Hotel or motel?
hotel is a noun meaning “A large town house or mansion; a grand private residence, especially in France”; motel is a noun meaning “A type of hotel or lodging establishment, often located near a major highway…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) hotel is about 22 times as common as motel.
What is the difference between hotel and motel?
| hotel | motel | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun, verb |
| Meaning | A large town house or mansion; a grand private residence, especially in France An establishment that provides accommodation and other services for paying guests; normally larger than a guesthouse, and often one of a chain | A type of hotel or lodging establishment, often located near a major highway, which typically features a series of rooms whose entrances are immediately… A low-cost short-stay hotel, often with hourly rates rather than daily rates, and notorious for permitting illicit sexual activities; a love hotel informalTo stay in a motel or motels |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | hotels hôtels | motels |
| Pronunciation | /həʊˈtɛl/ /əʊˈtɛl/ /hɒˈtɛl/ | /moʊˈtɛl/ |
| In writing | 89 times per million words | 4.1 times per million words |
Sources: hotel and motel in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of hotel and motel
hotel
- 1
A large town house or mansion; a grand private residence, especially in France
- 2
An establishment that provides accommodation and other services for paying guests; normally larger than a guesthouse, and often one of a chain
- 3
AustraliaCanadaA public house or pub
- 4
A restaurant; any dining establishment
- 5
Alternative letter-case form of Hotel from the NATO/ICAO Phonetic Alphabet
- 6
The larger red property in the game of Monopoly, in contradistinction to houses
- 7
The guest accommodation and dining section of a cruise ship
motel
- 1
A type of hotel or lodging establishment, often located near a major highway, which typically features a series of rooms whose entrances are immediately adjacent to a parking lot to facilitate…
- 2
informalTo stay in a motel or motels
- 3
A low-cost short-stay hotel, often with hourly rates rather than daily rates, and notorious for permitting illicit sexual activities; a love hotel
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, hotel or motel?
hotel appears 89 times per million words; motel 4.1 times per million words.
hotel 89 times per million wordsmotel 4.1 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search hotel vs motel?
“hotel vs motel” is searched about 5,400 times a month on Google and 230 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“motel vs hotel”, “hotel or motel”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.