Motel 6 offers free rooms for musicians

Many of have considered the fact that each night there must be tens of thousands of empty motel rooms all over the world, and there are also thousands who have nowhere to sleep. I know that motels need to make a profit to survive, but it does seem like a horrible waste, and it is actually kind of weird. Imagine someone sleeping in their car across the street from a motel that has two of their fifty rooms occupied…it seems like the motel would be better off lowering the price and at least wind up getting something for the room rather than nothing.

Touring musicians have certainly had this thought more than once, and Motel 6 is participating in an interesting partnership that is good for musicians, and good for their business. They are offering free rooms to some touring musicians in return for mere goodwill. They figure that the band members will say nice things about them publicly and via social networking online and that this type of word-of-mouth, grass roots buzz will help their business in the long run.

This deal is not a universal policy that applies to all musicians (darn!). It is a deal that was worked out between Motel 6 and a couple of music biz entities who arranged for this hook-up for three somewhat fledgling bands. Though this partnership is helping just a handful of artists at present, it is a step in the right direction, and it makes a lot of sense. When you do nice things for people, they say nice things about you and do what they can to help you in return. Hey, maybe our government should try that, because killing folks in faraway lands doesn’t look like it’s working as a public relations tool.