The development of motels

The heavy and continual increase in road traffic which has taken place during the last quarter of a century, and especially since the end of the last war, has made necessary the extension of facilities to feed and accommodate motorists. In the United States of America, where distances between towns are great and the intervening countryside is usually devoid of villages, the need for roadside hotels became apparent earlier than in Europe. The result was that special motorists' hotels, of which the name soon became contracted to “motel”, started to make their appearance, and their success encouraged an ever growing army of operators to flock into the field. I am told there are now over 75,000 motels in the States as compared with about 45,000 hotels. Today, therefore, the motel industry is firmly established on the other side of the Atlantic while conditions on this side are becoming increasingly more favourable to the basic plan of specialised hotels for motorists.