The room flickers, briefly illuminated by the headlights of a car outside, causing various fixtures and the television to glow. The ignition is cut off. Closed doors. From my bed, I see the arriving guests passing their suitcases through my window. I am struck by a sense of intimacy, like seeing an elegant house through gauze curtains from the outside sidewalks, in reverse.
I am in the Austin Motel, a colorful two-story property in the Texas city of the same name. The 41-room structure is marked by a slightly priapic neon sign; Downstairs, there’s an all-day restaurant, a hot dog cart, and a pool flanked by striped umbrellas. So far, so evocative.
Except Austin Motel isn’t your typical roadhouse. Owned by Bunkhouse Group, the once-dilapidated lodge now features luxurious amenities: crisp cotton sheets, oversized memory foam mattresses, and coconut-infused bath products. This is not a dive motel.
“The days of Sani-wrapped paper cups and miniature plastic ice buckets are long gone,” says Sherry Villanueva, founder and managing partner of Acme Hospitality Group, which runs the Blue skyan equally recycled motel in California’s Palm Springs – it’s a 14-key desert oasis where mid-century accents meet warm Japanese-inspired design, from the floating oak beds to the custom kitchen cabinets and the cozy bouclé armchairs.
They are just two examples of a series of new-age interpretations: unique roadside boutique offerings. In North Adams, Massachusetts, the 46-room hotel Tourists The motel offers tall exterior windows that display the seasonal color changes in the adjacent landscape. In Taos, New Mexico, Hotel Willa It is filled with tactile handcrafted pieces from local artisans. The Brentwood, located across from the famous horse racing course in New York’s Saratoga Springs, features wood-paneled rooms with walls hung with antique equestrian oil paintings. The rooms facing the patio Palihotel Hollywood Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, part of Avi Brosh’s Palisociety group of hotels, everyone has balconies overlooking the Wes Anderson-esque pastel pool, DJs spin afternoon sets, and waiters bring spicy salads and fruit platters to bathers from the kitchen of the house.
Motels occupy a unique place in the modern psyche; They have long been synonymous with a specific notion of Americanness. In the ’50s and ’60s, when they were a new-age concept, motels represented freedom. Road infrastructure boomed after the end of World War II, making travel easier; Then, when cars became cheap and available, being on the road became a novel idea (which Jack Kerouac turned into an actual novel).
Motels are also nostalgic. “I think about trips in my parents’ Jeep Wagoneer: a greasy bar, a pool and great adventures,” says Rob Blood, founder of blue bird by lark motels. Also from an architectural point of view they awaken the imagination. Motels are filled with neon “vacancy” letters, boxy art deco structures, and kitsch-futuristic road signage. The hotel’s restaurants are marked with spinning, spiked neon balls known as Sputniks; Pools tend to have whimsical shapes.
These idiosyncratic references are ingrained in the popular consciousness. “In a world filled with so much corporate sameness, it’s no wonder that people are gravitating back toward older designer hotels,” says Villanueva of the Azure Sky, where the motel is flanked by palm trees and filled with sculptural furniture that leans towards the modernist environment. . They also generally offer excellent value: rooms at the Brentwood in upstate New York start at $109; the Ranch in San Antonio starts at $180, and the Palihotel Hollywood from around $200.
For today’s homeowners, the visual iconography is a sentimental snapshot of American history. Jayson Seidman, who reopened the Ranch Motel Last October he personally restored his enormous arrow-shaped sign, which shines like a crashed roadside beacon. “We try to preserve these unique little gems that relate to the property,” Seidman says of his efforts with the sign; He also commissioned a “vacant” neon one to hang outside the reception.
In 1964, there were 61,000 motels throughout the United States; In 2012, there were only 16,000. Today they are likely to be even fewer; the Ranch Motel was about to become a Walgreens. The decline accompanied a change in perception about motels in the 1970s, when vacation habits changed and motels became popular as cheap, dark places to commit cheap, dark deeds. In “Blue Motel Room,” Joni Mitchell finds her room to be the ideal place to nurse heartbreak; Bates Motel is a murder site; in Schitt’s Creekthe motel is a symbol of having fallen on hard times.
Today’s moteliers are rewriting the narrative. Many have rebranded their properties as hotels, and some motels are proposing themselves as destinations in themselves. Seidman turned the former Ranch Motel parking lot into a landscaped paradise, where steps wind down to table tennis areas and pickleball courts. At the reception there is a mini-market and a refrigerator stocked with natural orange wines and local snacks; Next door, an open-air market. “We’ve had local couples come over to drink wine, read a book, spend the night and use the pool because they hired a babysitter,” he says. At the Azure Sky in Palm Springs, guests, most between the ages of 30 and 60, stay two to three nights on average.
Built on the outskirts, usually with parking lots, many motels are primed for this resort town revival. It’s also prime real estate. They are “less expensive to update” than traditional downtown spots, according to Avi Brosh, whose Palihotel on Sunset Boulevard features a cocktail bar, coffee shop and kitchen on the ground floor; There’s also a pool really suitable for training and underground valet parking. “If the motel is a city, the pool area is the town square,” says Tenaya Hills, senior vice president of design and development at Bunkhouse, which runs the Austin Motel. In Massachusetts, the Tourists (a lively reconstruction of a traditional motel) host outdoor concerts, while the Ranch has an Airstream barbershop and coffee cart outside. The Pearl in San Diego hosts movie screenings.
“It’s professional hospitality at its best,” says Tourists owner Ben Svenson. Each motel is “dynamic and alive.” They are also a welcome breath of fresh air. Guests open their doors and are greeted by natural light, not a dimly lit, air-conditioned hallway. The fact that all rooms generally open onto a common outdoor space creates opportunities for chatting: at the Palihotel Hollywood, I fill my mornings with people-watching from my balcony, my afternoons with sunbathing and pre-dinner aperitifs. with another solo traveler. . I enjoy the fact that I don’t have to wake up, go out and walk around all day to feel like I’m living in a city. At the Austin Motel in Texas, I chat with a local nurse who announces a honky tonk concert (by a real cowboy, excellent) and tells me which streets to avoid after dark.
The motel fosters a tangible human connection. In an era of contactless check-in and countless online social touchpoints, it’s comforting to get advice from staff and regulars alike. Especially in Austin, I appreciate that my experiences expand beyond the things I had favorited on Instagram.
Alone and without a driving license, I’m not on the road to anywhere, like Kerouac. But on the grounds of these new-age motels, I truly feel like I’ve landed somewhere.