The story of Hotel starts in England, with engineer Denys Fisher, the inventor of Spirograph toy. He founded his own company, Denys Fisher Toys. Through the 60's and 70's Fisher and his company, designed and produced many toys, like Doctor Who and Star Wars figures and distributed board games acquiring their licenses, like Haunted House, Dig and obviously Hotel.

After its first development, the game was finally officially released by Denys Fischer in 1974, sold inside a huge black box. The game consisted in a hard-cardboard table where up to four players had to move their small colored cars. Each turn the player had to try to buy lands and build different buildings with the aim to create full hotel chains to make opponents pay for their stay in your hotels.

The game shared many rules and particularities of the much more famous game Monopoly. Effectively the object of the game was very similar, and for this reasons many pointed out Hotel to be a clone of Monopoly. I guess the aim of Hayes was to create a simpler and more attractive version of Monopoly keeping the main philosophy of the game:
- buy terrains
- build on them
- let opponents pay you over them
His great idea was to include real 3d hotels, which involved the players who could see their buildings grow with their eyes, taking form and expanding, giving them a visual idea of what they were owning. Furthermore the rules of Hotel were more easy and smart. The most simple definition of Hotel is "a modern version of Monopoly".

In 1986 the first "modern" version of Hotel was released, published by MB and still developed by Hayes. It brought the original rules but the big step forward was a new fresh 80's design made by the magic of Roger Ford. The box was totally redesigned, with a photo of the game, more colorful, more attractive. The hotels style was more heterogeneous, they recalled real hotels, the walls were made of thicker cardboard and with glossy paint, a style that was so right and beloved that it would last for almost another 20 years.<br> A thinner board was made, that could be easily folded in two, so that the box could be made smaller. The game was finally translated into different European languages, including English, Italian, Spanish, German, French and Dutch. Due to a huge marketing and advertising campaign it was a great success at the time and it's still the most common version.

Through the years many different editions were released, even travel editions and various non official PC adaptions for example. People still tries nowadays to create its own edition with 3d printers or Lego bricks, showing how the games still keeps its fame alive, through lovely nostalgia.