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For other uses, see Motel (disambiguation).
"Motels" redirects here. For the band, see The Motels.
"Roach Motel" redirects here. For the Black Flag bait device, see Roach Motel (product).
Entering dictionaries after World War II, the word motel (blend of "motor" and "hotel" or "motorists\' hotel") referred initially to a single building of connected rooms whose doors face a parking lot and/or common area or a series of small cabins with common parking. Their creation was driven by increased driving distances on the United States highway system that allowed easy cross-country travel.
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The concept originated with the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo, constructed in 1925 by Arthur Heineman.
Unlike their predecessors, auto camps and tourist courts, motels quickly adopted a homogenized appearance. Typically one would find an \'I\'- or \'L\'- or \'U\'-shaped structure that included rooms, an attached manager\'s office, a reception which usually takes up the space of one guest room and perhaps a small diner. Postwar motels sought more visual distinction, often featuring eye-catching neon signs which employed pop culture themes that ranged from Western imagery of cowboys and Indians to contemporary images of spaceships and atomic symbols.
The motel began in the 1920s as mom-and-pop motor courts on the outskirts of a town. They attracted the first road warriors as they crossed the United States in their new automobiles. They usually had a grouping of small cabins and their anonymity made them ideal trysting places (or the "hot trade" in industry lingo). Even the famous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde were frequent guests, using motels as hideouts. The motels\' perceived lust and larceny alarmed then FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who attacked motels and auto camps in an article he penned called "Camps of Crime", which ran in the February 1940 issue of American Magazine.
Exterior of a Howard Johnson\'s motor lodge.
Motels differed from hotels in their emphasis on largely anonymous interactions between owners and occupants, their location along highways (as opposed to urban cores), and their orientation to the outside (in contrast to hotels whose doors typically face an interior hallway). Motels almost by definition included a parking lot, while older hotels were not built with automobile parking in mind.
With the 1952 introduction of Kemmons Wilson\'s Holiday Inn, the \'mom and pop\' motels of that era went into decline. Eventually, the emergence of the interstate highway system, along with other factors, led to a blurring of the motel and the hotel. Today, family-owned motels with as few as five rooms may still be found along older highways. The quality and standards of every independent motel differ. Sometimes, these older locations that are in poor condition are referred to as "roach motels."
Motels with low rates sometimes serve as housing for people who are not able to afford an apartment or have recently lost their home and need somewhere to stay until further arrangements are made.
Motels offering such accommodation have also served as a haven for fugitives of the law. In the past, the anonymity and the ability to move around easily between motels in different regions by dropping in and checking out with a simple registration process allowed fugitives to remain ahead of the law. However, several advances have reduced the capacity of motels to serve this purpose. Credit card transactions, which in the past were more easily approved and took days to report, are now approved or declined on the spot, and are instantly recorded in a database, thereby allowing law enforcement access to this information. Laws in many places now require registering guests to present a government-issued photo ID, especially when paying with cash. TV shows such as America\'s Most Wanted and various web sites alert the greater public to the identity of more fugitives, and many local law enforcement agencies frequently check motels when they suspect a wanted individual may be staying in their jurisdiction.
In most countries of Latin America and some countries of East Asia, motels are also known as short-time hotels, and offer a short-time or "transit" stay with hourly rates primarily intended for people having sexual liaisons and not requiring a full night\'s accommodation.
In Mexico love hotel equivalents are known as "Motel de paso" (Passing Motel) (even if they are actually meant mostly for pedestrian access). In Colombia and Brazil, motels are used by people for sexual intercourse only. Argentina these establishments are called albergue transitorio ("temporary lodging"), though known as telo in vesre-slang. In Panama love hotels are known as Push Bottoms. In Singapore, cheap hotels often offer a slightly more euphemistic "transit" stay for short-time visitors. In Manila, a campaign against the hotels, believed by religious conservatives to contribute to social decay in the predominantly Roman Catholic country, ended with the city banning hotels from offering stays of very short duration. As of December 2006 there are still many short time hotels in operation. In Belgium and France, these establishments are known as hôtels de passe. In Chile, they are known as moteles parejeros (coupling motels), and many of them offer hourly rates. In the United States and Canada, some ordinary motels in low income areas—often called no-tell motels or hot sheet motels—play a similar role to love hotels.
The Bates Motel is an important part of Psycho, a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch and the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name. Film sequels Psycho II and Psycho III feature the motel as does the 1987 television movie Bates Motel.
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