Motels Voyage Tips and guide

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A motel, short for motor hotel, is self-contained travel accommodation adapted for people who are travelling by car. Motels are usually situated along highways, on routes where the distances between population centers are long.

Motels are typically at 1 or 2-star level with few shared amenities. Guest rooms typically have designated parking spaces; lobby and community areas are absent, or very basic. If there's a pool, it will be outdoors and (depending on the climate) usable only seasonally. A minority have an on-site restaurant; there is no room service. As the original architecture had rooms opening directly onto a car park, rooms are self-contained with a private WC, wash handbasin and shower/bath "en suite".

A motel building boom accompanied the expansion of highways in the United States and Canada during the mid-20th century. As an icon of motoring culture, the motels of the 1950s and 1960s represented a lower-cost alternative to the grand old hotels of the railway era. Most were independently owned and were low-end when they were constructed. As the original owners retire, some have withstood the test of time better than others.

Increasing land cost and the growth of cost-competitive economy, limited service hotel chains which began in the late 1970s and early 1980s have halted new motel construction, but many existing properties remain in operation. While a well-operated and properly-maintained motel in a good location may still represent good value for money, a motel in a bad neighbourhood will attract crime, adultery or other illicit activity as the ability to enter the rooms directly from the car park confers privacy.

Rarely, motels have been restored as part of a larger effort to market a destination for nostalgia tourism; U.S. Route 66 is the most common example, although a few historic motels have been saved from demolition and redevelopment in Wildwood (New Jersey)'s beach district.

North American motels are usually designed with one or two floors and a hallway on the outside of the building. By contrast, the economy, limited service hotels which have supplanted motels at the low end of the market might be very tall structures with interior hallways.

In Germany, "motel" (also referred to as Rasthaus, Raststätte oder Autohof) has come to signify any low-end property built to 'one-star' service levels; these would be classed as economy, limited service (ELS) hotels elsewhere. In Austria, the term (and its German equivalents) is a category recognized officially.

In these budget motels, the rooms are typically very basic and small with a small desk, a television (with cable and international channels dependent on location), a double bed (or a double bed with a single bunk above), and a sink. There is no toilet or shower in the room; facilities are provided by single-person showers and toilets accessible from the common hallways, automatically self-cleaned after every use.

In Sweden, several motoring organizations were at the forefront of the development of motels. Most establishments of this type on Swedish motorways are now usually referred to as hotels. During the period from the 1950s until the early 1980s, the word "motel" was more common. From the infancy of mass motoring around 1950–1965, motels were often lavish establishments with their own banquet halls and restaurants.

In 1968, Esso Motor Hotels was founded, which was like a hotel chain owned by the then-major oil company Esso. During the 1980s, these were taken over by Scandic and were called hotels instead of motels/motor hotels. At most, there were around 150 motels in Sweden along major roads in the mid-1970s. Road reconstruction, standardization and lack of maintenance are factors that have led to many of them being closed down over the years, but there are still many buildings left from the motel's heyday. One of Sweden's oldest still operating motels from 1954 is Fleninge Classic Motel in Fleninge, Helsingborg.

In Finland, motels became more common in the 1960s and 1970s, when accommodation establishments were built along the roads. Finnish motels, unlike in the United States, also operated as restaurants and parties, which allowed motels to attract many customers thanks to their program services. However, customers did not necessarily stay overnight in the motel. In the mid-1970s, there were 70 motels in Finland with 1,500 rooms. In 2007, there were only 22 operating motels with 477 rooms.

Motels have not achieved the same popularity as a service type in Finland as they did in the United States, the country where this service concept originated. It has been thought that the traffic flows in a large and sparsely populated country are too thin for motels to be successful, and the accommodation capacity of hotels has been sufficient for leisure car travelers. Gas station chains have built roadside service centers to partially replace motels, the first of which was Linnatuuli, completed in 1992 along the E12 highway in Janakkala.

Most motels in Australia, the Cook Islands, Fiji and New Zealand would be called "efficiencies" in North America. They include a kitchenette equipped with cooking utensils, crockery and cutlery together with a table and at least two chairs, a microwave, cooking rings, toaster and fridge. They thus offer opportunities for self-catering.

The term motel in Latin America and some other parts of the world usually refers to a place of accommodation where the rooms are rented on a short term basis, typically for romantic assignations. Hotels, by contrast, are places of accommodation for travelers and are typically family friendly. Many hotels will not permit persons who are not registered as guests to go beyond the reception area. This is for the safety of both the guests and hotel staff and also to protect the hotel's reputation in what may still be a culturally conservative and Catholic part of the world. So visitors looking for a place to enjoy the physical company of another will often use motels. Also privacy is something of a premium in Latin America, with children often living at home until they are married. For this and other practical reasons, couples, even married couples desiring a little intimacy, sometimes rent a room at a motel. These motels are common in Latin America and do not carry the social stigma that used to be associated with so called "no tell motels" in the United States or Canada. The quality and price of motel accommodations varies, sometimes drastically, with most being clean and well kept. Rooms are booked anonymously with the bill usually being paid in cash. Rather than open car parks in front of the rooms, motels in Latin America may have gates or enclosed garages whose doors can be closed so that the car cannot be seen by passers-by.

In South Korea and Taiwan, the term "motel" is a euphemism for "sex hotel", the equivalent of Japan's love hotels, for couples to go for a tryst.

• La Quinta
• Motel 6
• Super 8