User:Bkil/Tag:tourism=motel
 tourism = motel
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Short term accommodation, particularly for people travelling by car. 
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| Rendering in OSM Carto |
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| Group: tourism |
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| Status: in use |
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A 
motel is an establishment that provides paid lodging, usually on a short-term basis, mostly serving single nights. It is an abbreviation of motor and hotel. It offers convenient parking for motor cars at or close to the room, thus the building itself is usually not of a high rise kind, and may have been built to an inexpensive design. A motel is usually positioned next to major roads and intersections on low cost land usually outside residential areas and thus nearby tourism attractions may not be available. They are generally cheaper than hotels and hence it is common for passers by to get a room for a single night stay for taking a break during a long journey and usually not a tourist destination itself.
Motels may sometimes but not always provide a number of additional guest services such as a restaurant, breakfast service or swimming pool.
How to Map
Add a node at the centre of the building and tag it with tourism=motel. You can name it with name=*.
Add in features like leisure=swimming_pool and amenity=restaurant where appropriate.
How to tell apart from hotel / guest house
Based on the Wikipedia article, there are a list of aspects unique to a motel. Though the following are not hard requirements, the more properties that apply in a given case the more likely that we are talking about a motel in the given case:
- it is best accessed using a motor vehicle (placement uncorrelated from public transport)
- not many tourist attractions nearby
- not many leisure services on premise other than food
- high vehicle traffic route/intersection nearby
- built on low cost land (nearby industrial centers, on the perimeter or outside of residential areas)
- at least as many parking places as rooms (or even better if more than the lodging capacity)
- cost saving building construction and interior design
- low rise building
- people check in ad-hoc without much planning ahead
- people usually plan to stay here as few nights as possible
- cost is affordable to passer-by motorists who just need a little rest with few requirements
- doors of many rentable rooms open to the parking lot instead of an internal corridor
- some extra services are available on premise or nearby that are especially valuable to passer by motorists, like fuel or fluid refilling, truck & trailer parking and servicing, electronics or tire shop, ...
- it is open all year round (there is less seasonality in usage compared to hotels, some guest houses even close down for part of the year)
- it is sometimes also operating a camping site on premise or on a neighboring plot of land
Useful combinations
- building=yes - useful to map the building itself
- rooms=*
- beds=*
- smoking=*
- wheelchair=*
See also
- tourism=hotel, short term accommodation but typically not single night, often with more services, better positioned and more expensive than a motel
- tourism=guest_house, accommodation without hotel license that is typically owner-operated, offers a room and breakfast with staff not available 24/7
- Camping facilities provided by motels