I have my limits, but to a considerable extent, a degree of funkiness is part of the adventure...
Marriott ran an ad campaign for Fairfield Inn some years ago:
Traveling’s an adventure. Where you stay...shouldn’t be.I quite agree. When I’m traveling, I’ll go out of my way to find off-the-beaten-path sights, meet the natives, and try regional cuisine at local restaurants. But all that stops at the bedroom door (or rather, the hotel's front door). I want a hotel to be familiar sanctuary in a strange place and an insulation from what I’m visiting (including relatives, as the case may be—I don’t stay
with people).
As to the interior/exterior corridors issue, the decision has largely been made for me. Since women have unilaterally decided that exterior corridors are unsafe at any speed, every respectable chain has dutifully dumped whatever exterior corridor properties still lingered on their rolls. So what may have been a perfectly splendid exterior-corridor Holiday Inn in the ’90s has since had its franchise revoked and first became a Days Inn, then an America’s Best Value Inn, and now is the unbranded “Thruway Motor Lodge”. And it’s attracting the type of people who rent a motel room either by the hour or by the month.
And yet, part of me wants to like exterior corridors, particularly for a Motel 6. In a perfect world where every Motel 6 is as neat as a pin and attracts a pleasant crowd of sober, hardworking people who merely want to save money on their lodging expenses, I’d almost rather the Motel 6 have exterior corridors. Interior corridors in a budget motel typically feel cheap, dark, and depressing, while at least an exterior room door opens up to a sunny day and the hum of the adjacent Interstate. Sadly, this is most definitely not a perfect world.
But even in a perfect world, I’d like to be able to open my room window or leave the drapes open, neither of which I’d do at an exterior corridor property—considering the fishbowl level of privacy I’d have.
For those of you who claim a security benefit to exterior corridors, I have to ask what scenario you’re envisioning where being within earshot of your car—which, by the way, you can do with most interior corridor layouts—would somehow save the day.
Assuming that the sound is enough to awaken you, by the time you hear anything (breaking glass, metal on metal impact), it’s too late; the damage has been done. Sure,
maybe you’ll be able to catch part of a license plate if you bolt to the window as fast as you can. Or if it’s an amiable drunk bro who accidentally crunched your fender while parking his band’s van, you might be able to hold him until the police arrive. (Of course a bro who thinks nothing of driving drunk, stays at a cheap motels, and drives a broken down van is probably uninsured and penniless anyway.) But otherwise, you’re probably dealing with a local hood who’ll either take a shot at you or run. You’re going to run after him guns blazing at 2 a.m.?