Hotel

"Hotel" is also the letter H in the NATO phonetic alphabet, and see Hotel for the American television program that aired on ABC from 1983 until 1988.

A small hotel in Mureck, Styria, Austria which has preserved its 1960s exterior and interior

A hotel is an establishment that provides lodging on a short-term basis. Hotels often provide a number of additional guest services such as a restaurant, a swimming pool, child care. Some hotels have conference services and encourage groups to hold conventions and meetings at their location. The word derives from the French hôtel. The French spelling (with the circumflex) was once also used in English, but is now rare.

Hotels differ from motels in that most motels have drive-up, exterior entrances to the rooms, while hotels tend to have halls with interior entrances to the rooms.

The cost and quality of hotels are usually relatively indicative of the range and type of services available. Due to the enormous increase in tourism worldwide, during the last decades of the 20th century common standards, especially those of smaller establishments, have improved considerably. For the sake of greater comparability, various rating systems have been introduced, with the one to five stars classification being the most commonly used.

"Basic" accommodation consisting of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand only have largely been replaced by rooms with en-suite bathrooms. Other features many travellers do not want to do without today are a TV, a telephone, an alarm clock, a small refrigerator (usually referred to as "mini-bar") containing snacks and drinks (to be paid for on departure), and tea and coffee making facilities (cups, spoons, an electric kettle and sachets containing instant coffee, tea bags, sugar, and creamer).

However, in Japan is an opposite example, that of the capsule hotel, where facilities and room space have been drastically reduced.

In the United States, many immigrants from India and South Asia are involved in the hotel and hospitality industries.

The lobby of the Hotel Reineldis

Apart from family-run or individual hotels, there are also national and worldwide hotel chains. These include:

Accor Hotels
Best Western
Four Seasons Hotel
Holiday Inn
Hyatt
Hilton Hotels
Howard Johnsons
Le Meridien
Marriott
Paradores de Puerto Rico
Ramada Inn
Starwood Hotels
The Ritz-Carlton

Hotels in fiction

Hotels have often been chosen by authors as the setting of their literary works, e.g. The Hotel New Hampshire. It is especially true of crime fiction (Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun, A Caribbean Mystery, At Bertram's Hotel; Cyril Hare's Suicide Excepted) and farces. Hotels also feature prominently in films (Grand Hotel, Room Service, Plaza Suite), television series, and songs, e.g. "Hotel California".

Hotel

Hotels in fiction

See also