Water bodies
Hilly Areas
Coastal Properties
Palaces
Forest/Wildlife Areas
India 1857
Forts
Old Residences
Old Factories
Recent developments in tourism
There has been an upmarket trend in the tourism over the last few decades, especially in Europe where international travel for short breaks is common. Tourists have higher levels of disposable income and greater leisure time and they are also better-educated and have more sophisticated tastes. There is now a demand for a better quality products, which has resulted in a fragmenting of the mass market for beach vacations; people want more specialised versions, such as 'Club 18 -30', quieter resorts, family-oriented holidays, or niche market-targeted destination hotels. As well, people are taking second short break holidays.
The developments in technology and transport infrastructure such as jumbo jets and low-budget airlines have made many types of tourism more affordable. There have also been changes in lifestyle, such as retiree-age people who living as a tourist all the year round. This is facilitated by internet purchasing of tourism products. Some sites have now started to offer dynamic packaging, in which an inclusive price is quoted for a tailor- made package requested by the customer upon impulse.
There have been a few setbacks in tourism, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks and terrorist threats to tourist destinations such as Bali and European cities. Some of the tourist destinations, including the beach resorts of Cancún have lost popularity due to shifting tastes. In this context, the excessive building and environmental destruction often associated with traditional "sun and beach" tourism may contribute to a destination's saturation and subsequent decline. Spain's Costa Brava, a popular 1960s and 1970s beach location is now facing a crisis in its tourist industry. On December 26, 2004 a tsunami, caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake hit Asian countries bordering the Indian Ocean, and also the Maldives. Tens of thousands of lives were lost, and many tourists died. This, together with the vast clean-up operation in place, has stopped or severely hampered tourism to the area.
The terms tourism and travel are sometimes used interchangeably. In this context travel has a similar definition to tourism, but implies a more purposeful journey. The terms tourism and tourist are sometimes used pejoratively, to imply a shallow interest in the cultures or locations visited by tourists.
Sustainable tourism is becoming more popular as people start to realize the devastating effects poorly planned tourism can have on communities. Receptive tourism is now growing at a very rapid rate in many developing countries, where it is often the most important economic activity in local GDP.
In recent years, second holidays or vacations have become more popular as people's discretionary income increases. Typical combinations are a package to the typical mass tourist resort, with a winter skiing holiday or weekend break to a city or national park.
Islands
Niche tourism
Physical activity or sports-oriented niche tourism includes adventure tourism such as mountaineering and hiking (tramping); Backpacker Tourism; Sport travel to do skiing, golf and scuba diving or see a sports event (e.g., FIFA World Cup); and extreme tourism for people interested in risky activities.
Learning-oriented niche tourism includes audio tourism and audio walking tours; bookstore tourism, in which travellers visit independent bookstores; creative tourism workshops; educational tourism for classes; ancestry tourism, to visit birth places; Hobby tourism (such as garden tours, amateur radio DX-peditions, or square dance cruises).
- The cultural sub-type of learning-oriented niche tourism focuses on cultural and arts activities, including cultural tourism, music tourism, andheritage tourism. The nature and environment-oriented sub-types include Coastal Tourism; Ecotourism (e.g. sustainable tourism in Rainforests or national parks); Garden tourism; and Rural Tourism such as Agritourism.
Lifestyle-oriented niche tourism types include Gay tourism; Gourmet tourism; Wine tourism; Health tourism; Medical tourism; Inclusive tourism (or Accessible Tourism) for people with disabilities.
Other miscellaneous types of niche tourism include:
- Armchair tourism and virtual tourism: not traveling physically, but exploring the world through internet, books, or TV.
- Dark tourism includes travel to sites associated with death and suffering, such as the scene of the Hindenburg airship disaster, or to the sites of disasters (Disaster tourism).
- Free Independent Traveler: a sector of the market in which the tourists select their own accommodation and transport, rather than using the established tourism booking system.
- Pop-culture tourism: tourism by those that visit a particular location after reading about it or seeing it used as a location in a film (e.g., the Lord of the Rings film sets in New Zealand).
- Perpetual tourism: individuals always on vacation; some of them, for tax purposes, to avoid being resident in any country.
- Pilgrimage Tourism: pilgrimages to ancient holy places (Rome and Santiago de Compostela for Catholics, temples and stupas of Nepal for the Hindus and Buddhist, Mount Athos or Painted churches of northern Moldavia for the Orthodox), religious sites such as mosques and shrines.
- Sacred travel or metaphysical tourism is a form of New Age travel where believers travel to and perform rituals at religious sites
- Shopping tourism promoting shopping festivals such as the Dubai Shopping Festival.
- Space tourism: traveling in outer space or on spaceships.
- Vacilando is a special kind of wanderer for whom the process of traveling and discovery is more important than the destination.
- Visiting Family and Relatives (VFR) Tourism: traveling to visit persons related by close family ties and combining this with vacation-type activities; distinct from ancestry tourism, which involves genealogical research
Tourism as an upcoming industry
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) forecasts that international tourism will continue growing at the average annual rate of 4 %.[3] By 2020 Europe will remain the most popular destination, but its share will drop from 60 % in 1995 to 46 %. Long-haul will grow slightly faster than intraregional travel and by 2020 its share will increase from 18 % in 1995 to 24 %.
With the advent of e-commerce, tourism products have become one of the most traded items on the internet. Tourism products and services have been made available through intermediaries, although tourism providers (hotels, airlines, etc.) can sell their services directly. This has put pressure on intermediaries from both on-line and traditional shops.
It has been suggested there is a strong correlation between Tourism expenditure per capita and the degree to which countries play in the global context[4]. Not only as a result of the important economic contribution of the tourism industry, but also as an indicator of the degree of confidence with which global citizens leverage the resources of the globe for the benefit of their local economies. This is why any projections of growth in tourism may serve as an indication of the relative influence that each country will exercise in the future.
Space tourism is expected to "take off" in the first quarter of the 21st century, although compared with traditional destinations the number of tourists in orbit will remain low until technologies such as a space elevator make space travel cheap.
Technological improvement is likely to make possible air-ship hotels, based either on solar-powered airplanes or large dirigibles. Underwater hotels, such as Hydropolis, expected to open in Dubai in 2009, will be built. On the ocean tourists will be welcomed by ever larger cruise ships and perhaps floating cities.
Some futurists expect that movable hotel "pods" will be created that could be temporarily erected anywhere on the planet, where building a permanent resort would be unacceptable politically, economically or environmentally.
Resorts
Hotels
Services and facilities
Basic accommodation of a room with only a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with en-suite bathrooms and, more commonly in the United States than elsewhere, climate control. Other features found may be a telephone, an alarm clock, a TV, and broadband Internet connectivity. Food and drink may be supplied by a mini-bar (which often includes a small refrigerator) 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 or milk).
Some hotels offer various combinations of meals as part of a room and board arrangement. These are often advertised as:
| European Plan | no meals are included, or only a minimal breakfast |
| American Plan | all meals included (full board) |
| Modified American Plan | option of breakfasts and dinners |
In the United Kingdom a hotel is required by law to serve food and drinks to all comers within certain stated hours; to avoid this requirement it is not uncommon to come across "private hotels" which are not subject to this requirement.
However, in Japan the capsule hotel supplies minimal facilities and room space.
Classification
The cost and quality of hotels are usually 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, standards, especially those of smaller establishments, have improved considerably. For the sake of greater comparability, rating systems have been introduced, with the one to five stars classification being most common.[citation needed]
Boutique hotels
"Boutique Hotel" is a term originating in North America to describe intimate, usually luxurious or quirky hotel environments. Boutique hotels differentiate themselves from larger chain or branded hotels by providing an exceptional and personalized level of accommodation, services and facilities. Because of their financial successes in the most recent past, there have been attempts to create chains have adopted the "boutique" look and feel. In the US this trend was started by the "W" hotel chain in the 1990s and most recently this trend can be observed in chains as "aloft", "NYLO","Hyatt Place" and others. Through this corporate adaptation of the concept the term "boutique" also changed and more recently hoteliers prefer to use the term "lifestyle hotels" to get away from the above mentioned quirky image.[citation needed]
Boutique hotels are sometimes furnished in a themed, stylish and/or aspirational manner. Although usually considerably smaller than a mainstream hotel (ranging from 3 to 100 guest rooms) boutique hotels are generally fitted with telephone and wi-fi Internet connections, honesty bars and often cable/pay TV. Guest services are attended to by 24 hour hotel staff. Many of the boutique hotels have on site dining facilities, and the majority offer attractive bars as well as lounges which may also be open to the general public.[citation needed]
Of the total travel market a small percentage are discerning travelers, who place a high importance on privacy, luxury and service delivery. This market is typically price insensitive (made up of both high end leisure and corporate travelers), non-seasonal, high-yielding and repeat, and therefore one which boutique hotel and other high-end operators target as their primary source of income.[citation needed]
Motels
There is no hard and fast rule differentiating motels from other hotels, although the word motel suggests that it is aimed at motorists. This may simply mean that it is a hotel with good access to the road network (on a motorway or ring road) so that a long car journey need not be interrupted for long by town-centre traffic. In other cases the designation is simply an attempt to make the most of a poor location inconvenient for town-centre services and attractions. Classically, though, a motel is a hotel which is made convenient for people who, for whatever personal reason, wish to be able to have quick access from the outside world (especially from their parked car) to the hotel room - without passing the scrutiny of a receptionist or fellow guests. This is usually arranged by having rooms (sometimes in individual chalets or even trailers) arranged around the car park with room doors opening directly to the outside rather than to an internal corridor.[citation needed]
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 so-called Potsdam Conference of the World War II allies Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin in 1945. Other establishments have given name to a particular meal or beverage, as is the case with the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, USA, known for its Waldorf Salad or the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, where the drink Singapore Sling was invented. Another example is the Hotel Sacher in Vienna Austria, home of the Sachertorte or even the Hotel de Paris where the crèpe Suzette was invented.
There are also hotels which became much more popular through films like the Grand Hotel Europe in Saint Petersburg, Russia when James Bond stayed there in the blockbuster Goldeneye. Cannes hotels such as the Carlton or the Martinez become the center of the world during Cannes Film Festival (France).
A number of hotels have entered the public consciousness through popular culture, such as the Ritz Hotel in London, UK ('Putting on The Ritz'), the Algonquin Hotel in New York City with its famed Algonquin Round Table and Hotel Chelsea, also in New York City, subject of a number of songs and also the scene of the stabbing of Nancy Spungen (allegedly by her boyfriend Sid Vicious). Hotels that enter folklore like these two are also often frequented by celebrities, as is the case both with the Ritz and the Chelsea.
Unusual hotels
Many hotels can be considered destinations in themselves, by dint of unusual features of the lodging and/or its immediate environment:
Treehouse hotels
Some hotels, such as the Costa Rica Tree House in the Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, or Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park, Kenya, are built with living trees as structural elements, making them treehouses.
The Ariau Towers near Manaus, Brazil is in the middle of the Amazon, on the Rio Negro. Bill Gates even invested and had a suite built there with satellite internet/phone.
Another hotel with treehouse units is Bayram's Tree Houses in Olympos, Turkey [2].
Another ecological treehouse hotel is in the natural reserve at Rio Claro , Antioquia, (Colombia).
Cave hotels
Desert Cave Hotel in Coober Pedy, South Australia and 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.
Capsule hotels
Capsule hotels are a type of economical hotels that are quite common in Japan.
Ice hotels
Ice hotels, such as the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, melt every spring and are rebuilt out of ice and snow each winter.
Snow hotels
The Mammut Snow Hotel in Finland is located within the walls of the Kemi snow castle, which is the biggest in the world. It includes The Mammut Snow Hotel, The Castle Courtyard, The Snow Restaurant and a chapel for weddings, etc. Its furnishings and decorations, such as sculptures, are all made of snow and ice.
A hotel which offers similar accommodation is the Lainio Snow Hotel in Lapland, near Ylläs, Finland.
Garden hotels
Garden hotels, famous for their gardens before they became hotels, includes Gravetye Manor, the home of William Robinson and Cliveden, designed by Charles Barry with a rose garden by Geoffrey Jellicoe.
Underwater hotels
As of 2005, the only hotel with an underwater room that can be reached without Scuba diving is Utter Inn in Lake Mälaren, Sweden. It only has one room, however, and Jules Undersea Lodge in Key Largo, Florida, which requires Scuba diving, is not much bigger.
Hydropolis is an ambitious project to build a luxury hotel in Dubai, UAE, with 220 suites, all on the bottom of the Persian Gulf, 20 meters (66 ft) below the surface. Its architecture will feature two domes that break the surface and an underwater train tunnel, all made of transparent materials such as glass and acrylic.
Other unusual hotels
The Dariush Grand Hotel in Kish Island, Iran, built with the theme of the world heritage Persepolis.
The Library Hotel in New York City is unique in that its ten floors are arranged according to the Dewey Decimal System.
The Rogers Centre, formerly SkyDome, in Toronto, Canada is the only stadium to have a hotel connected to it, with 70 rooms overlooking the field. West Ham United F.C.in the UK now has a hotel with rooms that overlook the pitch and sometimes double as executive boxes for important games, as does Coventry City's Ricoh Arena.
The Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, built on an artificial island, is structured in the shape of a sail of a boat.
The RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California is the only 1930s ocean liner still in existence. Its elegant first-class staterooms are now used as a hotel.
The Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai houses an extremely expensive hotel with only 20 rooms.
The Hotel Ca Sa Padrina in Palma de Mallorca It is an automatic hotel that works without recepcionist at all
Beach Resorts
Ski Resorts
Apartment
An apartment is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Apartments may be owned (by an owner-occupier) or rented (by tenants).
The term "apartment" is favored in North America, whereas the term "flat" is sometimes, but not exclusively used in the United Kingdom and most other English-speaking areas and Commonwealth nations[citation needed] (Canada being a notable exception); in those countries, "apartment" is often used to describe more upmarket flats.
Some apartment-dwellers own their apartments, either as co-ops, in which the residents own shares of a corporation that owns the building or development; or in condominiums, whose residents own their apartments and share ownership of the public spaces. Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but large older houses are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment connotes a residential unit or section in a building. Apartment building owners, lessors, or managers often use the more general word units to refer to apartments. Units can be used to refer to rental business suites as well as residential apartments. When there is no tenant occupying an apartment, the lessor is said to have a vacancy. For apartment lessors, each vacancy represents a loss of income from rent-paying tenants for the time the apartment is vacant (i.e., unoccupied). Lessors' objectives are often to minimize the vacancy rate for their units. The owner of the apartment typically when transferring possession to the occupant(s) gives him/her the key to the apartment entrance door(s) and any other keys needed to live there, such as a common key to the building or any other common areas, and an individual unit mailbox key. When the occupant(s) move out, these keys are typically returned to the owner.
Apartment types and characteristics
Apartments can be classified into several types. Studio, efficiency, bedsit, and bachelor style apartments all tend to be the smallest apartments with the cheapest rents in a given area. These kinds of apartment usually consist mainly of a large room which is the living, dining, and bedroom combined. There are usually kitchen facilities as part of this central room, but the bathroom is its own smaller separate room. Moving up from the efficiencies are one-bedroom apartments where one bedroom is a separate room from the rest of the apartment. Then there are two-bedroom, three-bedroom, etc. apartments. Small apartments often have only one entrance/exit. Large apartments often have two entrances/exits, perhaps a door in the front and another in the back. Depending on the building design, the entrance/exit doors may be directly to the outside or to a common area inside, such as a hallway. Depending on location, apartments may be available for rent furnished with furniture or unfurnished into which a tenant usually moves in with their own furniture. Permanent carpeting is often included in an apartment.
Laundry facilities may be found in a common area accessible to all the tenants in the building, or each apartment may have its own facilities. Depending on when the building was built and the design of the building, utilities such as water, heating, and electricity may be common for all the apartments in the building or separate for each apartment and billed separately to each tenant (however, many areas in the US have ruled it illegal to split a water bill among all the tenants, especially if a pool is on the premises). Outlets for connection to telephones are typically included in apartments. Telephone service is optional and is practically always billed separately from the rent payments. Cable television and similar amenities are extra also. Parking space(s), air conditioner, and extra storage space may or may not be included with an apartment. Rental leases often limit the maximum number of people who can reside in each apartment. On or around the ground floor of the apartment building, a series of mailboxes are typically kept in a location accessible to the public and, thus, to the letter-carrier too. Every unit typically gets its own mailbox with individual keys to it. Some very large apartment buildings with a full-time staff may take mail from the mailman and provide mail-sorting service. Near the mailboxes or some other location accessible by outsiders, there may be a buzzer (equivalent to a doorbell) for each individual unit. In smaller apartment buildings such as two- or three-flats, or even four-flats, garbage is often disposed of in trash containers similar to those used at houses. In larger buildings, garbage is often collected in a common trash bin or dumpster. For cleanliness or minimizing noise, many lessors will place restrictions on tenants regarding keeping pets in an apartment.
In some parts of the world, the word apartment is used generally to refer to a new purpose-built self-contained residential unit in a building, whereas the word flat means a converted self-contained unit in an older building. An industrial, warehouse, or commercial space converted to an apartment is commonly called a loft.
When part of a house is converted for the ostensible use of a landlord's family member, the unit may be known as an in-law apartment or granny flat, though these (sometimes illegally) created units are often occupied by ordinary renters rather than family members. In Canada these suites are commonly located in the basements of houses and are therefore normally called basement suites.
Remote monuments
Bed and Breakfast
A Bed and Breakfast, which can also be referred to simply as a B&B, used to be considered almost exclusively as a type of boarding house typically operating out of a large single family residence. Over the past twenty or thirty years however, that definition has changed. As travelers became increasingly interested in unique destinations, many larger B&B's flourished operating as professionally run lodging establishments. These days a Bed and Breakfast can range from a smaller home-stay operation, all the way up to historical properties with upwards of twenty or more rooms that more closely resemble the traditional definition of an "Inn." One thing most of the properties have in common is a focus on customer service, individually decorated rooms, and a home-cooked but restaurant-style breakfast.
Generally, across all of the different properties, regardless of size, guests are accommodated at night in private bedrooms and breakfast is served in the morning - either in the bedroom or, more commonly, in a dining room or the host's kitchen. Bathrooms in the larger properties tend to be compltely private, though in some properties they may be shared (with other guests or with the family in smaller establishments) or en-suite (where the washing facilities are directly accessed from the guest's bedroom).
B&Bs may be operated either as a primary occupation or as a secondary source of income. Staff often consists of the house's owners and members of their family who live there in the case of smaller operations. Often properties with more than four or five rooms hire professional management or even local chefs to prepare the meals.
Staying at a B&B can offer better access to popular locations "off the beaten path" which may not be convenient to the city center or from hotels. B&B properties may often be located closer to locations where other larger lodging competitors may not place a guest accommodation because of market conditions.
The term "bed and breakfast" is also used to refer to a meal plan where breakfast is the only meal provided, commonly in package holidays, in a major hotel that may provide other meals to only some customers.
History
The B&B arrangement is a very old one. Before the 20th century, it was quite normal for country travellers to spend the night at a private house rather than an inn, and this custom persists in many parts of the world. However, prior to the 19th century, this was strictly an informal arrangement constrained by acquaintance and social rank; a doctor might stay with a doctor or pharmacist, while a nobleman would stay with the local gentry.
The abbreviation of "B&B" on roadside signs first became popular in the British Isles - typically with a detachable "Vacancies" sign swinging below.
National differences
Australia
Despite the cultural similarities, there are far fewer[1] B&B's in the whole continent of Australia than there are in just the South Island of New Zealand despite the resident population being more than twenty times greater.
Since 1879 the average per capita disposable income of Australians has been greater than that of New Zealanders and this has mitigated the powerful incentive to let out rooms in their homes to travellers. Another factor may be that Australia has, apart from City States such as Singapore, the greatest concentration of city dwellers anywhere on the globe and these cities are amply supplied with budget hotels and motels.
Belgium
In Belgium bed and breakfasts generally offer better value than hotels, and provide the opportunity to sample the local food and meet new people. Bed and breakfast accommodations often have a very relaxing, homey feel to them.
Britain and Ireland
Britain and Ireland have some of the most expensive hotel beds in the European Union[citation needed] and throughout the British Isles, B&Bs are a budget option where owners often take pride in the high service levels, local knowledge and personal touch that they are able to offer.
There tend to be concentrations of B&Bs in the seaside towns where, historically, the working classes holidayed such as Newcastle in Ireland and Blackpool in England but they are also widespread in isolated rural areas such as the Highlands of Scotland and Connemara where there is not a year-round concentration of travellers sufficient to sustain an hotel.
Breakfast is usually cooked on demand for the guest and usually features bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, etc but, increasingly, because of either a desire of owners to economise or guests to minimise their calorie intake, a continental breakfast is becoming more common. In Ireland, most B&Bs serve a traditional Full breakfast as a point of pride.
In recent years some bed and breakfast businesses in the UK have struggled against budget hotel chains such as Premier Travel Inn and Travelodge. Traditionally, business travellers used B&Bs but many of these clients now tend to stay in budget hotel chains. However, in holiday areas the B&B or small hotel still prevails. Unlike the 'chain' accommodation providers these provide a more comprehensive service and breakfast is included in the price.
Cuba
In Cuba, which opened up to tourism in the 1990s after the financial support of the Soviet Union ended, a form of B&B called casa particular ("private home") became the main form of accommodation outside the tourist resorts.
Israel
The Israeli B&B is known as a zimmer. All over the country, but especially in the north of the country and the Galilee, zimmers have become a popular alternative to hotels for romantic weekends or family vacations.[1]
New Zealand
As in the USA, Bed and Breakfasts in New Zealand tend to be more expensive than Motels and often feature historic homes and lovingly furnished bedrooms at a commensurate price. The historic city of Nelson has an unusually high concentration of both of these accommodation alternatives because it was historically the place where kiwis holidayed.
North America
Many B&Bs in North America (and New Zealand) try to create a historical ambiance, with old properties turned into guesthouses decorated with antique furniture. Recently B&B and Inn owners have been launching upscale amenities to improve business and move "up-market." It is not uncommon now to find free wireless internet access, free parking, spa services, or nightly wine and cheese hours. Due to the need to stay competitive with the rest of the lodging industry, larger bed and breakfast inns have expanded to offer wedding services, business conference facilities, and meeting spaces as well as many other services a large hotel might offer.
Regulations
Regulations and laws vary considerably in each national jurisdiction both in content and extent and in enforcement.
The most common regulations B&Bs must follow pertain to safety. They are usually required by local and national ordinances to have fire resistance, a sufficient fire escape plan in place, and smoke detectors in each guest room. Kitchens and equipment used to serve meals are also often required to be monitored for hygienic operation, but there are significant national and local differences.
Most B&Bs are generally compliant with their jurisdiction's laws. However, guests are mostly unfamiliar with these guidelines and may miss any violations out of ignorance or a desire not to be involved in reporting violations while on holiday.
National associations
While various local governments have regulations and inspect for health issues and fire safety code, membership in a state/provincial/national bed and breakfast association can indicate a higher standard of hospitality. Associations sometimes review their members' properties and tend to have additional standards of care.
These associations also facilitate marketing of the individual B&Bs and provide a stamp of approval that the business in question is reputable. This "stamp of approval", however, may be just an indication that membership dues have have been paid.
USA
Two for profit professional innkeeper associations that operate in the United States are the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (Professional Association of Innkeepers International) and Select Registry (Select Registry)
The Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) is a national for profit organization with members in the U.S., Canada, and other countries. PAII currently holds annual trade conferences for education of innkeepers and prospective innkeepers. Attendance to these conferences is open and well advertised to all. PAII also provides an industry study to all of its members at low cost that details operations and finance of the industry.
Select Registry is a national organization that inspects its member properties on a regular basis, beyond routine inspections that may be carried out by the local government.[2]
A third almost ad hoc organization is the Caucus of American Innkeepers (or CAIK) is a social and professional networking organization for owners of B&Bs, country inns, and similar properties.
Reservations and payment
Guests are usually expected to pay for their stay upon or before arrival and may be asked to leave in time before the next guest arrives so that their room can be properly prepared. This policy is not unlike any regular hotel accommodation; but the innkeeper, in fact, may have more discretion being the owner of the property. Innkeepers often have a good idea as to when the next guest is arriving and may be able to be more flexible than a hotel. This is all part of the personalized service Innkeepers can offer guests due to the property's smaller size.
Booking a B&B or Inn has gotten much easier with advent of the Internet. Many properties offer fully bookable online reservations from their website. In addition, websites like BedandBreakfast.comand BBOnline offer online reservations for a vast number of properties.
Because most B&Bs are small, typically with 2-20 rooms, it is advisable for anyone wanting to stay at a particular B&B to make reservations reasonably well in advance of their travel date. Location and time of year play an important role in room availability. Consultation with a qualified travel agent or the innkeeper with this type of accommodation may be helpful. Many B&Bs increasingly belong to associations and have a web presence.
Be aware that prices and tariffs described in various books and paper travel guides are often obsolete by the time they are published - Wikitravel may contain more up to date information.
Wetlands
Old Towns
Motel
Entering dictionaries after World War II, the word motel (portmanteau of "motor" and "hotel" or "motorists' hotel") referred initially to a single building of connected rooms whose doors face a parking lot and/or common area or a series of small cabins with common parking. Their creation was driven by increased driving distances on the United States highway system that allowed easy cross-country travel.
Contents[hide] |
History
The concept originated with the Motel Inn of San Luis Obispo, constructed in 1925 by Arthur Heineman.
Unlike their predecessors, auto camps and tourist courts, motels quickly adopted a homogenized appearance. Typically one would find an 'I'- or 'L'- or 'U'-shaped structure that included rooms, an attached manager's office, a reception which usually takes up the space of one guest room and perhaps a small diner. Postwar motels sought more visual distinction, often featuring eye-catching neon signs which employed pop culture themes that ranged from Western imagery of cowboys and Indians to contemporary images of spaceships and atomic symbols.
The motel began in the 1920s as mom-and-pop motor courts on the outskirts of a town. They attracted the first road warriors as they crossed the United States in their new automobiles. They usually had a grouping of small cabins and their anonymity made them ideal trysting places (or the "hot trade" in industry lingo). Even the famous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde were frequent guests, using motels as hideouts. The motels' potential for breeding perceived lust and larceny alarmed then FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who attacked motels and auto camps in an article he penned called "Camps of Crime", which ran in the February 1940 issue of American Magazine.
Motels differed from hotels in their emphasis on largely anonymous interactions between owners and occupants, their location along highways (as opposed to urban cores), and their orientation to the outside (in contrast to hotels whose doors typically face an interior hallway). Motels almost by definition included a parking lot, while older hotels were not built with automobile parking in mind.
With the 1952 introduction of Kemmons Wilson's Holiday Inn, the 'mom and pop' motels of that era went into decline. Eventually, the emergence of the interstate highway system, along with other factors, led to a blurring of the motel and the hotel. Today, family-owned motels with as few as five rooms may still be found along older highways. The quality and standards of every independent motel differ, so it is always wise to consider alternatives before settling on a room.
Long-stay accommodation
Motels with low rates sometimes serve as housing for people who are not able to afford an apartment or have recently lost their home and need somewhere to stay until further arrangements are made.
Short-time
In most countries of Latin America and some countries of East Asia, motels are also known as short-time hotels, and offer a short-time or "transit" stay with hourly rates primarily intended for people not requiring a full night's accommodation.
Ski slopes
Fossil Sites
