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At its most basic, a hotel is an establishment that provides travelers and tourists with a place to spend the night%u2014for a price. Many also offer meals. The word hotel derives from the Latin hospes, meaning guest. It is also the origin of the word hospital. Low-cost hotels may offer a simple mattress with basic bedding in a small room. Older ones sometimes had a shared bathroom down the hall. A more expensive version might have a bigger, professionally decorated and furnished room, with a larger, higherquality mattress, a refrigerator, a flatscreen TV, and other features. The highest tier hotels offer true luxury suites for their guests.Hotels got their start with the ancient Greeks and Romans as inns built adjacent to thermal baths. By the Middle Ages, as horse-drawn coaches became increasingly popular, greater numbers of people travelled for business, education, tax collection, sending messages, and military purposes. As a result, additional inns and taverns were established to accommodate them. Monasteries and abbeys also provided bed and board, but they usually catered to the nobility. Popular inns of 12th-century London included the Tabard (demolished in 1873) and the George and Dragon, which remains in operation today. It%u2019s the only surviving inn in London from that era. However, the George is no match in longevity for Japan%u2019s Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, which, according to the Guinness Cook of World Records, is the oldest hotel in existence. It opened in 705, it is still owned by the original founding family. These and other early inns, hotels, and alehouses, were akin to what we would call bed and breakfasts today.London%u2019s George and Dragon today, An inn in Roman times.