This is ridiculous... The idea of a "motel" is to be cheap. I'm not too fond of this article. It wasn't well written. Nothing great about it. Some chain hotels purchasing old motels and rebrand them. Whatever.
Millennials now have real jobs and real money now so there's money to be made by turning things from that time period upscale experiences for them to relive with nostalgia.
See TV/Hollywood. :/ Tons and tons of remakes. Some are decent enough (the 2017 Duck Tales was solid), but they're pretty clear cash/attention grabs...
The idea of a motel (“motor hotel”) is to be a convenient to motorists, often as a stopping point or destination on road trips by family vehicle. Now, that market historically has skewed more working class than that for “destination” hotels not focussed on motorists, where guests were assumed to be brought to and from the hotel by a driver—taxi, etc.—for the last/first leg, an by longer range owned or hired transport—air, usually, these days—so, yes, on average motels have been cheaper, but that is incidental rather than central to the idea of a motel.
The term just means "motor hotel"; a hotel oriented at motorists, usually with an external-facing door for each room.
Even in their heyday, there were cheap ones and nice ones.
> The idea of a "motel" is to be cheap.
The stereotypical cheap motel is almost guaranteed to be an unpleasant experience because of the riff-raff it attracts and the extremely low level of service/cleaning. That said, they exist to serve a need, they're not going to go out of business anytime soon.
The "rebanded" hipster motels are quite nice, I stayed at one in Marfa TX and also a different one somewhere in MA. Such motels can only exist if there's enough visitors to make them worthwhile, they also serve a need.