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‘No Vacancy’ Signs Are Vanishing From America’s Highways
Why this icon of road travel is flickering out.
By Paul Lukas
You’ve been driving for a good chunk of the day, you’re pulling into an unfamiliar town, and you need a place to stay for the night. Happily, there’s a comforting sight just ahead—a motel with an illuminated “Vacancy” sign, the “No” thankfully darkened.
The “(No) Vacancy” sign, a beacon of hospitality and/or disappointment, has greeted road-weary American travelers for generations. But just as paper maps and toll booth clerks increasingly seem quaint relics of the analog age, the classic “(No) Vacancy” sign may soon become another victim of shifting travel habits and market forces.
First, some quick historical context. It’s not clear who came up with the ingeniously simple pairing of “Vacancy” and “No Vacancy,” which allows the motel operator to simply toggle the “No” on or off, but it was probably sometime in the 1930s or before. (While the canonical example is neon, electricity isn’t required: Some motels instead gave the “No” a cover-up flap or a slider panel.) By 1946, the signs had become so ubiquitous that country singer Merle Travis recorded a song called No Vacancy, which reached No. 3 on the country charts. America’s postwar boom in the 1950s and ’60s, which led to an explosion of automotive travel and a corresponding spike in roadside lodging development, further solidified the “(No) Vacancy” sign as a staple of American travel culture.
But a lot has changed since those days. “We don’t really have any customers who want that type of sign anymore,” said Alex Lauretano of the Lauretano Sign Group, a leading sign manufacturer for the hospitality industry. “At one point they were useful—but not anymore, with online booking.” Julie Hall, a spokesperson for AAA, which inspects and rates motels, confirmed that vacancy indicators are on the wane and also cited online booking as a key factor.
What about the freewheeling road trippers who don’t book days in advance and simply follow their wanderlust? Even that type of traveler can now use smartphone apps, or simply Google lodging options in the next town down the highway and call ahead to check on availability, rendering the “(No) Vacancy” sign somewhat moot.
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