Video: Brazilian motel becomes an export product – 04/09/2024 – Tv Folha

The Brazilian motel is so unique that it has become an export product. “It’s an industry that started in 1968, has gone through dozens of economic plans, currencies, and resists bravely”, says Ciça Guedes, author of the book “Os Motéis e o Politics”.

“The motel is not a Brazilian jabuticaba, but this business model is a Brazilian invention. And it was exported. In some European countries and the United States there are already Brazilian motels”, says Murilo Fiuza de Melo, author of the book “The motiles and power”.

The word motel comes from the combination of “motor” and “hotel”, and emerged in the United States in 1920 as a type of low-cost accommodation for travelers. It didn’t necessarily have a loving purpose.

In Japan, there is the so-called love hotel – an accommodation designed for romantic relationships. It comes from its own ancient tradition, linked to tea houses, and it is estimated that there are around 30 thousand love hotels in Japan. Let’s say that Brazil mixed elements from both countries and created the “Brazilian-style motel”.

The history of the Brazilian motel began during the military dictatorship, which indirectly financed the construction and consolidation of these establishments.

There was an interest in promoting the tourism industry. With the creation of the Brazilian Tourism Company in 1966, a series of measures facilitated hotel infrastructure in Brazil, such as tax incentives and low interest rates.

“A revolution is also beginning in the world. A sexual revolution that had and had its most important point in the contraceptive pill, that is, sex purely for reproduction, as has always been preached, begins to lose ground to sex for pleasure”, comments Ciça Guedes.

Ironically, traditional Brazilian motels operate with two paradoxical aspects: visibility and concealment. Extravagant facades on one side, but concern for anonymity on the other.

A service-only corridor and a private garage, for example, were inventions by Brazilian architect Paulo Pontes, who designed more than 200 motel projects throughout Brazil and even some abroad.

More than 50 years after the first Brazilian motel, Brazil has almost as many motels as municipalities: more than 5 thousand. And the sector continues to reinvent itself.

“Youth, the TikTok generation, has rediscovered motels, and turned motels into Instagrammable issues. An interesting thing is that it is women who are doing this, led by women, to take photos and put them on their Instagram profiles, etc”, adds Murilo Fiuza de Melo.

“Women end up being the decider in the question of ‘ah, let’s go to that room, to that motel’. Those who most follow, for example, motels on the social network, are the female public”, says businessman Vinicius Roveda.

Vinicius owns the first motel franchise in Brazil. He started very young, working in a motel founded by his father in the 1970s. And in the 2000s he realized that this business model had room to take other directions, what he calls a “new motel”.

“We turned the key. The old motel owner always thought this was a place just for extramarital affairs. The business model was all supported, yes, thinking that the majority were extramarital, when in reality we serve the couple much more with a stable relationship. More than 80%, 85% of those who frequent the motels are couples in a stable relationship”, reports Vinicius Roveda.