From the Bates Motel to the Patels: Family-Owned Motels in the American West

Over half of the independently owned motels in the United States are owned and operated by Indian immigrants. My paper explores the confluence of events that created this phenomenal shift in patterns of ownership in the hospitality industry, including changes in federal immigration policy in 1965, and the deterioration of the postwar mom-and-pop motels.  I argue that reliance on family capital and family labor allowed Indians to purchase and operate motel properties that are now an integral part of the national travel economy.  Discrimination against the immigrants forced them to form their own insurance and financial networks, thus strengthening their hold on the motel market.  The stream of Indian immigrants from another continent has brought a sudden diversity to islands of roadside business in the rural West.  The larger project of which this is a part, a study of family-owned lodging in the twentieth century, can illuminate broader currents in postwar history, such as the expansion of the corporation, the growing importance of the service economy, and the changing nature of immigration.