trailers became available, and this made camping even more popular. Auto camps pre-dated motels by a few years. Unlike auto camps, tourist courts typically provided bed and breakfast or hotel-style service, usually with stand-alone cabins. After the introduction of the motel, auto camps continued in popularity through the Depression years and after World War II, their popularity finally starting to diminish with the construction of freeways and changes in consumer demands. Examples include the Rising Sun Auto Camp in Glacier National Park and Blue Bonnet Court in Texas. Such facilities were "Mom-and-Pop"facilities, on the outskirts of a town, that were as quirky as their owners. Small comforts were few and far between at cabin camps, which were basically just auto camps with small cabins instead of tents. Travelers in search of modern amenities could find them at cottage courts and tourist courts. Here, the cabins had electricity, indoor bathrooms, and sometimes even a private garage or carport. They were arranged in attractive clusters or a U-shape. Often, these camps were part of a larger complex containing a filling station and caf. The 1935 City Directory for San Diego, California, lists "motel"-type accommodations under Tourist Camps. In contrast, though they remained small independent operations, motels quickly adopted a [4] more homogenized appearance and were designed from the start to cater purely to motorists.
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[edit]Tourist

homes

In town, tourist homes were private residences advertising rooms for auto travellers. Unlike boarding houses, guests at tourist homes were usually just passing through. In the southwestern United States, a handful of tourist homes were opened by African-Americans as early as the Great Depression due [5] to the lack of food or lodging for travellers of color in the Jim Crow conditions of the era. There were things money couldn't buy on Route 66. Between Chicago and Los Angeles you couldn't rent a room if you were tired after a long drive. You couldn't sit down in a restaurant or diner or buy a meal no matter how much money you had. You couldn't find a place to answer the call of nature even with a pocketful of money...if you were a person of color traveling on Route 66 in the 1940s and '50s. [6] Irv Logan, Jr. A Green Book (1936) would list lodgings, restaurants, fuel stations, liquor stores, barber and beauty salons without racial restrictions; the smaller Directory of Negro Hotels and Guest Houses in the [7] United States (1939, US Travel Bureau) specialized in accommodations. Segregation of US tourist accommodation would legally be ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and by a court ruling in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States affirming that Congress' powers over interstate commerce extend to regulation of local incidents (such as racial discrimination in a motel serving interstate travellers) [8] which might substantially and harmfully affect that commerce. [edit]Early

motels

Arthur Heineman's Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo

The motel concept originated with the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo, originally called the Milestone Mo-Tel, which was constructed in 1925 by Arthur Heineman (although some earlier motels that dated to 1915 have been discovered). In conceiving of a name for his hotel, Heineman abbreviated motor [1] hotel to mo-tel after he could not fit the words "Milestone Motor Hotel" on his rooftop. Many other businesses followed in its footsteps and started building their own auto camps. Combining the individual cabins of the tourist court under a single roof yielded the motor court or motor hotel. Some motor courts were beginning to call themselves motels, a term coined in 1926. Many of these early motels are still popular and are in operation, as in the case of the 3V Tourist [9] Court inSt. Francisville, Louisiana, built in 1938. During the Great Depression, landholders facing onto roads in U.S. highway or provincial highway systems constructed tourist cabins in order to convert unprofitable land to income; some opened tourist homes. The (usually single-story) buildings for a roadside motel or cabin court were quick and simple to construct, with many plans and instructions available in how-to and builder's [7] magazines. Expansion of highway networks would continue unabated through the depression as governments attempted to create employment. Those still travelling (including business travellers and travelling salespeople) were under pressure to manage travel costs by driving (instead of

taking trains) and staying in the new roadside motels instead of more costly established downtown hotels wherebell captains, porters and other personnel would all expect a tip for service. By 1947, there would be approximately 22,000 motor courts in operation in the US alone; a typical 50room motel in that era cost $3000 per room in initial construction costs, compared to $12,000 per [10] room for metropolitan city hotel construction. In the 1940s construction had ground to a near-halt as workers, fuel, rubber and transport were pulled away from civilian use for thewar effort, but the postwar 1950s would usher in a building boom on a massive scale. By 1950 there would be 50,000 motels serving half of the 22 million US vacationers; by 1951 motels would surpass hotels in consumer [11] demand. Many motels began advertising on colorful neon signs that they had air cooling (a early term for "air conditioning") during the hot summers or were "heated by steam" during the cold winters. A handful used novelty architecture such as wigwams or teepees or used decommissioned rail cars to create a Red Caboose Motel in which each "Caboose Motel" or "Caboose Inn" cabin is an individual rail [12] car. [edit]Expansion The 1950s and 1960s was the pinnacle of the motel industry in the United States and Canada. As older mom-and-pop motor hotels began adding newer amenities such as swimming pools or color TV (a luxury in the 1960s), motels were built in wild and impressive designs. In-room gimmicks such as the coin-operated Magic Fingers vibrating bed were briefly popular; introduced 1958, these were largely removed in the 1970s due to vandalism of the coin boxes. The American Hotel Association (which had briefly offered a Universal Credit Card in 1953 as forerunner to the modern American [13] Express card) became the American Hotel & Motel Association in 1963. As many motels vied for their place on busy highways, the beach-front motel instantly became a success. In major beachfront cities such as Miami, Florida, rows of colorful motels such as the Castaways, in all shapes and sizes, became commonplace.