Larger, higher-priced hotels may provide additional guest facilities such as a swimming pool, a business center with computers, printers, and other office equipment, childcare, conference and event facilities, tennis or basketball courts, gymnasium, restaurants, day spa, and social function services.
In Japan, capsule hotels provide a tiny room suitable only for sleeping and shared bathroom facilities.
A motel is a small-sized low-rise lodging with direct access to individual rooms from the car parking area.
Each department head manages their specific area, trains staff, handles departmental budgets, and ensures their team delivers quality service that aligns with the hotel’s standards.
The precursor to the modern hotel was the inn of medieval Europe, possibly dating back to the rule of Ancient Rome.
A typical layout of an inn featured an inner court with bedrooms on the two sides, with the kitchen and parlour at the front and the stables at the back.
Some English towns had as many as ten such inns and rivalry between them became intense, not only for the income from the stagecoach operators but for the revenue from the food and drink supplied to the wealthy passengers.
By the end of the century, coaching inns were being run more professionally, with a regular timetable being followed and fixed menus for food.
[4] Inns began to cater to richer clients in the mid-18th century, and consequently grew in grandeur and in the level of service provided.
Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is part of a United States law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or national origin in places of public accommodation.
Example brands include: Grand Hyatt, Conrad, InterContinental, Sofitel, Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons, The Peninsula, Rosewood, JW Marriott and The Ritz-Carlton.
Lifestyle luxury resorts are classified with a Five Star hotel rating depending on the country and local classification standards.
Example brands include: Waldorf Astoria, St. Regis, Wynn Resorts, MGM, Shangri-La, Oberoi, Belmond, Jumeirah, Aman, Taj Hotels, Hoshino, Raffles, Fairmont, Banyan Tree, Regent and Park Hyatt.
Most focused or select service hotels may still offer full-service accommodations but may lack leisure amenities such as an on-site restaurant or a swimming pool.
Common during the 1950s and 1960s, motels were often located adjacent to a major highway, where they were built on inexpensive land at the edge of towns or along stretches of freeway.
Hotels may offer rooms for microstays,[14] a type of booking for less than 24 hours where the customer chooses the check in time and the length of the stay.
[17] The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower in Mumbai is one of India's most famous and historic hotels because of its association with the Indian independence movement.
The Algonquin Hotel in New York City is famed as the meeting place of the literary group, the Algonquin Round Table, and Hotel Chelsea, also in New York City, has been the subject of a number of songs and the scene of the stabbing of Nancy Spungen (allegedly by her boyfriend Sid Vicious).
Some hotels are built specifically as a destination in itself to create a captive trade, example at casinos, amusement parks and holiday resorts.
The Cuevas Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (named after the author) in Guadix, Spain, as well as several hotels in Cappadocia, Turkey, are notable for being built into natural cave formations, some with rooms underground.
The Desert Cave Hotel in Coober Pedy, South Australia, is built into the remains of an opal mine.
Located on the coast but high above sea level, these hotels offer unobstructed panoramic views and a great sense of privacy without the feeling of total isolation.
Some examples from around the globe are the Riosol Hotel in Gran Canaria, Caruso Belvedere Hotel in Amalfi Coast (Italy), Aman Resorts Amankila in Bali, Birkenhead House in Hermanus (South Africa), The Caves in Jamaica and Caesar Augustus in Capri.
[22] Some hotels fill daytime occupancy with day rooms, for example, Rodeway Inn and Suites near Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The Maya Guesthouse in Nax Mont-Noble in the Swiss Alps, is the first hotel in Europe built entirely with straw bales.
Due to the insulation values of the walls it needs no conventional heating or air conditioning system, although the Maya Guesthouse is built at an altitude of 1,300 metres (4,300 ft) in the Alps.
Some hotels are built with living trees as structural elements, for example the Treehotel near Piteå, Sweden, the Costa Rica Tree House near the Jairo Mora Sandoval Gandoca-Manzanillo Mixed Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica; the Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park, Kenya; the Ariau Towers near Manaus, Brazil, on the Rio Negro in the Amazon; and Bayram's Tree Houses in Olympos, Turkey.
Hydropolis, project in Dubai, would have had suites on the bottom of the Persian Gulf, and Jules' Undersea Lodge in Key Largo, Florida, requires scuba diving to access its rooms.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest hotel in operation is the Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan in Yamanashi, Japan.
[40][41] In October 2014, the Anbang Insurance Group, based in China, purchased the Waldorf Astoria New York in Manhattan for US$1.95 billion, making it the world's most expensive hotel ever sold.