Hotels of North America

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As I write these lines it’s early spring in the Northeast, and Americans of every age and station are getting back into their cold, muddy, salt-befouled automobiles. They are lining up again at the airports, notwithstanding the humorless security protocols of the current air-traffic moment. The siren melody of spring break is calling to the college-age hedonists of America. And before long it will be Memorial Day, one of the heaviest travel weekends of the calendar year. We here in the New World are “on the move,” going where the “weather suits our clothes,” where we have business, where we have family, or where there is simply good old-fashioned entertainment.

With almost five million guest rooms in the greater United States, and another two hundred and forty thousand available in Canada, these hotels and motels are our residences, here in this part of the world, when we are away from home. Think of that motel by the side of the interstate at two in the morning when you’ve put in eleven or twelve hours driving your son’s dormitory furniture back east, and the double lines on the road are starting to blur into four. That motel is there for you, like a friend outstretching a hand. Think of that big sexy flamingo-pink Art Deco hotel on the beach in Miami that you stayed in during your first trip to the Florida coast, when you were amazed by the mashing up of Cuban intrigue, dance clubs, and beach culture. What a mark that hotel made on you. That hotel was where you danced until you aggravated your lumbago.

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