Motels and Hotels?

The word MOTEL (portmanteau 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.

Typically, It is 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 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).

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.