A
hotel is an establishment that provides paid
lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic
accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a
bed, a
cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with
modern facilities, including
en-suite bathrooms and
air conditioning or
climate control. Additional common features found in hotel rooms are a
telephone, an alarm clock, a television, a safe, a
mini-bar with snack foods and drinks, and facilities for making tea and coffee. Luxury features include bathrobes and slippers, a
pillow menu, twin-sink vanities, and jacuzzi bathtubs. Larger hotels may provide additional guest facilities such as a restaurant, swimming pool, fitness center, business center, childcare, conference facilities and social function services.
Hotel rooms are usually
numbered (or named in some smaller hotels and
B&Bs) to allow guests to identify their room.
Some hotels offer meals as part of a room and board arrangement. In the
United Kingdom, a hotel is required by law to serve food and drinks to all guests within certain stated hours. In Japan,
capsule hotels provide a minimized amount of room space and shared facilities.
| Contents- 1 Etymology
- 2 Types
- 3 Management
- 4 Historic hotels
- 5 Unusual hotels
- 5.1 Treehouse hotels
- 5.2 Bunker hotels
- 5.3 Shoe hotels
- 5.4 Cave hotels
- 5.5 Capsule hotels
- 5.6 Ice and snow hotels
- 5.7 Garden hotels
- 5.8 Underwater hotels
- 5.9 Other unusual hotels
- 5.10 Resort hotels
- 5.11 Railway hotels
- 6 Motels
- 7 World record setting hotels
- 7.1 Largest
- 7.2 Oldest
- 7.3 Tallest
- 8 Hotel rooms as an investment
- 9 Living in hotels
- 10 Fictitious hotels
|
Etymology
The word
hotel is derived from the
French hôtel (coming from
hôte meaning
host), which referred to a French version of a
townhouse or any other building seeing frequent visitors, rather than a place offering accommodation. In contemporary French usage,
hôtel now has the same meaning as the
English term, and
hôtel particulier is used for the old meaning. The French spelling, with the
circumflex, was also used in English, but is now rare. The circumflex replaces the 's' found in the earlier
hostel spelling, which over time took on a new, but closely related meaning. Grammatically, hotels usually take the
definite article - hence "The Astoria Hotel" or simply "The Astoria."
Types
Hotel operations vary in size, function, and cost. Most hotels and major hospitality companies that operate hotels have set widely accepted industry standards to classify hotel types. General categories include the following;
Management
The management of a hotel operation is considered a major business operation. Degree programs such as
Hospitality management studies and certification programs prepare hotel managers for industry practice.
Historic hotels
Some hotels have gained their renown through tradition, by hosting significant events or persons, such as Schloss
Cecilienhof in
Potsdam,
Germany, which derives its fame from the
Potsdam Conference of the
World War II allies
Winston Churchill,
Harry Truman and
Joseph Stalin in 1945. 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. Some establishments have given name to a particular meal or beverage, as is the case with the
Waldorf Astoria in
New York City, United States where the
Waldorf Salad was first created or the
Hotel Sacher in
Vienna,
Austria, home of the
Sachertorte. Others have achieved fame by association with dishes or cocktails created on their premises, such as the
Hotel de Paris where the
crêpe Suzette was invented or the
Raffles Hotel in
Singapore, where the
Singapore Sling cocktail was devised.
A number of hotels have entered the public consciousness through popular culture, such as the
Ritz Hotel in
London, United Kingdom, through its association with
Irving Berlin's song, '
Puttin' on the Ritz'. 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). The Waldorf Astoria and
Statler hotels in New York City are also immortalized in the names of
Muppets Statler and Waldorf.
[citation needed]Unusual hotels
Many hotels can be considered
destinations in themselves, by dint of unusual features of the lodging or its immediate environment:
Treehouse hotels
Some hotels are built with living trees as structural elements, for example the Costa Rica Tree House in the Gandoca-Manzanillo 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.
Bunker hotels
The
Null Stern Hotel in
Teufen,
Appenzellerland,
Switzerland and the Concrete Mushrooms in
Albania[1] are former nuclear
bunkers transformed into hotels.
Shoe hotels
Shoe hotels are hotels built into a giant
shoe. The idea was inspired by the "Old Woman who lived in a shoe" myth. The largest such hotel is currently in
Hokkaido, Japan. The most popular shoe hotels are modelled after a woman's
platform dancing shoe.
[citation needed]Cave hotels
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.
Capsule hotels
Capsule hotels are a type of economical hotel that are found in
Japan, where people sleep in stacks of rectangular containers.
Ice and snow hotels
The Ice Hotel in
Jukkasjärvi,
Sweden, and the Hotel de Glace in Duschenay, Canada, melt every spring and are rebuilt each winter; the Mammut Snow Hotel in
Finland is located within the walls of the
Kemi snow castle; and the Lainio Snow Hotel is part of a snow village near
Ylläs,
Finland.
Garden hotels
Garden hotels, famous for their gardens before they became hotels, include Gravetye Manor, the home of garden designer
William Robinson, and
Cliveden, designed by
Charles Barry with a rose garden by
Geoffrey Jellicoe.
Underwater hotels
Some hotels have accommodation underwater, such as
Utter Inn in
Lake Mälaren, Sweden.
Hydropolis, project cancelled 2004 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.
Other unusual hotels
- The Library Hotel in New York City, is unique in that each of its ten floors is assigned one category from the Dewey Decimal System.
- The Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, built on an artificial island, is structured in the shape of a boat's sail.
- The Jailhotel Löwengraben in Lucerne, Switzerland is a converted prison now used as a hotel.
- The Luxor, a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States due to its pyramidal structure.
- The Liberty Hotel in Boston, used to be the Charles Street Jail.
- Built in Scotland and completed in 1936, The former ocean liner RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, United States uses its first-class staterooms as a hotel, after retiring in 1967 from Transatlantic service.
- There are several hotels throughout the world built into converted airliners.
Resort hotels
Some hotels are built specifically to create a captive trade, example at
casinos and
holiday resorts. Though of course hotels have always been built in popular desinations, the defining characteristic of a resort hotel is that it exists purely to serve another attraction, the two having the same owners.
In
Las Vegas there is a tradition of
one-upmanship with luxurious and extravagant hotels in a concentrated area known as the Las Vegas Strip. This trend now has extended to other resorts worldwide, but the concentration in Las Vegas is still the world's highest: nineteen of the world's twenty-five largest hotels by room count are on the Strip, with a total of over 67,000 rooms.
[2]In Europe
Center Parcs might be considered a chain of resort hotels, since the sites are largely man-made (though set in natural surroundings such as
country parks) with captive trade, whereas
holiday camps such as
Butlins and
Pontin's are probably not considered as resort hotels, since they are set at traditional holiday destinations which existed before the camps.
Railway hotels
Frequently, expanding railway companies built grand hotels at their termini, such as the
Midland Hotel, Manchester next to
the former Manchester Central Station and in London the ones above
St Pancras railway station and
Charing Cross railway station also in London is the
Chiltern Court Hotel above
Baker Street tube station and
Canada's grand railway hotels. They are or were mostly, but not exclusively, used by those travelling by rail.
Motels
A motel (motor hotel) is a hotel which is for a short stay, usually for a night, for motorists on long journeys. It has direct access from the room to the vehicle (for example a central parking lot around which the buildings are set), and is built conveniently close to major roads and intersections.
World record setting hotels
Largest
In 2006,
Guinness World Records listed the
First World Hotel in
Genting Highlands,
Malaysia as the world's largest hotel with a total of 6,118 rooms.
[3] Similarly, the Venetian Palazzo Complex, in Las Vegas, has the most number of rooms. It has 7,117 rooms followed by MGM Grand Hotel, which contains 6,852 rooms.
see also List of largest hotels in the worldOldest
According to the
Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest hotel still in operation is the
Hoshi Ryokan, in the Awazu Onsen area of
Komatsu,
Japan which opened in 718.
[4]Tallest
The
Rose Tower in
United Arab Emirates is the tallest building used exclusively as a hotel.
[5] Originally, the tower was to be 380 m (1,250 ft) high, but design modification reduced it to 333 m (1,093 ft).
Hotel rooms as an investment
Some hotels sell individual rooms to
investors. Timeshare is an example of this kind of investment. The buyer is allowed to stay in the room without charge or at a reduced rate for a given number of days each year. The investor is paid a share of the takings for the room. Rooms can be sold on a
leasehold basis, sometimes on a 999 year lease. Room owners are free to sell at any time.
[6]Living in hotels
A number of public figures have notably chosen to take up semi-permanent or permanent residence in hotels.
- Actor Richard Harris lived at the Savoy Hotel while in London. Hotel archivist Susan Scott recounts an anecdote that when he was being taken out of the building on a stretcher shortly before his death he raised his hand and told the diners "it was the food."[7]
- Inventor Nikola Tesla lived the last 10 years of his life at the New Yorker Hotel until 1943 when he died in the hotel room.
- Millionaire Howard Hughes lived his last few years in a Las Vegas hotel.
- Egyptian actor Ahmad Zaki lived his last 15 years in Ramses Hilton Hotel - Cairo.
- Larry Fine (of the Three Stooges) and his family lived in hotels, due to his extravagant spending habits and his wife's dislike for housekeeping. They first lived in the President Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where his daughter Phyllis was raised, then the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. Not until the late 1940s did Larry buy a home in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, California.
- General Douglas McArthur lived his last 14 years in the penthouse of the Waldorf Towers, a part of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
- American actress Elaine Stritch lived in the Savoy Hotel in London for over a decade.[8]
- Fashion designer Coco Chanel lived in the Hotel Ritz Paris on and off for more than 30 years.
- Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera lived in the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland from 1961 until his death in 1977.
- British entrepreneur Jack Lyons lived in the Hotel Mirador Kempinski in Switzerland for several years until his death in 2008.
Fictitious hotels
Hotels have been used as the settings for television programmes such as the British situation comedies
Fawlty Towers and
I'm Alan Partridge, the British
soap opera Crossroads, and in films such as the Bates Motel in
Hitchcock's 1960 film
Psycho and The Dolphin Hotel in
1408, a short story by Stephen King which was adapted into a 2007 film.
Another is Tipton Hotel, a fictitious hotel in Disney's "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody." When the show later became a spinoff into "The Suite Life on Deck," the Tipton evolved into the SS Tipton, run by the same company.
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