I always thought this was one of those questions kids asked before they were 10 and then knew the answer to for the rest of their lives. I was really suprised the other day when riding with my in-laws (both in their 50s) when they said they had no idea what the difference was.
is it:
the rooms at motels open directly to the great outdoors, and the rooms at hotels open to interior hallways of the building?
I don’t know the “official” difference, but I thought the M was shorthand for motor, in that the lodgings were designed for people traveling by car.
Machine Elf’s distinction is what I would have gone with, but I don’t really spend a lot of time differentiating. If someone told me they were staying at a hotel that I would have called a motel, I wouldn’t care.
Also, I tend to think of motels as places you crash while you’re traveling while a hotel is where you are ‘staying’ for a trip.
Huh? Well I dunno if I know, I might be wrong! I always thought it was that “mo” was for “motorway”, as in, they are found along the motorway
ETA: ah, simul-posting with blondebear and InnerStickler. So OP, what should we check in the poll? By your definition, do we know the difference?
Pretty close. The traditional definition of a motel seems to be:
Located on or near a highway (as opposed to a city center), room doors opening to the outside (as opposed to an interior hallway) – and often directly facing the parking lot, so guests could park near their room…and the fact that they have a parking lot at all, whereas, when motels were first being established, some hotels may not have had parking lots.
However, the definition was rather loose to start with, and the line between “hotel” and “motel” is undoubtedly far blurrier today than it was in the 1950s and 1960s.
They’re both hotels but
one serves motor traffic - cars and trucks. A motor hotel = motel.
It is apparently a portmanteau / contraction of “motor hotel” or “motorist’s hotel”.
The word “motel” was coined to set aside roadside hotels, which catered to auto travelers, from traditional downtown hotels that catered to train travelers. Almost nobody travels by train these days, so this distinction has lost its importance. Even big-city hotels have huge parking lots and most people arrive by car.
Nowadays “motel” is just a marketing term, applied to any hotel that a marketer wants to apply it to. It seems to be out of fashion, except for the ubiquitous Motel 6, which has perhaps given it low-end associations. Most hotels these days seem to name themselves inns, suites, or lodges.
I call bullshit on any attempt to define “the difference” between hotels and motels.
Also, I miss the TV ads for schools offering majors in hotel-motel management.
I agree with what has been said above—that
“motel” is short for “motor hotel”; and thus a motel is intended for motorists (i.e. people traveling by car) to stay at; and
the line between what you’d call a “hotel” and what you’d call a “motel” can be blurry. Rooms that open directly onto the parking lot, instead of onto an interior hallway, are a sure sign of a motel, but I’d hesitate to say that that’s a necessary condition. A light-up “(NO) VACANCY” sign that can be seen from the road is also a dead giveaway, but I remember we had a thread about how you don’t see those as much nowadays.
You’re more likely to have a dead hooker in your room at a motel.
I always had this vague idea that a hotel offered food and a motel did not.
But why are Holiday Inn’s in their own category?
That’s what I learned, as a kid back in the Sixties.
My sense was that motels were generally situated along highways, and attracted travellers who needed a place to stop for a night before moving on the next morning to their actual destination.
A hotel, on the other hand, typically WAS the destination. And, in my childhood days, many hotels didn’t even HAVE parking lots.
But the definitions and differences have definitely blurred over the years.
At the No-tell Motel.
Yeah to me, in my mind, there is no “official” difference between the two. But I agree that in my mind, a motel is a place where you crash for a few hours when you’re on a road trip, it’s not very nice, it’s cheap, the room doors open to the outside, right where you park your car, it’s probably only 1 or 2 stories at most.
A hotel is generally nicer, more expensive, and the sort of place you would want to stay for an extended period of time. It probably has nicer amenities, and facilities, for longer stays.
Originally, that was probably true, at least in most cases. Traditional hotels usually had restaurants within them (and maybe more than one), and would usually offer room service. A traditional motel might have had an attached coffee shop, but might as likely only have some vending machines.
But, a lot of chains that are (or, at least, historically were) motels, such as Holiday Inn, now may have restaurants (or, at least, offer a hot breakfast), in addition to some of the other more hotel-like features (multiple stories, interior hallways, etc.)
I’m reading David Halberstam’s The Fifties; Holiday Inn was the first chain of motels to always offer food. Plus a pool, a giftshop & free TV’s. Direct access to parking is the major difference between a hotel & a motel. Hotels were mostly downtown–or located in resorts; the increasing crumminess of hotels (& many downtowns) led to the popularity of handy, cheap motels–located on highways.
Motels had been around since the early days of “motoring.” The word is short for “Motor Hotel”–we don’t have “motorways” in the USA. They’ve been evolving upward but the historic distinction was quite clear. Here’sa historic Houston example. I remember when it was very nice; it’s now low-cost housing.
Today even traditional motels offer some kind of free breakfast - not as fancy as a hotel breakfast, but definitely food, These include motels with no restaurants.
While I agree with those who use “motor” to differentiate, I think a good way of telling is that hotels usually have some sort of meeting room facility, while motels do not.
I don’t think inner corridors make a difference - most two story motels I’ve been at have them, and they are getting more popular to give another level of security.