Hotels
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50 free Hotels trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hotels are where history checks in for the night. Treaties have been hammered out in their ballrooms, novels finished in their bedrooms and classic dishes invented in their kitchens, while a handful of roadside start-ups grew into brands known in every country. This quiz covers the lot: landmark hotels and the guests who made them famous, the people behind the big chains, the working vocabulary of the front desk and the dining room, unusual places to sleep around the world, and the hotels and motels that star in films, television and song. It is written for travellers, quiz hosts and anyone who works in hospitality and wants a round for a team meeting or staff party. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few stories to tell at check-in.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which New York hotel, birthplace of a famous apple-and-celery salad, first stood where the Empire State Building is now?
The Waldorf-Astoria
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.
Q 02Which country has the world's oldest hotel, a hot-spring inn founded in 705 and run by 52 generations of one family?
Japan
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.
Q 03Which hotel, named after the founder of modern Singapore, is where the Singapore Sling cocktail was first mixed?
Raffles
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.
Q 04Which hotel inspired Stephen King to write The Shining after a one-night stay just as it was closing for winter?
The Stanley
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.
Q 05Which hotel giant grew out of an A&W root beer stand opened in Washington, D.C., in 1927?
Marriott
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.
Q 06Which motel chain, founded by Kemmons Wilson in 1952, took its name from a Bing Crosby musical as a joke?
Holiday Inn
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.
Q 07Which country is home to the original Icehotel, rebuilt every winter from blocks cut out of the frozen Torne River?
Sweden
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.
Q 08Which New York hotel beside Central Park is home to storybook heroine Eloise and a setting for Home Alone 2?
The Plaza
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.
Q 09In Monopoly, what colour are the plastic hotels a player can buy after building four houses on each street of a set?
Red
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.
Q 10Which reclusive billionaire bought the Desert Inn in Las Vegas after its owners asked him to check out?
Howard Hughes
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.
Q 11Which band won the 1978 Grammy for Record of the Year with Hotel California, a song ending in a long twin-guitar solo?
Eagles
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.
Q 12Which singer's first million-selling single was Heartbreak Hotel, a Billboard chart-topper for seven weeks in 1956?
Elvis Presley
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.
Q 13Which Alfred Hitchcock thriller sends runaway embezzler Marion Crane to a secluded roadside motel run by Norman Bates?
Psycho
Q 21Which London hotel, built on Gilbert and Sullivan opera profits, was Britain's first lit throughout by electricity?
The Savoy
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.
Q 22Which Paris hotel on the Place Vendôme was fashion designer Coco Chanel's home for more than thirty years?
The Ritz
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.
Q 23Which Manhattan landmark on West 23rd Street was home to Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith and Arthur C. Clarke?
Hotel Chelsea
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.
Q 14Which 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
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.
Q 15Which HBO anthology series follows guests and staff at a luxury resort chain, with a first season set in Hawaii?
The White Lotus
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.
Q 16Which action film series features the Continental, a luxury hotel where criminals may not do business on the grounds?
John Wick
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.
Q 17Which actor plays Monsieur Gustave, mentor to lobby boy Zero, in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel?
Ralph Fiennes
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.
Q 18Which Las Vegas resort is a 30-storey pyramid whose rooftop beam is billed as the world's most powerful man-made light?
Luxor
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.
Q 19Which Las Vegas resort, whose vault is robbed in the 2001 film Ocean's Eleven, stages fountain shows on a man-made lake?
Bellagio
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.
Q 20Which Dubai hotel, standing on its own artificial island, was designed to resemble the billowing sail of a dhow?
Burj Al Arab
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.
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.
Q 24Which New York hotel hosted the Round Table, a daily lunch circle of wits including Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley?
The Algonquin
The Algonquin owes its traditions to first owner-manager Frank Case, who gave struggling authors discounts and installed an official resident cat.
Q 25Which hotel chain began in 1919 when its founder, in Texas to buy a bank, bought the 40-room Mobley in Cisco instead?
Hilton
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.
Q 26Which budget chain, founded in Santa Barbara in 1962, is named after the nightly price its first rooms cost?
Motel 6
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.
Q 27Which rival to hotels began when two San Francisco roommates rented out floor space during a design conference?
Airbnb
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.
Q 28Which organisation began placing free Bibles in hotel rooms in 1908, starting at the Superior Hotel in Montana?
The Gideons
The Gideons grew out of an 1898 encounter, when two travelling salesmen sharing a room at a Wisconsin hotel talked over forming an association.
Q 29Which hotel job has an international society, Les Clefs d'Or, whose members wear crossed gold keys on their lapels?
Concierge
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.
Q 30Which evening hotel ritual has staff fold back the bed linen and often leave a chocolate or mint on the pillow?
Turndown service
Turndown service can go well beyond a sweet on the pillow: some hotels add bedtime stories for children or cocktails for couples.