Love Hotels, No-Tell Motels: Discretion desired, sex work allowed

Many years ago I saw an inexpensive hotel in the southern United States called the No-Tell Motel. It sounded titillating, but now I realise that the discretion and short-term stays promised by such lodgings are used by many sorts of people – anyone who would like assignations or business dealings kept private, and those needn’t be sexual. Therefore, users include wives and husbands who want privacy, people having extramarital affairs, prostitutes and clients, people doing business. Some of the hotels offer elaborate fantasy rooms, costumes and props (for some kinds of cosplay).

In Japan these places are called love hotels (ラブホテル, rabu hoteru). The one below has multiple doors rather than an attention-getting central entrance. 

The next one has no windows.

Checking in via video screens assures anonymity.

In a well-known middle-American motel from the 1940s, the Coral Court’s rooms had private garages for customers’ cars near St Louis, Missouri.

A lot of commentary stigmatises these hotels as immoral or sleazy, but some of them are quite grand and used by people who only desire privacy, without having anything dramatic to hide. They are also another example of how commercial-sex relations overlap with other social relations.

2 thoughts on “Love Hotels, No-Tell Motels: Discretion desired, sex work allowed

  1. Pingback: No-Tell Motels | Love Hotels | Shinjuku | Sex Work | Discretion … - 2Dinternational

  2. Pingback: No-Tell Motels | Love Hotels | Shinjuku | Sex Work | Discretion … | Hotel Confirm

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