Are motels are as bad and creepy as we see in the movies? How was your experience when you’ve stayed at one?

32 comments

1. Do they exist? Sure. But most of them are just cheap, small, and too boring to make good plotlines for movies and tv.

2. No.

   Most roadside motels are great.

3. Motels are just accommodations where the door to the room faces outside rather than into an interior building.

   There’s nothing inherent that makes them inferior or superior to a hotel. There can be luxury motels or hotels, budget motels and hotels, and everything in between.

4. Honestly about 95% of them are perfectly nice, clean places to spend a night when you need one. Heck, a lot of them might have nicer stuff than you have at home.

   There are a few really crappy ones out there, but you can usually tell those by the empty parking lots. There’s almost always a nice one just a few miles down the road.

5. There’s a wide range in the quality of motels. Some are good, some are ok, some are bad.

6. Obligatory “movies and tv aren’t very real”.

7. They can be lavish.

   They can be mediocre.

   They can be gross. Perhaps not haunted house creepy.

   If a person in a movie needs to hide. And they need to be some place where strangers leave each other alone. A “fleabag motel” [which can be gross] is what they need. Places where people are committing crimes (prostitution, drug use and sales). Everyone ignores everyone — unless they want to steal from someone.

8. It varies. I’ve stayed in a few, including a few really sketchy ones, but overall, they’re fine. Motels are nice because you can park right in front of your room, which is nice if you have a lot of unloading to do.

9. Rip the sheets off of the bed and find out. If you’re really brave and daring, you can sniff the mattress to find out how many Squirters have been serviced there.

10. It really depends on the motel.

    I’ve stayed at a motel that I would consider a resort. Amazing place. Great pool. Hot tub.

    And I stayed at a motel where I had to sleep on top of the blanket. In my clothes. It was beyond disgusting.

11. They are cheap and easy accomodation. There are some no-tell-motels out there, but the US is vast and wide, so there are plenty of places to stay that are one or two story drive in motels.

    The name literally means motor-hotel. A place for travelers driving long distance.

12. Not really. They can be and they are more seedier than hotels, but most aren’t as crazy as movies make them out to be. Movies deal in exaggerations.

13. There’s a very wide variety. Back when road trips were newish (50-60s), motels sprung up. They were affordable (Motel 6 was $6 bucks).

    Motels were a bit of a fad, and people are fine with hotels OR motels now. [

    Existing motels are often dated and just house local people that are poor or homeless or can not access money for first/last months rent and a security deposit.

    Many are [updated and modern](https://www.lodgeonthecove.com/), some are update and kind of refurbished back to midcentury when they were new and popular.

    ​

    weird. Why is this downvoted?

14. I stayed at one that could have been in a horror film. Dirty, holes punches in the walls. Most memorable part was a woman keying a guy’s face in the parking lot. This was before the Internet, so you just had to blindly book.

    Most are fine. Some are pretty bare bones (which can be all you need). Others can be pretty nice.

    Edit: Why downvoted? It happened! I didn’t say I enjoyed it or that it was common!

15. They vary a lot. Some are pretty nice. Others are..not.

16. Motels are totally fine. No, they’re not bad and creepy. Most Americans have stayed in motels, especially during road trips. I’ve stayed in motels 100s of times in my life so far. Most of the motels I’ve stayed in have been clean, with a free breakfast and an outdoor pool. Most motels simply have doors facing an outdoor balcony. Motels in good locations can be very very nice–Like I just stayed in one at Estes Park CO just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. Gorgeous grounds and view of the mountains all around. In general, motels are cheaper and more basic than hotels. That’s all.

    Hollywood like to use really bad motels as sets, usually for drug deals or whatever. This is just a movie convention. Very little to do with reality. In all my life I’ve been in only one motel that was gross & used by prostitutes who literally checked in for an hour. All the hallways smelled like weed and cigarettes. But that was in a bad area close to NYC & I stayed one night after my car was totaled. And even there, the beds were clean and comfortable lol.

17. I’ve lived in one in CANADA, B&B too be precise and it was best time of my life but for one month I had this problem with Carpet beetles bar that was cleanest B&B I’ve been in.

18. I had only a few times creepy experiences. While ago, I was driving through Tennessee on I-40 and was getting late with tornadoes warnings. I decided to stay in first motel near Nashville. It was like from movie with hookers walking around and rather scary, so I went elsewhere. Stayed in bunch of places where we were warned by the staff not to leave premises at night for our safety, but ghat one was absolutely the worst.

19. Yes this is probably the one thing that movies get right about America.

20. It varies widely.

    There was a point in my life where I was routinely exposed to low cost lodging.

    Some of the larger chain motels (the motel6 brand in particular) appeared to really focus on cleaning up their product and service, focusing on building a “clean and safe” brand image. That being said, depending on where it was, sometimes the drama outside the room couldn’t be avoided

    There was unfortunately one case where I went too far off the known path and came across a room that clearly had a bug infestation problem. Fortunately they agreed to a full refund on the spot.

21. Motels are often lower cost than hotels. They aren’t all drug and prostitution dens. But some can end up that way.

    Dan Bell has a YouTube series called Another Dirty Room where he visits low-rated motels across the country to see why they’re rated so low. There’s a selection bias in how locations are chosen for filming, but some motels are in fact as wretched as the ones on movies.

22. Most are fine.

23. Check out Best Western if you are touring the west.

24. I underwrite commercial property insurance and some of them really are that bad. Bugs, crime, mold, filth, broken everything, pools filled with trash, rooms not cleaning, missing toilet seats, burned out rooms, boarded up windows, floods, you name it. I’d say the bulk of them are average but the really bad ones are absolutely out there. I don’t prefer to stay in mireks because they usually have exterior entrance doors to the rooms and I don’t feel safe with that but I’ve stayed at probably two that were fine.

25. Yeeessss!!!!

26. It varies like everything else over here.

27. the last time I went to one the people on both sides were fucking. That was nice I guess, most hotels I’ve been to are boring if you don’t consider pissing your money away fun

28. Not really, just check the reviews.

    Most are just fine, never creepy, but sometimes a bit run down and often smell like cigarettes. If they’re brand new (but most of the motel chains make their new locations like hotels with interior hallways) then they can be quite nice.

    Around national parks you’ll find lots of pretty nice (and not so cheap) motels.

29. Name brand ones like a Holiday Inn or a Hampton Inn aren’t bad at all. But my rule is if it’s not a name brand or a name brand with a bad reputation I don’t stay there. Tbh though I stayed at an Econo Lodge off the NJ Turnpike during a snowstorm, I thought it would be awful and it actually wasn’t a bad place.

30. Sorry, I just watched Home Alone 2.

    What were you saying about hotels in movies?

    Oh… Right. Depends on the genre you’re watching. *Psycho* was a huge hit for sure but movie makers miss the point; they think the hotel setting makes it scary when it’s actually the polite innkeeper’s mother who made it creepy.

31. No, but you aren’t going to see somebody stay at a nice comfortable motel watching Family Feud and getting a good night’s sleep in a movie.

32. There are a fair number of dirty-ass low-down shithole motels throughout our great land. Most the people responding enjoy the privilege of never having had to stay at one.