This trip would be an adventure, promised the editor. A whirlwind tour of five motels in five nights.
So I dreamed glamor and glitz. I imagined a cushy terry bathrobe with a logo from the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons stitched on the breast pocket. I figured I’d cash in on at least one room-service champagne-and-orange-juice breakfast.
Then came the rude awakening: Nix the glamor and glitz and bring your own bathrobe. Oh yes, and forget the champagne. This travel adventure would be about lodging at its most basic, about dollars and cents.
My mission, pronounced the editor, would be to travel incognito as sort of a Christopher Columbus of the budget crowd, searching for traveler’s gold: A great cheap sleep.
It would be about the low-priced motels that are the bread-and-butter of so many, particularly the road warriors hellbent on traversing America’s highways for their summer vacations and business people picking up the tab for their own travel.
Come back with the goods on motels that make up this country’s big budget business, he said. Find out how the largest U.S. budget and economy motel chains deliver on lodging at its simplest: a bed, a bathroom, a television, a telephone, a couple of chairs.
And do it for less than 45 bucks a night-before taxes get tacked on.
The candidates were the thousands of motels-the Days Inns and Motel 6s-that have sprung up along America’s interstates and peppered the country’s landscape in the past 15 or so years.
The destination was Springfield, a town of 105,200 that draws tourists to its Lincoln sites and business folks to its commerce and politics. (Besides, Abe Lincoln was a down-to-basics kind of guy.)
While not an L.A. or New York, nor a blink of a village along an expressway, Springfield does have a range of hotels. There’s the top-of-the-line Renaissance Hotel (rooms can cost $85 to $115 weekdays), which has coffee makers in the rooms and concierges in the lobby, as well as the smaller, mom-and-pop places like the A Lincoln Motel and Dirksen Inn.
The five motel chains chosen-Comfort Inn, Days Inns of America, Motel 6, Red Roof Inns and Super 8 Motel-were ranked among the Top 10 in Ernst & Young’s 1993 listing of the nation’s Top 50 economy/limited-service chains. They also were properties where the price tag on a room for one adult was less than $45 (before taxes) and one for two adults was less than $50 in late April when I visited.
Well, five beds, five bathrooms, five motels later, I can report that the business of budgets is all about the basics.
It’s about Styrofoam instead of crystal. About Formica instead of teak. Or, as one lodging analyst aptly noted, it’s about “the difference between a Wal-Mart and a Nordstrom.”
At the places I visited, the glitz was on hold. There wasn’t a concierge, a bellman or an atrium in any lobby in the bunch.
No matter.
Price tags for the rooms were as low as $23.99 and as high as $44, a pretty good deal for a decent night’s sleep, some nice amenities and friendly service.
At some places, I simply got the bed, the bath, a television (with a variety of cable channels) and a “thanks for staying with us.” At others, amenities ranged from reclining lounge chairs to hot chocolate at night and bagels at breakfast. Problems-from a broken phone to soggy hair needing a hair dryer-were handled by earnest front-desk teams.
Most places had clean bathrooms and fresh, decent-size rooms. (Note the word “most”-I did stumble across potato chip crumbles in one place and nail clippings in another. But those were the exceptions.) Some places needed a paint job, others could have used a little work on the nicks, scuffs and cigarette burns defacing the furniture.
And while management can fix such problems, there’s one thing that’s pretty much out of their control: your neighbors for the night.
My nondescript rental car occasionally shared the parking lot with a semi or two, a couple of four-wheel drives and at least one Cadillac (with a dashboard-mounted fan). At the ice machine, I met seniors, college kids, business folks and a good number of bikers in town for a gathering in the state capital.
What those neighbors did-when and where-never seemed to matter much, because most places were well soundproofed. (OK, there were two exceptions: one evening, a family of elephants executed the last tango in Springfield in the room above; and one morning, a gentleman in an adjoining shower serenaded-I’m being nice here-me awake.)
Each morning, travelers gathered in the lobby for a cup of coffee or the “continental breakfast.” With budget motels, it seems, breakfast has become something of a benchmark and a point of competition.
There’s reason, of course, for such competition among the budget-economy properties. Twenty years ago, these properties made up less than 5 percent of the lodging in this country, with all-suite hotels, luxury hotels and resorts making up the remainder. Today, the number of budget-economy properties has pushed this segment of the lodging industry past 35 percent.
Initially, the buzzwords in the budget business were “price” and “location.”
But today, Ernst & Young’s Daniel W. Daniele, national director of hospitality advisory services in the accounting firm’s Chicago office, says, “With economy lodging, you’re looking at price, quality and location.”
The quality of the lodging offered by two chains will be different, of course. But travelers also will find that quality can vary within a particular chain, from the service they receive to the condition of the rooms and the age of the property. (Which is due, in part, to the fact that some properties are owned and operated by a chain; others are franchises; and still others are operated by management companies.)
Which means that the room you get in Springfield will probably not be exactly like the room you’ll get in, say, Tampa or Indianapolis. Generally, though, amenities such as the type of breakfast offered, the fax facilities or cable channels available, will be similar throughout a chain.
Daniele, who has studied the industry for about 16 years, compiles an annual survey of the economy/limited-service chains, ranked by the number of rooms.
(Other properties in Ernst & Young’s Top 10 list are Hampton Inns and Travelodge, which were priced out of our range in Springfield the late April weekend I visited, and Econo Lodge, La Quinta Motor Inns and Hospitality International Inc., which had no properties in town.)
And while some of these chains began 20 years ago with a fixed price, that element of the business has pretty much faded away.
The prices quoted on the cover and paid in Springfield are just that: The prices for a night in Springfield with taxes tacked on. Visit during some mega-event (state fair, for example) or the summer, and prices can go up. Stay at similar lodging in a smaller town, and the prices might drop; hit a big city, and prices will probably increase a few dollars. Prices can even vary by the day of the week. Another factor: Every chain visited had special discounts (for senior citizens, for AAA members, etc.).
Generally, all chains have non-smoking rooms and rooms that have been modified for disabled guests. Most major credit cards are accepted. All have color TVs and all offer some cable channels. They all have ice machines with free ice (though many have signs begging guests not to use ice to fill up coolers). None had radios or clocks in the rooms, but they all offered wake-up calls. Plastic glasses have replaced glass glasses, and all had Gideon Bibles. All chains, except for Motel 6, have 800 reservation numbers. And all the properties are surrounded by restaurants, groceries and convenience stores.
That’s where the similarities end.
So now, with all the jokes about Magic Fingers (couldn’t find ’em) and the Bates Motel (I heard them all before I left) out of the way, here’s a totally personal report on the motels I visited (in alphabetical order). The prices quoted when I called to check May 23 reflect some summer increases.
Comfort Inn
Wedged between a busy highway and a Target, a Wal-Mart and fast-food places, this motel’s simplicity was a welcome sight-stark white with green trim.
It was also one of the newest properties visited and the priciest. (Maybe the price reflected the indoor pool and whirlpool. Or perhaps the flavored coffee creams-amaretto, mocha and Irish creme-available in the lobby for jazzing up guests’ java.)
The streamlined lobby had a check-in desk for the property’s 67 rooms; it also had a cafe-type setup of tables, chairs and a credenza. This was where guests could find the fixings for hot coffee, tea and cocoa 24 hours a day, a microwave oven, a toaster, complimentary copies of USA Today, and a free continental breakfast: coffee, tea, several juices, apples and oranges, mini-blueberry muffins, English muffins and bagels, cream cheese, jelly, peanut butter and Country Crock spread.
Comfort Inn had the greatest number of amenities of any of the motels visited for this story: two pools, a small room with a couple of video games and vending machines with soft drinks, snack cakes, bakery items, chips, aspirin and toothbrushes. There also were free cribs and free passes to a nearby fitness center.
The rooms were outfitted with wooden furniture: a night stand, chest of drawers, table and two chairs. The subtle decor (think beige and mauve) complemented the clean, forest-green paisley bedspread and the simple art (long-legged birds and cattails). The remote-control TV set offered cable channels, including HBO.
The bath boasted a good supply (four bath, three hand, two wash) of quality towels, a full-wall mirror at the vanity, a heat lamp and a tub-shower.
Some nice freebies? Two soaps-facial and bath, one bottle of conditioning shampoo, plus writing materials and a pen.
A problem? While the friendly front-desk team tried to be helpful, they couldn’t come up with a hair dryer-a previous guest, they figured, had filched it. (It seems to be a problem throughout Springfield. A couple of hair dryers had disappeared at other motels as well, I was told.)
Comfort Inn, 3442 Freedom Drive, Springfield; 217-787-2250. Reservations: 800-221-2222. Price: $48.95 for one adult; $57.95 for two adults. Kids: under 18 free in the same room with an adult relative. Pets: allowed in some rooms.
