Motel vs Hotel: What’s the difference? And does it matter?

Appearing on ancient trade routes, they’d have provided basic overnight shelter for traveling merchants in exchange for some form of payment.

In all likelihood, though, this sort of accommodation stretches further back into unrecorded history to a time we can only imagine.

On the other hand, the motor hotel, or motel, can trace its origins – or at least the origin of the word ‘motel’ – to a precise and definite point: post-war America, an era still in living memory for a few…