page_title: Hotels in Toronto
section_title: Motel era
hierarchical_section_title: Hotels in Toronto / History / Motel era
caption_attribution_description: Scarboro is the last town ( when it was its own town and not part of the City of Toronto) on the road from Montréal to Toronto. And it was the place to stop for the night before heading into the Big Smoke. And the place to rest for motorists was the motel. I can remember when the street was one motel after another. Even now there are still about 12 within a few blocks. I also remember when there was anything other than color TVs. Does this sign mean that some other places still offer only Black and White television? And note the spelling of color to entice American travellers.
context_page_description: Hotels in Toronto have been some of the most prominent buildings in the city and the hotel industry is one of the city's most important. The Greater Toronto Area has 183 hotels with a total of almost 36,000 rooms. In 2010, there were 8.9 million room nights sold. Toronto is a popular tourist destination, with it having the 6th highest room occupancy rate in North America, but about two thirds of rooms are taken by commercial, government, or convention travellers.
  Toronto hotels are found in different clusters. The downtown core and financial district has a wide array of hotels. Many are near the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and others, like the Sheraton Centre, have their own substantial convention facilities. North of downtown the upscale Yorkville neighbourhood has many of the city's most luxurious hotels. Hotels such as the Four Seasons, Windsor Arms, and Sutton Place are at the centre of the Toronto International Film Festival each year. Outside of the downtown area around Toronto Pearson International Airport has a cluster of hotels and convention centres. The major highways through town also have a wide array of smaller hotels and motels along them.
context_section_description: The arrival of the automobile transformed travel to Toronto. The motel quickly became one of the most popular hotel forms. In the 1950s and 1960s this led to the creation of Toronto's famous "motel strip" along Lake Shore Boulevard, then the main western route out of the city. At its height the strip had many motels, each attempting to draw attention through eye catching architecture and street side advertising. In 1954 Highway 401 was built to the north of the city, and much traffic was redirected there; in 1966 the Gardiner Expressway almost wholly redirected remaining intercity traffic away from the area. The strip declined rapidly and by the 1980s the area was most known for its prostitution and gunfights. The recent condo boom in Toronto has seen most of the motels closed and demolished to be replaced with condo towers looking out over the lake. As of 2008 five structures remain only two of which are operational. 
  A similar, but less prominent, strip developed along Kingston Road in Scarborough, then the main eastern route out of town. Many of these still remain in operation, such as the iconic Hav-A-Nap Motel. While inner city travellers are less likely to take Kingston Road, today some of the Scarborough motel rooms have been rented for refugees awaiting decision on their claims, with up to 700 rooms arranged by Toronto's community services department. Smaller motel strips also exist in Mississauga along Lakeshore Road and on Dundas Street east of Dixie Road to Etobicoke Creek.
  As Highway 401 rose to become Canada's busiest highway, it also became the centre of many hotel developments. Today there are dozens of hotels, mostly chain owned, located along the 401 in Toronto and many others in the rest of the Greater Toronto Area.
caption: A motel on Kingston Road. The road developed as a motel strip in the 1950s, with a number of motels remaining in operation today.
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