Usually, when we ask an indirect question in English, we first ask a direct question, then we say the real question indirectly. But in Spanish, they say two direct questions. Why is English different?
John asked "Where is the hotel?"
John asked where the hotel is/was.
If I understand correctly, the difference seems to be describing a situation in which the question is asked, as a quote, or "reporting." You are telling someone the words John said. Whereas, the second instance is making a statement as a generalization, rather than telling the third-party what his own words were. I hope that made sense.
It may also simply be cultural idealism and views of what makes sense, "logically." Not all cultures view the logic behind language structure the same. For example, I was trained in Persian-Farsi and Persian-Dari by natives, full time, for two years. Their culture believes, logically, that a negative statement should be stated as a double-negative, where we view it the opposite way. As in, "I don't have nothing" logically means "they have nothing."
The statement "John asked X" is not a question. If you quote John directly, you of course use the question form, with inversion.
If you don't, you state the topic of the question with a subordinate clause, which works the same whether the sentence concerns a question, a statement, or anything else:
