Hotels in the Age of Auto and Air Travel
The rise of the automobile in the early twentieth century reordered the nation's transportation regime and marked the beginning of a new hotel age that lasted for more than two decades. The nineteenth-century American hotel system had been predicated upon long-distance, point-to-point, steam-driven water and rail transportation, and the gradual transition to automobility wrought major changes in the hotel industry. In an effort to secure the patronage of drivers, existing hotels added parking facilities, and new establishments incorporated them into their building plans. Other developers created the motor hotel, or motel, a new hotel variant which, instead of being located in cities and other travel destinations, was typically sited on inexpensive land along the roads in between. The automobile also influenced the hotel industry in construction and management techniques, as Fordist mass production fostered a corresponding drive for standardization and scale in hotels. E. M. Statler was the foremost figure in this cause. In 1908, he opened the first chain of hotels dedicated to his belief that hospitality should be made as similar as possible in every location. Statler's success with a business model based on cost cutting and scientific management made him the leading hotelier of his time and an important influence upon twentieth-century hotel administration. By 1930, as the Great Depression was putting a definitive end to this period of hotel building, the Census Bureau counted more than 17,000 hotels in the United States.