Ariela L Zucker

Living off the Road - Stories from a Mom-and-pop Motel Ariela L Zucker

The Mom-and -pop motel seems like a nicely wrapped package. Compact enough to make it manageable yet sufficiently varied to keep it exciting. Other people with no prior experience have done it, and survived, so how hard can it be? And so people often dive in without doing their homework, not realizing what it actually means, mislead by their own misconceptions and wishful thinking. It might seem simple, but small does not necessarily means effortless, and a motel is not like any other small home business. When every room is crucial, when one good season does not guarantee another, rain, or shine, or snow, in health or in sickness, the show must go on in order to keep surviving. That is the nature of this business in a nutshell. No wonder then that the burnout rate is rather fast and small motels change hands so often. The mom-and ?pop motel is not for the faint of heart.