Hotel

A hotel is a commercial establishment that provides customers with lodging and other services that could include meals, conference rooms, retail stores, and activities. Hotels arose in ancient times in response to people's need to travel. Ancient hotels were unsanitary and forced travelers to share accommodations. Hotel conditions improved somewhat into the early medieval period and became more modern in Europe in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The hotel industry is believed to have arisen in the United States about this time, and competing hotel owners began to offer customers an increasingly luxurious array of services. In the twenty-first century, tourists and other travelers have many hotel options available to them, such as inexpensive motels, luxury hotels, spas, and resorts. Global hotel revenues reached 1.5 trillion dollars in 2023.

Background

The word hotel first appeared in about the 1600s. It derives from the French word hôtel, meaning "mansion" or "large house." The word hôtel derives from the Old French word hostel, which refers to a lodging. Although these words arose only in the early modern era, the institution of providing travelers with accommodations for money dates to ancient times. Even in the last few millennia BCE, travelers in different areas around the world could stay and rest at inns along their journeys. Many ancient inns were simply private homes that featured spacious halls where travelers could spread bedding on the floor and sleep. These shared rooms were not always clean. Innkeepers, however, sometimes fed their guests and entertained them with song and dance.

These types of inns were common into the last few centuries BCE and the early centuries CE. Inns were prominent throughout the territories of the Roman Empire because of the amount of travel required of Roman soldiers and administrators. Inns became even more pervasive throughout the Near East and Europe after the crucifixion of Jesus in the 30s CE. The subsequent spread of Christianity in the Western world inspired pilgrims to begin traveling for religious purposes; for instance, many Christians journeyed to the Holy Land of Jerusalem. In the medieval era, the Roman Catholic Church kept inns and monasteries where religious travelers could stay and receive free bread and ale. In the mid-1000s CE, the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, also known as the Knights Hospitaller, maintained inns for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem.

Privately owned inns proliferated in Europe into the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance period of the 1300s and 1400s. The Tabard, for instance, was a famous inn in Southwark, London, England, where many pilgrims stayed while on religious journeys. Geoffrey Chaucer famously mentioned the establishment in his late 1300s work The Canterbury Tales.

The conditions of inns improved in the late 1700s and early 1800s, particularly in Western Europe and the United States. New forms of travel such as the train and steamship allowed more people to travel long distances for business, education, or pleasure. Inns needed to provide clean accommodations and acceptable services for these people. It was around the nineteenth century that hotels began to take on the qualities for which they would become commonly known in later centuries.

Overview

Historians generally point to the construction of the City Hotel in New York City in 1794 as the birth of the modern hotel industry. The building is believed to be the first constructed specifically as a hotel. This initiated fierce competition among American hotel owners to offer travelers the best in accommodations and other services. The Tremont House that opened in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1829 is known as the first American luxury hotel. It offered wealthy travelers single rooms, doors with locks, and basins and soap for bathing. Other luxury hotels opened during the rest of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. These included the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago, Illinois; the Paxton Hotel in Omaha, Nebraska; the Palmer House in St. Louis, Missouri; and the Waldorf Astoria (and its multiple later incarnations) in New York City.

The Great Depression, the global economic downturn of the 1930s, nearly destroyed the American hotel industry, as many hotels went bankrupt. The onset of World War II (1939–1945) reinvigorated American hotels, and the economic boom that lasted into the 1950s eventually allowed famed American hotelier Conrad Hilton to expand his Hilton Hotels internationally. This era also saw the rise of motels, which marketed themselves as cheap, plain lodging options for travelers who simply needed a place to sleep for a night. Hotels became highly corporatized over the rest of the twentieth century. Many hotels became part of international chains that offered guests identical accommodations anywhere in the world.

Travelers have a variety of hotel brands available to them in the twenty-first century, as hotels have exploded as one of the most successful industries in the world, with the global hotel market size reaching 1.5 trillion dollars in 2023. Each type of hotel features a different set of accommodations that travelers can assess to find the most appropriate lodgings for their travel needs. Motels and budget hotels, for instance, offer minimal extra services in their facilities in exchange for lower room rates. American budget hotels include Red Roof Inn and Travelodge. Meanwhile, suite hotels provide guests with additional rooms or other living spaces, including kitchens or kitchenettes, connected to the standard bedrooms. Embassy Suites by Hilton is an example of a famous suite hotel chain.

Boutique hotels generate business by featuring themes designed to put guests into certain mind frames. Some boutique hotels may use furniture from a particular historical period, while others might be constructed with unusual architectural designs or decorated with specific artistic motifs. The Seven Hotel Paris in France, as part of its allure, offers beds that appear to be levitating just above the floor.

Resorts and spas are hotel complexes that attempt to provide guests with an array of services to meet their needs. These include luxury accommodations, spa services such as steam baths and massages, restaurants, and diverse forms of entertainment ranging from concerts, casinos, nightclubs, horseback riding, and bird hunting.

Luxury hotels, such as those managed by the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, claim to offer guests the best accommodations and services available anywhere. These include upscale rooms, diligent housekeeping, fine-dining restaurants, butlers, chauffeurs, and concierge services. The Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts is a famous example of an international luxury hotel company.

To be more competitive, many modern hotels chains began offering a variety of perks to lure costomers to their doors. Free breakfast, coffee, and happy hour cocktails and appetizers have become staples of many establishments, as have fitness facilities, pet-friendly rooms, luxury bath products, and technological upgrades like digital keys, access to personal television streaming services, and free wireless internet access.

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