At least from what I can tell from old movies, it used to be fairly common for people to live in hotel rooms indefinitely, like they were renting an apartment. Is this correct? If so, why did it change- or has it?
Didn’t really change around here; lots of people can afford to pay X dollars per week but could never get up the cash to pay first, last & security, so they live in hotels.
Apart from the financial aspect, some folks simply prefer to have a small apartment with full room service, maid service, and nearby restaurants, theatres and the like. My great aunt was like that. She was a painter who liked to travel, and spent her entire adult life living in hotels. Even up in her 90s she managed to find a lovely hotel in the desert that she loved to paint: hotelgadsden.com - This website is for sale! - hotelgadsden Resources and Information.
In any decent sized town there are still “rent it by the week” “transient” hotels. They cater to the lower income dudes.
It was not unknown at all, especially in the past, to stay most of your life in a hotel. It provided a comfortable stay with maid service, a regular change of linen, usually a good eating (and drinking) establisment on site and few responsibilities. Usually the location of said hotels were near the city center where most everything was “happening.”
These days, there are some “long stay” hotels as well. If you had the money, you could live in one pretty much indefinitely. I just spent about two weeks at a Studio 6 (cheapskate that I am) in East Brunswick, NJ. The room had a kitchen, and was better than at least one apartment I lived in while I was in London.
Not much use for living the arty life (I restate that it was in East Brunswick, NJ), but it would be comfortable for quite a long time. ISTR it cost about $300 per week.
My mum lives in a small town (about 300 people in the town itself) out in the country about five hours drive west of Sydney. There was a town “character” (who sadly died a few years ago) by the name of Ernie.
Ernie came home from WWII as a young man, and promptly booked into a room upstairs in the pub. He lived a bachelor’s life, and had three square a day and his room cleaned and linen done. By the time I met him, he was in his late 70s, and was “the old guy who lives cheaply/free in return for odd jobs”. Every Aussie country pub seems to have one of these. If you ever talked to him, he’d tell you about the time he moved - from room 7 to room 12 up the hall, back in the sixties.
He was a clever and witty man, and he was also content with his long and simple life. The crazy part was that, at least by the time I first met him back in the late 80s, he had become such an institution that he had become written in to the hotelier’s contract - ie. if you bought the pub, you took on Ernie and couldn’t evict him.
There are even some nicer-looking hotels that advertise weekly rates around here. I think they are going after people who are staying in an area on business, but I suppose you could live there.
My father told me there was an old fleabag hotel that people lived in in the town I grew up in when they moved to the town in 1973. I was born in 1975, and by the time I was old enough to remember, it had been torn down and apartment buildings built in its place. That’s probably what happened to a lot of those places.
A classic example of this would be the Algonquin in New York.
I’d be interested to know how “hotel” in the US translates to UK/Australian experience.
Here, a hotel is a pub. Traditionally that is, though now it’s a bit murky. A traditional pub (of which there are still thousands) is a large-ish freestanding building with bars downstairs and rooms upstairs. Most suburban pubs that have rooms are probably a bit above the American-style dosshouses like in the Blues Bros (though we have those too in some places), but still generally cater for low income men. But the licence held by the local pub is the same as the licence held by the Sydney Hilton, and I daresay you could live there too if you had the cash. It’s possible to live this way in a fairly expensive/ritzy environment, but that’s not the norm.
I worked in a pub in a mining town in the 80s. We had ten or twelve rooms which were mostly always full. It was an even mix of drunkard on welfare / blue collar worker on 12 month stay while the nearby power station was being built / management type for same power station [this was the only type that would never show his face in the bar downstairs].
Even today, hotels serve as housing for low income workers. They’re not like the Algonquin – generally old, run down motels with no maid service or restaurant – but they are cheaper than an apartment and you don’t need to scrap up first and last months rent – a big issue for a minimum wage worker. Of course, these places are dumps and few stay in them willingly.
But it’s even available for upscale visitors. Extended stay hotels are common for people traveling for long-term assignments. They usually have suites and kitchenettes. They’re probably a bit pricey for a place to stay, but if you’re doing a long-term consulting assignment, they’re great.
What a fascinating and informative article!
In the US, a hotel is a large-ish freestanding building where you can rend a room for the night. A restaurant serves food, and a bar serves alcoholic beverages. That’s three separate licenses from the local authorities.
A hotel may, or may not, have its own restaurant. If not, it will nearly always be within walking distance of one. It may, or may not, have a bar. If not, it will frequently be within walking distance of one. (I work at a hotel that does not have a bar. I am very grateful. Drunkards are a big pain in the ass.) In some hotels, the restaurant and the bar may be in separate rooms. Local laws regulating alcohol can vary widely. A restaurant may or may not be allowed to serve alcohol. A bar may or may not choose to get a license to serve food.
Hotel is sometimes used as a synonym for pub here in Canada, well Ontario at least.
Also, in Ontario, if you are licensed to serve alcohol, you must also serve food.
FWIW much of the action in Saul Bellow’s Seize The Day takes place in Manhattan’s “Gloriana Hotel”, which is supposed to have been modeled on the Ansonia–despite the fact that the latter is actually mentioned as visible from the Gloriana’s windows. In this case, the hotel seems to be a little worn-down by time, but still provides full service and seems to cater mostly to middle and upper class long term residents. One definitely gets the feeling that the guests comprise a motley assortment.
The main character is an out-of-work salesman soon to be out of money, while his father is a retired doctor with a comfortable fortune. Both are residents of the hotel. One wonders what the cost of living in such a place was, and how it compared to average wages and salaries back then (1956).
I’ve probably collectively lived three years or so in hotels. My two longest stays were about 11 months each. Of those, the first was at a resort-style hotel in Mexico. I was single, and so the junior suite was good enough for me. There were good restaurants in the area, and the lobby bar had a long happy hour. (Of course I eventually took Spanish classes, got out of hanging with the other gringos, and discovered the country.)
My last long term stay was in Ontario for 11 months. In this case, it was a Marriott Residence Inn. Traditionally I’ve always loved the Residence Inns, and while the service was good and the staff were great, the modern, high-density layouts kind of suck. Most of the older Residence Inns are semi-detached buildings with spacious rooms. The current concept is an oversized room with a kitchenette. For this stay, I was with my wife and dog, and a normal room would have been pretty uncomfortable for such a long time.
Residence Inn’s are pretty cheap. Actually, I wish they cost a little more. All the tourists with their kids normally ruined any chance of a peaceful breakfast for all of us serious business travellers that lived there.
Normal company policy is corporate apartments, but the good ones were all gone by time I accepted the assignment, and I wasn’t willing to live in the rat’s nest of Toronto.
In the old days people really didn’t travel all that much, and when they did it was usually to some destination where they stayed with their relatives. So the “transiants” hotels we know today didn’t exist.
Hotels were for celebrities and and such. Remember there was no Disneyland or theme areas until the 50s. If people traveled it was to a World Fair or a natural attraction like the Grand Canyon (camping not hotels)
Outside of actors and such, traveling salesman came from town to town but they usually stayed in town for a period of a few days to a week. Again not the transiant hotel guest we know today
I know that used to be the case here too, especially in small towns. If old guys tell you they’re going to the hotel, it means they’re going to have a few drinks at the bar. (These bars will have a few rooms available upstairs.)
1969-1973, I lived in the Ocean Front Hotel in Newport Beach, California. One room, kitchenette, partitioned off toilet and sink, dirty shower down the hall. This was a rundown establishment, built in 1908. It was basically home to hippies (like me) and assorted ne’er-do-wells. They rented to “permanent” residents such as me, as well as “tourists” coming to Newport from inland for a few days in the summer.
It was remodeled in the 1980’s into an upscale bed and breakfast hotel. Don’t know what it is like now.
I live in a small city with a large university and medical hub. There is a residential hotel in our downtown. It houses overflow students, teachers, doctors, patients families, people here on contract, etc.
Of course, there are still some of the seedy variety out the other end of town too!