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When my family went to Maui, we rented a room at a local __. I have no idea what to call it. It was like a hotel room, but it wasn't in a hotel building, it was only one story.

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You are faced with this question because you have this preconceived idea that hotels are multi-storied. It's wrong. Hotels could be in any shapes!!! :D – John Oct 2 '11 at 13:42

4 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

I disagree with whoever contributed the distinction between hotel and motel to answers.com. Hotels are not inherently multi-storied.

Merriam-Webster defines hotel as

an establishment that provides lodging and usually meals, entertainment, and various personal services for the public

The Cambridge Advanced Learners' Dictionary defines it as

a building where you pay to have a room to sleep in, and where you can eat meals

Dictionary.com says

a commercial establishment offering lodging to travelers and sometimes to permanent residents, and often having restaurants, meeting rooms, stores, etc., that are available to the general public.

And if you want examples in actual usage of "hotel" for a single-storey building, just Google single-storey hotel.

In short, on the basis of the details you've provided there's no reason not to call the place where you stayed a hotel.

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up vote 3 down vote

The key distinction of a motel is that the room doors open directly to the outside, and typically you can park your car very close to that door. In a hotel, the room doors open into a corridor. There are certainly one story hotels and there isn't a special word for them. If the building you went to had an internal hallway or corridor, it was just a hotel. But if it did not, you could call it a motel if you wanted to give people a clearer mental picture of your accommodations.

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up vote 1 down vote

It sounds like it was just a motel:

A motel, was derived as a combination of the words "motor hotel," is best described as a one or two story structure with rooms that open to the exterior of the building, usually surrounded by a common balcony or patio.

A hotel has rooms that open to the interior of the building, along a hallway, and is multi-storied.

From wiki answers.

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You might call such a place a pension, a hostel or a lodge. They aren't by definition one-story, but they're smaller, cheaper and often house many people in one room. – onomatomaniak Oct 2 '11 at 6:45
Any building of no more than a storey or two can be described as 'low-rise'. I have limited experience of motels, but I imagine them to be indeed low-rise. – Barrie England Oct 2 '11 at 7:11
@BarrieEngland limited experience with motels? you're missing out! – onomatomaniak Oct 2 '11 at 7:27
Quite possibly. – Barrie England Oct 2 '11 at 8:07
up vote 1 down vote accepted

Thank you for the answers. The word did eventually come to me, and it was "inn".

Words are only useful because we give them meaning. The dictionary is a reference that tries to keep up with our meaning of words.

The word "peruse", for example, means to search carefully. I've never heard anyone us it like this, it's always been used when they mean they want to quickly go through something. And thus, if I used the word peruse correctly, I would also be using it incorrectly because years of using it wrong has changed its definition to us.

When I say hotel, people are going to think large 20 story building, no matter what the definition says.

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An 'inn' does not have the connotation of a single ground-level building. In fact the connotation is, as far as building size, a large two-story house, with very few rooms (a more modern synonymous term would be bed-and-breakfast'). Sure, an inn could be one story and the one-story place you stayed at may have been called an 'inn', but that is not the canonical image. – Mitch Oct 2 '11 at 21:29
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Maybe it's because I live in a smallish city with both large and small hotels, but I don't think of a 20-story building when I hear the word "hotel". – ghoppe Oct 3 '11 at 4:20
To me "inn" connotes a building whose primary activity is the sale of alcohol, but which may have one or two rooms where you can lodge for a night. OTOH I've stayed in places calling themselves hotels which were B&Bs, hotels where each room was a separate hut, etc. If everyone you know thinks hotels have 20 storeys I would have to guess that you live somewhere like New York. – Peter Taylor Oct 3 '11 at 12:41
Hello and welcome to EL&U, Walkerneo. If one of these answers — whether your own or another — answers your question to your satisfaction, you can mark that as the accepted answer. This will help future visitors with a similar question be able to quickly see the answer that helped you the most! – aedia λ Oct 13 '11 at 16:08

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