Hotels in the Course of History

A hotel – what exactly is that? For thousands of years travel routes have been used as links to far-off lands, their waysides being lined with buildings offering short-term accommodation to travellers: hostels, pensions, guest houses, inns and, of course, hotels. We think of hostels, pensions and guest houses as being smaller establishments with simpler furnishings, the expression “hotel”, however, calls to mind more extensive facilities and services, a certain level of respectability and widespread, regional importance. The word “hotel” has become the most popular and widely used variation of the alternatives mentioned above. After the French revolution this expression was applied to public buildings of note; the town hall became the “Hôtel de Ville”. With the commencement of hotel construction as a genre, which occurred more or less simultaneous to secularisation, the expression began to be applied to the larger guest houses which were predominantly constructed for the aspiring bourgeoisie – the so-called “grand hotels”. Today, with the creation of a new hotel, highly original, often theatrically staged spatial sequences and sensual architectural elements are employed to express the inherent enchantment and seductive luxury contained within.