CJKatl

When I was in Law School at Emory my parents started staying at the CY in Executive Park, around 1987. The rooms had never been updated as the hotel was only four years old at that point. They were pretty much regular hotel rooms. Prior to CY, there were hotels and motels. Motels had exterior doors, cheap beds that often vibrated for a nickel, cheap dressers, desks and tables with ashtrays and a closet without a door. CYs had better bedding and linen, more like a hotel, nicer bathrooms and less cheap furniture. IIRC, there were green carpets. Motels were cheap. Hotels were upscale. CY offered the nice hotel room without the expensive features of a hotel like bellman, a 24 hour restaurant/room service and a souvenir selling newsstand. CYs were also located in suburbs, which usually only had motels, which kept costs down. Most suburban Holiday Inns were motels with restaurants at that point.

BTW, before staying at the CY, my parents had stayed at the Sheraton Century Center, which is now a FS. The CY was much nicer, despite not having the amenities found at the Sheraton. Also, it being the eighties, these were rooms that Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia would have likely have felt at home in, aesthetically speaking.

CY was a game changer. In my lifetime, there have been few concepts that have completely changed an industry. Chrysler had it with the minivan. Blackberry had it with their device, but later lost the market to imitators. None of these categories existed but now we think of them as normal. I remember my parents marveling to friends about the wonderful CY concept.