What's the Difference Between a Hotel and a Motel?

You're driving on some long stretch of highway in the dark of night. You're 400 miles from home. You and your travel companion are weary and fresh out of gas-station cheeze curlz. You're starving, cranky, and need to pee. Suddenly, the clouds part. The moon shines, revealing a hotel on a hill and a motel on the side of the road. So…which should you choose? And what is the real difference between the two?

Some of us use "hotel" and "motel" to describe any place we pay to stay temporarily. However, they are two different types of commercial lodgings.

Hotels are large, multi-room lodgings with room doors that open into an interior hallway. They often offer laundry services, food, and even bar and spa options, and enjoy a generally safe reputation and full staff. From coma-inducing blankets to room service, there's something a bit luxe in the very act of booking a hotel. Especially now, even a basic hotel chain can feel like a splurge, as prices increase in response to multiple global and domestic events impacting the hospitality industry.

Conversely, motels are often smaller, with sparser amenities (if any) and fewer rooms. Motel room doors open directly into a parking lot or the outside world. They may offer room service, but only in the sense that you must leave your room and hope the outdoor vending machine is working. A skeleton crew or an army of one usually runs a motel, and some still smell like the 1970s. On the plus side, though, the rates are often excellent. 

"Sometimes people associate hotels with luxury. Certainly with historic grand dame hotels," Jaime Calder, a features writer and editor for Sun Rays Magazine in Central Texas, said. Her work focuses on historical, destination, and travel writing in Texas and beyond. "Like, here in Austin, we have The Driskill. A cattle baron, who went by Colonel Driskill, founded it in the late 1800s to showcase his wealth." The Driskill's vibe is like The Grand Budapest Hotel but for cowboys. 

"But before the opulence of these Driskill-type hotels, you had inns, which were individual folks who had a big-ass house and happened to live off of a main road," Calder continued. "When people were coming through, these innkeepers would tend to the traveler's horses. They would offer something to eat. The stables were run by somebody called a 'hostiler' or 'hostler.' This is basically like an old French word for 'innkeeper.' Weirdly, it's also the same term that 'hospital' is derived from."

In fact, "hotel," "hostel," "hospital," and "hospitality" are all a bit born from Latin and borrowed from Anglo-French. These words derive from the Latin root word "hospes," meaning both "guest" and "host." The word's deeper meaning involves caring for and being cared for by strangers. 

Providing great hospitality is considered a requirement for good spiritual health across religions and cultures. The concept of welcoming traveling strangers as friends is as old as the hills. It was already an ancient idea in 1765 when French scholar Louis de Jaucort lamented hospitality's loss of meaningful personal connection with the rise of the merchant class. 

"In their travels, wealthy individuals have gained the enjoyment of all the delights of the country they visit, joined to the polite welcome that is offered proportionally to their expense," de Jaucort writes in Hospitalité. 

If our French scholar was bummed at how merchant mobility changed hospitality in the 1700s, we wonder what he would have thought about the heyday of Route 66. "The biggest difference between a hotel and a motel is that motels didn't emerge until motor culture emerged in the United States, with the advent of cars," Calder said. 

Throughout the late 1910s and into the '30s, affordable automobiles became an entire country's keys to freedom. The 1920s unspooled new highways across the American landscape. Travelers from all levels of socioeconomic status started hitting the road and never totally stopped. And lo, a distinctly American roadside culture was born in the "motor hotel." 

"There was a need for a place to stay overnight as you're getting from Point A to Point B. Motels were the low-frills answer to hotels, usually in that classic one-level horseshoe shape or one low strip of rooms off of a driveway area," Calder said. Picture the Motor Court from the classic 1934 screwball comedy It Happened One Night for a visual reference. 

"A lot of motels suffered disrepair and fell out of favor in the '70s and '80s. Right around the time that these massive hotel chains, like Holiday Inn, took over the nation." Holiday Inn set the tone for other American hotels at this time by offering amenities to keep guests spending inside their walls. 

"A hotel might have a concierge who can direct you to things that are more interesting in the community because there's an expectation that you're staying here more recreationally, not just as an overnight stop," Calder said. "With motels, it was normal for people to drive in and out all hours of the night. It was a hands-off experience, which is also how motels built that 'no-tell motel', seedy reputation."

Just how deserved is the bad reputation motels get compared to the highfalutin reputation of hotels? According to Andrew Bentley, writer and former front desk shift manager for an upscale boutique chain hotel in D.C., while hotels often enjoy a good reputation, it's based more on appearances than reality.  

"It's pretty much a no-tell policy. I think that goes for all hotels. A hotel generally gives you a little more privacy. It's economically tiered, like every other aspect of our society," said Bentley. "If you can afford to be in a hotel, you can do some shit that you might not get away with in a motel."

Motels, meanwhile, aren't incapable of flipping the script. "At first, when we were traveling, we tended to find motels not super accommodating. Hotels were nicer," Margaret Bienert, who co-runs the popular Instagram account A Pretty Cool Hotel Tour with her husband, Corey Bienert, said. Together, the pair explore hidden-gem-themed hotels and motels, which they also collected in the book Hotel Kitsch.

"But in the last couple years, we've had some great experience lately at motels bought by one person or family who wants to do a revamp. These experiences are so much nicer and cute personalized sometimes way better than being in a big hotel."

In the early 2000s, hotels and motels responded to a slump in business with renovations. Revenues improved. Amanda Harrison-Wu, a former hotel manager, tells us, "At that time I worked at remote properties known for their antique charm. Mackinac Island, Martha's Vineyard, and on Nantucket. These places couldn't update to get the more modern feel, but they updated where they could. Some even offered a line of more modern rooms. It set a new precedent and made more people interested in staying at motels and hotels again." 

A handful of decades later, the line between indie hotels and motels is starting to blur. Reimagined lodging experiences like the Rosebud Motel from Schitt's Creek might be fictional, but lodgings like Austin Motel in Texas, Coachman Hotel in Lake Tahoe, and White Sands in Waikiki show that a stylish, retro rebirth of old-school properties is very possible in real life. 

Bienert is emphatic that a revamped motel or hotel's success relies on the revamper's passion. "We had a favorite hotel that went under after it got bought by a corporation who turned it millennial gray. Those investors didn't pay attention to what made that hotel great, and so it failed," Bienert said. "You also need to be passionate when staying in these places. I've had such good experiences, and I wish more people got to know who's running the front desk because they're usually the small business owner trying to make the place better."

"People have to reinvest," Calder agreed. "Even if hotels and motels just put an EV charger on the premises, these places would probably explode with success." 

There really isn't a wrong choice when it comes to staying the night in a hotel or motel. While both options meet different needs, they also each meet the basic need of finding a place to rest while out on the open road. Whether that rest comes in the form of a brightly-lit chain hotel or a throwback motel so photo-ready it will make your social media weep—well, that's up to you. 

Nick Warnock, a sound engineer from Oklahoma, usually stays in mid-range chain hotels for his cross-country work travel. Still, he carries a soft spot for motels. "My dad was always on the road for pipelining, so we stayed predominantly in motels," Warnock said. "I'm pretty sure it was always a Motel 6, where Tom Bodett would always 'leave the light on for you'. When I was a kid, hotels were reserved for fancy occasions. Now that I'm older, I prefer a motel. There's a scent of of stale cigarette smoke and burnt coffee baked into a room. But two beds and a coffee pot will always feel like home."

(It should be noted that Tom Bodett, long-time spokesperson for Motel 6, politely declined to be interviewed for this story, as he was traveling in England, where he noted a "tragic lack of Motel 6 locations.”)

A sense of home and nostalgia are strong deciding factors for staying in hotels and motels. Often, planned (or surprise) time away from home calls for a sense of safety, comfort, and even adventure grown-ups may otherwise feel hard to grasp — certainly if travelers are on a budget. 

"People want to have experiences. Even people with kids," Calder said, "People want to see each other. They want to travel. That's just human nature. And those experiences make us all better as people. They just need to be within reach for everybody. It can't just be a luxury experience. There are so many grand hotels that are spectacular, but like, I don't make that much in a day. I can't spend that much on a night."

"I hope the trend continues toward that nostalgic cozy feeling," Bienert said of today's slowly reviving hotel/motel landscape. "I feel like that smaller, face-to-face interaction is what people want. I hope it is, and I'm always holding out hope." 

However and wherever you hope to find your two beds and a coffee pot at the end of an open road, safe and happy travels to you. 

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