R.I.P. William Becker, Co-Founder of Motel 6
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 05.14.07 | 9:23 AM ET
Photo by independentman via Flickr (Creative Commons).
The “6” in Motel 6 famously represents the $6 William Becker and his co-founder, Paul Greene, charged travelers per night when the budget chain opened its first property in Santa Barbara, California in 1962. According to an obituary in the Los Angeles Times, Becker “had been inspired by a monthlong, cross-country car trip from Santa Barbara to his family’s farm in Greenwich, N.Y., in the summer of 1960.” The two founders leveraged their background in building low-cost tract homes, and turned out rooms with no-iron sheets, coin-operated televisions and “shower stalls with rounded edges rather than corners to reduce cleaning time.”
Green told the Santa Barbara News-Press in 1962: “We feel that this is the type of simple accommodation needed by travelers with families. It may cause a revolution in the business in the West, but we feel it has a great future.”
They were right. Becker was 85 when he passed away.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
