50 Fun Facts About Hotels

Which New York hotel, birthplace of a famous apple-and-celery salad, first stood where the Empire State Building is now?

The Waldorf-Astoria was knocked down in 1929 to clear the skyscraper's site and reopened on Park Avenue two years later. It was also the first hotel to offer room service around the clock.

Which country has the world's oldest hotel, a hot-spring inn founded in 705 and run by 52 generations of one family?

Japan's Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, at the foot of the Akaishi Mountains, was recognised by Guinness World Records in 2011. The founding family's line ran it until 2017.

Which hotel, named after the founder of modern Singapore, is where the Singapore Sling cocktail was first mixed?

Raffles opened in 1887 under the Armenian Sarkies Brothers, and bartender Ngiam Tong Boon invented the drink in its Long Bar. In 1902 an escaped circus tiger was shot beneath its billiard room.

Which hotel inspired Stephen King to write The Shining after a one-night stay just as it was closing for winter?

The Stanley in Estes Park, Colorado, hosted King and his wife Tabitha in 1974 as the other guests were checking out. Room 217, said to be the one they were given, plays a sinister part in the novel.

Which hotel giant grew out of an A&W root beer stand opened in Washington, D.C., in 1927?

Marriott began when J. Willard Marriott and his wife Alice sold cold drinks in the humid capital, soon renaming the stand The Hot Shoppe. The company only took the family name in 1967.

Which motel chain, founded by Kemmons Wilson in 1952, took its name from a Bing Crosby musical as a joke?

Holiday Inn was the name architect Eddie Bluestein coined, borrowing the title of a 1942 film. Wilson built the chain after poor roadside lodgings spoiled a family road trip to Washington, D.C.

Which country is home to the original Icehotel, rebuilt every winter from blocks cut out of the frozen Torne River?

Sweden's Icehotel, in the village of Jukkasjärvi, first opened in 1990 and melts back into the river each spring. Even the glasses in its bar are made of ice.

Which New York hotel beside Central Park is home to storybook heroine Eloise and a setting for Home Alone 2?

The Plaza hung Eloise's portrait in its lobby after Kay Thompson's books made the building famous. Director Chris Columbus said then-owner Donald Trump asked for a film cameo in return for lobby access.

In Monopoly, what colour are the plastic hotels a player can buy after building four houses on each street of a set?

Red hotels replace four green houses, which go back to the bank. A standard set holds only 12 hotels and 32 houses, so the supply can run out during a game.

Which reclusive billionaire bought the Desert Inn in Las Vegas after its owners asked him to check out?

Howard Hughes had rented the top two floors and overstayed his booking just as New Year's high rollers were due. He paid about $13 million in 1967, then lived in the penthouse for four years.

Which band won the 1978 Grammy for Record of the Year with Hotel California, a song ending in a long twin-guitar solo?

Eagles guitarists Don Felder and Joe Walsh spent about three days perfecting the closing duel. Felder had worked out the music in a rented beach house in Malibu.

Which singer's first million-selling single was Heartbreak Hotel, a Billboard chart-topper for seven weeks in 1956?

Elvis Presley made it his first RCA Victor single after co-writer Mae Axton offered him a third of the royalties. A newspaper report about a lonely man's death inspired the song.

Which Alfred Hitchcock thriller sends runaway embezzler Marion Crane to a secluded roadside motel run by Norman Bates?

Psycho's motel and the house above it became a regular stop on the Universal Studios backlot tour. Hitchcock also made cinemas refuse entry to anyone arriving late.

Which Canadian sitcom moves the once-wealthy Rose family into a run-down motel in a town bought years earlier as a joke?

Schitt's Creek swept all seven major comedy awards at the 2020 Emmys with its final season. Sardonic desk clerk Stevie Budd ends up owning the motel as Johnny Rose's business partner.

Which HBO anthology series follows guests and staff at a luxury resort chain, with a first season set in Hawaii?

The White Lotus moved to Sicily and then Thailand for its next two seasons, each largely self-contained. Murray Bartlett won an Emmy for his performance in the first.

Which action film series features the Continental, a luxury hotel where criminals may not do business on the grounds?

John Wick lodges at the Continental's New York branch, owned by Ian McShane's enigmatic Winston. The building got its own prequel miniseries in 2023.

Which actor plays Monsieur Gustave, mentor to lobby boy Zero, in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel?

Ralph Fiennes leads the film's seventeen-actor ensemble as the famed, fastidious Gustave. The Grand Budapest Hotel earned nine Academy Award nominations and won four.

Which Las Vegas resort is a 30-storey pyramid whose rooftop beam is billed as the world's most powerful man-made light?

Luxor's sloping walls mean guests ride to their rooms in inclined lifts that travel at a 39-degree angle. A copy of the Great Sphinx of Giza guards the entrance.

Which Las Vegas resort, whose vault is robbed in the 2001 film Ocean's Eleven, stages fountain shows on a man-made lake?

Bellagio let the production shoot on site, and the cast stayed in its rooms during filming. An engineer in a tower overlooking the water pushes a button to start each musical show.

Which Dubai hotel, standing on its own artificial island, was designed to resemble the billowing sail of a dhow?

Burj Al Arab is linked to the mainland by a private curving bridge. Its helipad, near the roof, has doubled as a tennis court, a boxing ring and a car race track.

Which London hotel, built on Gilbert and Sullivan opera profits, was Britain's first lit throughout by electricity?

The Savoy opened in 1889 after impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte saw how opulent American hotels were. It also gave British hotel guests their first electric lifts.

Which Paris hotel on the Place Vendôme was fashion designer Coco Chanel's home for more than thirty years?

The Ritz opened in 1898 and became such a byword for opulence that English gained the word 'ritzy'. Its cocktail lounge is named after another regular, the writer Ernest Hemingway.

Which Manhattan landmark on West 23rd Street was home to Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith and Arthur C. Clarke?

Hotel Chelsea is where Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, calling the shabby building his spiritual home. Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas and Arthur Miller lived there too.

Which New York hotel hosted the Round Table, a daily lunch circle of wits including Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley?

The Algonquin owes its traditions to first owner-manager Frank Case, who gave struggling authors discounts and installed an official resident cat.

Which hotel chain began in 1919 when its founder, in Texas to buy a bank, bought the 40-room Mobley in Cisco instead?

Hilton founder Conrad Hilton arrived at the height of the Texas oil boom and switched plans when the bank purchase fell through. The Great Depression later nearly bankrupted him.

Which budget chain, founded in Santa Barbara in 1962, is named after the nightly price its first rooms cost?

Motel 6 charged six dollars a night when two local building contractors, William Becker and Paul Greene, opened the first one on Corona del Mar.

Which rival to hotels began when two San Francisco roommates rented out floor space during a design conference?

Airbnb started life as Airbedandbreakfast.com, after the pair put an inflatable mattress in their living room to help pay the rent. They later raised $30,000 selling election-themed cereal.

Which organisation began placing free Bibles in hotel rooms in 1908, starting at the Superior Hotel in Montana?

The Gideons grew out of an 1898 encounter, when two travelling salesmen sharing a room at a Wisconsin hotel talked over forming an association.

Which hotel job has an international society, Les Clefs d'Or, whose members wear crossed gold keys on their lapels?

Concierge was once a far grander title: in medieval France it belonged to a royal officer charged with executing justice, which is how the Conciergerie prison in Paris got its name.

Which evening hotel ritual has staff fold back the bed linen and often leave a chocolate or mint on the pillow?

Turndown service can go well beyond a sweet on the pillow: some hotels add bedtime stories for children or cocktails for couples.

Which city's Hotel Sacher is famed for a chocolate cake with apricot jam, long disputed with the Demel pastry shop?

Vienna's two rivals fought through the 20th century over the trademark and even the number of sponge layers: the hotel favours two, Demel one.

Which city's Parker House hotel invented a famous dinner roll and the cream pie that became its state dessert?

Boston's Parker House also once employed Malcolm X, who worked there as a busboy in the 1940s. Its cream pie, first sold as a chocolate cream pie, is the state dessert of Massachusetts.

In which city did newlyweds John Lennon and Yoko Ono spend their honeymoon staging a week-long hotel bed-in for peace?

Amsterdam's press were invited into Room 702 every day from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. At a second bed-in in Montreal weeks later, the couple recorded Give Peace a Chance in their room.

Which city's Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, became the National Civil Rights Museum?

Memphis kept Room 306, where King was staying, as a shrine within the museum. Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and other touring musicians had also been guests.

Which Irish writer died in a dingy Paris hotel in 1900 after joking that he was fighting a duel with its wallpaper?

Oscar Wilde's final address was the Hôtel d'Alsace in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where illness kept him largely to his room. It now trades on the connection under the name L'Hôtel.

Which Canadian skyline is crowned by the Château Frontenac, often called the world's most photographed hotel?

Quebec City's castle-like landmark hosted Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt for two wartime strategy conferences, in 1943 and 1944.

Which English seaside town is the setting of Fawlty Towers, in which John Cleese plays the rude hotel owner Basil?

Torquay's Gleneagles Hotel put up the Monty Python team in 1970, and its eccentric owner Donald Sinclair became Cleese's model for Basil.

In hotel pricing, which term means the room rate covers two meals a day, typically breakfast and dinner?

Half board usually leaves lunch to the guest, though some hosts serve breakfast and lunch instead. The fuller version adds the missing meal to make three a day.

Which country's state-owned Paradores chain houses luxury hotels in castles, monasteries and other historic buildings?

Spain opened the first parador in 1928 in the Sierra de Gredos, on a spot picked by King Alfonso XIII himself. The first in a historic building was a medieval castle in Toledo province.

Which car-free Great Lakes resort destination is home to a Grand Hotel with a 660-foot front porch?

Mackinac Island guests still ride from the dock to the door by horse-drawn carriage. The porch, overlooking a vast tea garden, is billed as the longest in the world.

Which 1944 conference at the Mount Washington Hotel created the IMF and the forerunner of the World Bank?

Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, received 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations, who came to plan the financial order that would follow the Second World War.

In which English spa town was missing novelist Agatha Christie found in 1926, checked into a hotel under a false name?

Harrogate's Swan Hydropathic Hotel had her on its register as Mrs Neele, the surname of her husband's lover. Her disappearance had made the front page of The New York Times.

Which luxury hotel brand was created in 1946 by Pan Am founder Juan Trippe to build rooms across Latin America?

InterContinental grew out of a White House breakfast at which Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the airline to take the lead in developing 5,000 hotel rooms in the region.

Which oil company co-founded a US travel guide in 1958, creating the five-star hotel ratings now run by Forbes?

Mobil launched the guide with publisher Simon & Schuster, and ratings come from paid inspectors who visit anonymously. In 2022 only 323 hotels held the top rating.

Which Kentucky city's Brown Hotel created the Hot Brown, an open-faced turkey sandwich baked under Mornay sauce?

Louisville chef Fred Schmidt devised it in 1926 as a late-night alternative to ham and eggs, and it soon became the choice of 95% of the restaurant's customers.

Which word did Steve Rubell coin for small, stylish hotels like Morgans, which he opened in New York with Ian Schrager?

Boutique was Rubell's comparison in 1984: he likened Morgans to a small specialist shop, and the big chain hotels to department stores.

Which city opened the world's first capsule hotel in 1979, built for sauna customers who had missed the last train home?

Osaka's Capsule Inn was designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa, hired because the sauna's owner had admired his capsule home exhibit at the city's 1970 World Expo.

Which country was home to Tor Sørnes, who invented the VingCard, the first recodable hotel key card?

Norway's Sørnes devised a plastic card punched with a pattern of 32 holes after singer Connie Francis was attacked in her hotel room in 1974.

Which star plays a fading Russian ballerina in Grand Hotel, the only Best Picture winner with no other nominations?

Greta Garbo heads an all-star cast that includes John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery and Joan Crawford as a stenographer, in a story set at a plush Berlin hotel.

Which luxury resort hid a secret Cold War bunker, code-named Project Greek Island, built to shelter the US Congress?

The Greenbrier's bunker in West Virginia went up alongside a new hotel wing from 1959 to 1962. It was kept stocked with supplies for thirty years but never used.