Inns are generally establishments or buildings where travelers can seek lodging, and usually, food and drink. Inns are typically located in the country or along a highway. Before the advent of motorized transportation, they also provided accommodation for horses.
An innkeeper is the person who runs an inn.
A caravanserai (or caravansary; /kærəˈvænsəˌraɪ/) was an inn that provided lodging for travelers, merchants, and caravans. They were present throughout much of the Islamic world. Depending on the region and period, they were called by a variety of names including khan, funduq and wikala. Caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information, and people across the network of trade routes covering Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe, most notably the Silk Road. In the countryside, they were typically built at intervals equivalent to a day's journey along important roads, where they served as a kind of staging post. Urban versions of caravanserais were historically common in cities where they could serve as inns, depots, and venues for conducting business.
The buildings were most commonly rectangular structures with one protected entrance. Inside, a central courtyard was surrounded by an array of rooms on one or more levels. In addition to lodgings for people, they often included space to accommodate horses, camels, and other pack animals, as well as storage rooms for merchandise.
A tavern is a type of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food such as different types of roast meats and cheese, and (mostly historically) where travelers would receive lodging. An inn is a tavern that has a licence to put up guests as lodgers. The word derives from the Latin taberna whose original meaning was a shed, workshop, stall, or pub.
Over time, the words "tavern" and "inn" became interchangeable and synonymous. In England, inns started to be referred to as public houses or pubs and the term became standard for all drinking houses.
A mountain resort is a place to holiday or vacation located in an elevated and typically at least relatively isolated area. The term resort implies integral hotel or inn accommodations, restaurants, and either or both sports facilities or scenic attractions like birdwatching. These can be part of a "destination resort" that provides accommodations and activities or a "resort town" that offers amenities near outdoor areas.
They include winter sports like skiing, snowboarding, and ice skating and summer activities such as hiking, golf, and tennis. Sightseeing and related activities, such as leaf peeping to appreciate fall colors, are also common where foliage turns.
Lodging refers to the use of a short-term dwelling, usually by renting the living space or sometimes through some other arrangement. People who travel and stay away from home for more than a day need lodging for sleep, rest, food, safety, shelter from cold temperatures or rain, storage of luggage and access to common household functions. Lodging is a form of the sharing economy.
Lodging is done in a hotel, motel, hostel, or inn, a private home (commercial, i.e. a bed and breakfast, a guest house, a vacation rental, or non-commercially, as in certain homestays or the home of friends), in a tent, caravan/campervan (often on a campsite). Lodgings may be self-catering, whereby no food is provided, but cooking facilities are available.
A pub (short for public house) is, in several countries, a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the late 17th century to differentiate private houses from those open to the public as alehouses, taverns, and inns. Today, there is no strict definition, but the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) states a pub has four characteristics:
The history of pubs can be traced to taverns in Roman Britain, and through Anglo-Saxon alehouses, but it was not until the early 19th century that pubs, as they are today, first began to appear. The model also became popular in countries and regions of British influence, where pubs are often still considered to be an important aspect of their culture. In many places, especially in villages, pubs are the focal point of local communities. In his 17th-century diary, Samuel Pepys described the pub as "the heart of England"; pubs have been established in other countries in modern times.
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a refrigerator, and other kitchen facilities, upholstered chairs, a television, and en-suite bathrooms. Small, lower-priced hotels may offer only the most basic guest services and facilities. Larger, higher-priced hotels may provide additional guest facilities such as a swimming pool, a business center with computers, printers, and other office equipment, childcare, conference and event facilities, tennis or basketball courts, gymnasium, restaurants, day spa, and social function services. Hotel rooms are usually numbered (or named in some smaller hotels and B&Bs) to allow guests to identify their room. Some boutique, high-end hotels have custom decorated rooms. Some hotels offer meals as part of a room and board arrangement. In Japan, capsule hotels provide a tiny room suitable only for sleeping and shared bathroom facilities.
The precursor to the modern hotel was the inn of medieval Europe. For a period of about 200 years from the mid-17th century, coaching inns served as a place for lodging for coach travelers. Inns began to cater to wealthier clients in the mid-18th century. One of the first hotels in a modern sense was opened in Exeter in 1768. Hotels proliferated throughout Western Europe and North America in the early 19th century, and luxury hotels began to spring up in the later part of the 19th century, particularly in the United States.
A courtyard or court is a circumscribed area, often surrounded by a building or complex, that is open to the sky.
Courtyards are common elements in both Western and Eastern building patterns and have been used by both ancient and contemporary architects as a typical and traditional building feature. Such spaces in inns and public buildings were often the primary meeting places for some purposes, leading to the other meanings of court. Both of the words court and yard derive from the same root, meaning an enclosed space. See yard and garden for the relation of this set of words. In universities courtyards are often known as quadrangles.