Home, I Have No Home: NYT Examines the Hotel Lifestyle

Recently the hotel lifestyle got quite the shout-out in the New York Times. Guy Trebay offers an insightful look at the experience of being a frequent traveler and the allure of luxury hotels as well as the simple charm of a roadside motel. It’s part story of a lifetime of travel and part examination of the the at-home feeling of otherness we all feel as strangers temporarily filling up an empty space with our lives. The transience of a hotel room, coupled with the fake familiarity of its wait staff is both welcoming and fleeting, like a summer romance. He gives special mention of a few hotels with which he’s shared the remarkable journey: Claridge’s, Halekulani, the various Raffles hotels, the Grand Hotel d’Angkor. It’s certainly well worth a read – he understands well the mind of the restless traveler, at home in impermanence, on the vacation that is so beautiful precisely because it is stepping out of your life.