29 Fascinating Hotels & Other Facts About the Hospitality Industry

Popular hotels in New Orleans put grease on balcony support poles during Mardi Gras so that drunks can't climb in.

2. Hotel Arbez sits right on the border of Switzerland and France. A set of stairs start in France and end in Switzerland upstairs. The upper rooms were thus an ideal hideout for French Resistance members during World War 2 as the Nazis weren't allowed to cross into the Swiss side.

3. Room 114 of Washington Jefferson Hotel is covered in melting cheese.

4. The Greenbrier hotel in West Virginia had a bunker was built under the hotel in the late 50s to house Congress in the event of a nuclear war. The secret was exposed by the Washington Post and since then bunker has closed down and it is now open for tours.

5. The Foxes Hotel in Minehead, U.K. is a specialist catering college and training hotel for young adults with learning disabilities. The hotel teaches them skills of trade for them to use when they get jobs in the real world.

Fairmont hotel chain has resident dogs known as Canine Ambassadors, who greet guests in the lobby, accompany them on walks to make them feel at home.

7. Tokyo’s Mitsui Garden Yotsuya hotel offers ‘crying rooms’ only to women. Yohei Ezato, the PR representative for the hotel, says with more Japanese women succeeding in the workforce, it’s causing a rise in female stress/anxiety. The rooms include tear-jerking movies, luxurious tissues, and warm sheets.

8. In the early 80s, the Mutiny Hotel in Miami was a cocaine-fueled hotspot where CIA agents partied side by side with notorious drug traffickers, celebrities and politicians.

9. In Asian hotels room, number 404 is usually missing because the repetition of number 4 is considered bad luck.

10. The Virgin Hotel in Chicago has no check-in desk; it uses a smartphone system in which you scan a QR code and retrieve your room key from a vending machine. The personal comfort assistant app named Lucy can order more pillows, control room temperature, and coordinate messages with hotel staff.

A luxury hotel named Grand Hyatt Cannes Hotel in Cannes, France has a team of 5 trained attack hawks that it uses to keep pesky seagulls from harassing its wealthy patrons in outside seating areas.

12. There is a resort named Kakslauttanen arctic resort in Finland where you sleep in a glass igloo to watch the northern lights.

13. The Sun Cruise Hotel in South Korea looks exactly like a huge yacht built on the top of a large cliff.

14. The Smuggler's Inn located on the Canadian-American border encourages its guests to spot illegal trespassers by supplying them with night vision goggles.

15. The Seaside Inn in Kennebunkport, Maine has been in continuous operation under the Gooch family since 1667, making it one of the oldest companies in the United States. The inn is currently owned by the twelfth generation descendants.

The Citadel Inn (a 5-star hotel) in Lviv, Ukraine used to be Stalag-328, an infamous Nazi concentration camp where it is said upwards of 100,000 prisoners were killed. It was nicknamed the “Tower of Death.”

17. There is a bed and breakfast in central Idaho that's 30 feet tall and shaped like a beagle. It is known locally as the Sweet Willy Dog Bark Park Inn.

18. The oldest Masonic lodge in the world is in Kilwinning, Scotland. It is number 0 (referred to as 'nothing' not zero.)

19. There is a resort in the Netherlands called Pony Park City where you rent 1 of 300 miniature ponies while you are there and it is designed to look like an old western town.

20. The world's first motel was built in 1925 in San Luis Obispo, California due to it being a midpoint between Los Angeles and San Francisco, a two-day trip for motorists at that time. Originally named the “Milestone Mo-Tel”, the motel combined the convenience of an overnight campground with the comfort of a hotel.

The hotel chain Motel 6 got its name because of the original price of its rooms, which was $6.

22. The world’s first “floating hotel” was originally located near Townsville, Australia. Following a financial struggle, it was transferred to and now docked in North Korea.

23. If you stay at Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, one of the hotel’s amenity is a 24-carat gold plate iPad, which will serve as a “virtual concierge” that offers information on everything from the hotel's restaurant menus and spa treatments to housekeeping and butler services. The hotel already has an iMac in each of its 202 rooms, in addition to other luxury amenities such as walk-in showers and jacuzzis, large plasma TVs, and private butler service.

24. During World War 2, the Claridge’s Hotel in London ceded a hotel room to be temporarily part of Yugoslavia so that the new crown prince could be born on his own country “soil.”

25. The most expensive hotel in the world is “The Mark Hotel” which is located in New York City. A room in this hotel costs $100,000 per night. It offers cathedral ceilings that overlook five bedrooms, six bathrooms, a 24-person dining room, a living room that can be converted into a ballroom, a conservatory, a library lounge, and a private roof-top terrace with the view of the city.