Tom Glennon, age 14, of Chester, Pa., for his question:
WHEN WAS THE FIRST HOTEL ESTABLISHED?
About 3000 B.C. the earliest hotels or inns were established. Most of them were private homes whose owners provided rooms for travelers.
Many early innkeepers did not keep the rooms clean and they provided only crude meals for their guests.
It wasn't until the A.D. 1700s when the quality of inns improved. And the first real improvements came in England where people at that time began to travel for pleasure.
The first building in the United States constructed specifically as a hotel was the City Hotel, which opened in New York City in 1794.
Then during the 1800s, American innkeepers became the leaders in the hotel development. At that time, only the wealthy could afford to stay at European hotels. Many hotels in the United States offered comfortable, inexpensive accommodations.
The rooms in early hotels had many beds and no locks on the doors. The Tremont Hotel in Boston became the first hotel to provide private rooms with locks. This security feature came along in 1829. The Tremont also introduced the practice of supplying soap and a pitcher of water in each room.
In the early 1900s, hotels expanded their services. During this period, an American hotel operator named Ellsworth Statier opened hotels that included many new features, such as private baths and full length mirrors in each room.
Today there are about 20,000 hotels in the United States and about 5,000 in Canada. They range in size from giant operations with more than 3,000 rooms to small inns that have as few as eight or 10 rooms.
Most large hotels maintain staffs of two employees for every three guests. The majority of small hotels do not offer the range of services provided by the large establishments.
The rates of some hotels include both lodging and meals. This method of payment is called the American plan. Other hotels operate on the European plan, which covers only the price of a room. Still others offer a continental plan, which includes a small breakfast in the price of the room.
Motels differ from hotels chiefly in their building design. Most hotels occupy one multistory building that has a central lobby on the main floor, off of which are located shops and restaurants. Most of the guest rooms in a hotel are upstairs.
Most motels consist of one building or more, designed to serve automobile travelers primarily. Parking lots make it easy to reach the rooms.
There are three chief kinds of hotels: commercial hotels, resort hotels and residential hotels.
Commercial hotels are usually located near the airport or in the downtown area of cities. They mainly serve business travelers and other people on short trips. Resort hotels feature golf, swimming, skiing and other outdoor activities that attract vacationers. Residential hotels rent one or more rooms to guests for long periods of time.