Hotel setting can serve multiple goals for Kdramas :
- Showing off the rich side of the CEO, main character ;
- Family business ;
- Various side stories with the different clients ;¨
- Etc.

I guess the most original and beautiful one wast Hotel del Luna :p

Otherwise, I remember You are My Spring, Encounter, My Secret Romance, My Secret Hotel (that was pretty good until the changed the writer...), Lie to Me, Hotel King... so many!

My favourite hotel setting this year was in TALE OF THE NINE TAILED 1938. The setting was used twice and both times I was at the edge of my seat. First was a heist(ish) romp, where various groups, individuals and deities had different motives, to steal the magical golden ruler and crystal. Plus zombies! A hotel feels large and small at the same time. In this insistence, with so many people planning their own schemes, the chaos of the hotel lent itself well for all the players to lay down their cards in secrecy. Watching Yeon navigate around the traps of the villains but also avoiding the tricks and ploys of his untrustworthy deity friends was incredibly exhilarating and nerve wracking to watch!

But hey let’s not forget the zombies! This is when the hotel felt very claustrophobic since a magnitude of people suddenly died and became zombies. Rang and his ‘henchmen’ held the fort, running around fighting. Trying to get through different passages of the hotel, all to get a specific item to save lives. It was definitely bloody but was also very exciting! This episode was clearly one of my favourites in the season if you can’t tell!

The second hotel setting was at the finale, during a wedding and the culminating battle scene with all our heroes banding together to defeat the coloniser baddies. A great way to end a perfect season I must say!

I only recollect old dramas like My Secret Hotel and Hotel King.

Hotel king - I just remember Lee Dong wook looking hot in suits.

Neither were good dramas but somehow I remember seeing them.

For me, hotels are a bit like airports; places you go, but they’re never your final destination. They are, in general, places where “no one is at home,” and so no one can claim home-court advantage. You pass through, and anything might happen.

Growing up in the US, there were two prime-time TV shows on (I seem to remember that they were aired back-to-back) that really epitomize this transience—and therefore the episodic possibilities of a hotel setting—for me: “Love Boat” (a.k.a. Weekly frolics in a floating hotel that only ever goes to Acapulco and back) and, of course, for those who were there, you’ll see where I am going, “Fantasy Island” (a.k.a…actually, wtf was that show?). I bring up these old shows because I think they relate to how Kdramas, and fiction in general, often use hotels to their best advantage.

First, let’s focus on the word “Fantasy.” Yeah, hotels are where trysts happen. Hopefully they’re between freely consenting adults (Love to Hate You and Business Proposal, for example), but there are times in dramas there for money (Stranger). I shall move on from this particular use case, as you didn’t make this post @missvictrix about motels which is the setting for which we would need to dwell on this point further.

There can be tamer frissons of excitement in a hotel. Check out the Event is a short-form drama that centers around folks on vacation and so also features a hotel prominently. There’s a bit of the old French farce “who’s in the hall, who’s at the door,” but there’s also, in a very funny scene, a guest house that hosts our leading love triangle for a night (it’s odd to call it that, but there you have it). Our FL gets falls down into a giant hole. She really does. I could go on, but I’ll now leave guest houses to the side too, as again, I’m to be talking about hotels.

Beyond this, folks often just meet in hotels to be somewhat anonymized but very private (Nevertheless springs to mind, unusually, as Park Jae-eon goes there to meet his mother). I suppose I’m focusing on the rooms here rather than the lobbies—I’ll be interested to see how others focus on this more public aspect of hotels!

To wrap-up my own contribution here (phew), I feel that in all of these cases, hotels allow characters easily pass through and then leave quickly. This this transience allows them to be potentially changed, and not bogged down in their environment. The viewers just let them move on.

The OG must be The Hotelier 😅

Before My Girl, the first drama of mine to use a hotel setting was 2001's Hotelier starring Bae Yong-joon, Song Yoon-ah, Kim Seung-woo and Song Hye-kyo. It was one of my favorite dramas at the time, and I loved Bae Yong-joon and Song Yoon-ah in it. I'm always reminded of it every time Im Yoon-ah calls herself a "hotelier" in King the Land, which is translated as "concierge" but in fact means "hotel manager."

In Hotelier, Bae Yong-joon is a M&A lawyer and businessman who is hired to take over Seoul Hotel, while hotel manager Kim Seung-woo fights to protect it. After falling in love with hotel employee Song Yoon-ah, Bae Yong-joon joins the fight and helps the hotel.

It's been twenty years, but I remember that the plot had never dragged, and I had learned a lot about hotel management and mergers and acquisitions. I think that K-dramas use hotels as their main setting so frequently because romances in a five-star hotel is like a fantasy.

To me hotels are just places with underpaid staff, well, apart from management of course, so I don’t understand such an obsession with them in dramas

I'm guessing that hotels and/or motels appear at least briefly in half of all K-dramas...maybe more. Does anyone have any guesses as to why? I don't think hotel settings are featured nearly as often in dramas from other countries.

Anyway, here are three that spring immediately to mind:

Fated to Love You - The main plot was set in motion by an accidental one-night stand precipitated by some spiked drinks and a mixed-up number on a hotel-room door. After many trials and tribulations, our couple returns to the same room in the same hotel to relive the magic—hopefully fully conscious this time! (Spoiler: Doesn't happen.)

Greasy Melo - Hello again, Jang Hyuk! The show features a David-and-Goliath battle between the gourmet hotel restaurant and the little neighborhood Chinese place.

Mr. Sunshine - One of the main characters, Kudo Hina, is the owner of the Glory Hotel, where many key scenes take place.

koreandramaland even has a whole subsection for hotels. I often wonder how so many Seoul hotels are available for shooting although many are used repeatedly.

Just a few random thoughts, hotels are an easy way to telegraph upscale, rich, luxury, sophistication, even Westernization. And the hotel setup can be used like the Palace setup in sageuks: upstairs/downstairs, luxury and beauty for a select few, internal intrigue, servile treatment of those at the top.

My favourite hotel setting is the lavish breakfast and to my knowledge it has sadly never been incorporated into a Kdrama. But I do understand why the hotel is a good setting with locals where you can incorporate the work place as well as the personal just by walking to a different room, and a third room for sweaty gym performances.

The show that made me wonder what's this fascination with hotels was Lie to Me, where in the first episode they were going on and on about him being a hotel chaebol, which I guess kind of answers that question already. We do have some of that hotel mogul fascination in the US, otherwise no one would care about Paris Hilton, and I can think of hotel-centered US films that are basically fantasy luxury settings, although the ones I'm thinking of do a better job of showing the lives of the staffers. I'd actually like to see more of that in kdramas, maybe less luxurious hotels that I might actually stay in (like the business hotel at Incheon airport I stayed in during my one visit to Seoul), and slice of life stuff with the guests. Maybe something like Hotel del Luna, but not necessarily with ghosts.

Indeed, hotel is a perfect setting for kdramas for the reasons you mentioned. Given how the Cinderella theme is often explored, hotels represent the glamorous side of life. The gloss is taken out in shows that explore family squabbles and chicanery. But I love murder mysteries taking place in a hotel. Somehow, The Grand Budapest Hotel movie stays in my mind. Must be the actors and the comedy to it.

finding a home theme maybe? a home in the sense of people, not space.
Hotel is not a home for sure and people in luxury hotel are also sort of homeless. it is hinted when for example Gu Won is told to stay at the hotel not the house. to someone longing for family warmth a hotel is the same as a street, no matter the penthouse. But once you fin acceptance and wamth in the people in it, it can become a home or at least "a place of approval".

a hotel is home-like, but you cannot behave too comfortably, and we have a contrast between the hotel vs people who live in a tight little rooftop room or small traditional family home. like light and shade, cold and warm, but interchangeable. yin and yang. some warmth leaks into the hotel, and some pride into the house.
another thing is visuals. There are different places to film, hallways, elevators, bars, gym, restaurant, park, rooftop, etc. so you have variety in your locations without running about town.

Grand hotels convey wealth, power and status which are goals for much of westernized society. From the 1920s to present, the Plaza Hotel in NYC was "home" to many stars and celebrities who lived full time in hotel suites (now costing $10K to $100K per month). Hotel bars were the gathering place for the elite: socialites, entertainers, politicians, writers, and musicians (esp. if there was an attached lounge). It was a place to be seen but also make deals.

But they could also be mysterious. There was once a downtown Chicago hotel where their dining room was so dark you could not see who was at the next table. The reason? Politicians and crime bosses did not want to be seen together.

I consider Wok of Love to be a hotel drama. Hilariously also one that stars Jun-ho

I find being away from home stressful and hotels are places where I pay for my luggage to hang out while I go outside of the hotel to do stuff outside of the hotel. If I spend lots of time at a hotel, it's really because a work conference is being held there...in which case, I feel sort of claustrophobic and try to get out of the hotel after the last session of the day.

So I do find it interesting to see what goes on at the hotel when I'm not there because there is definitely lots going on. There are hotels of various quality, but I find it interesting that hotel kdramas have hotels sort of in the 4-5 star range. So we'd get the working class staff, middle class business people, maybe even low/middle class people who scored a nice rate a room, and more wealthy folks who may opt for the nicer rooms. I notice in kdramas that blind dates and meetings also happen a lot in hotel dining establishments. Maybe the prices are more reasonable there? I guess that's where they can the Western-style food, which would be more special to them?

A cynical part of me is also saying that a hotel setting is easier to arrange and probably not that expensive to arrange. The hotel probably gives a reasonable film-booking rate for some extra publicity.

My favorite drama hotel is probably the one from Hotel de Luna. I loved how everyone could afford to go to such an elegant hotel that was also family-friendly (...because they were all dead...). I actually disliked the Kim Soo-hyun cameo somewhat because he redecorated and rebranded the hotel after Man-wol passed on.

@missvictrix I love your thoughts on this. I also think this idea of easily moving between public and private space plays a big part in hotels as a setting. You don’t have to move far to create a very different ambiance (it’s both personal and professional, both a workplace and a home away from home).
There’s also every level of the social class spectrum housed under one roof, organically, so you don’t have to stretch/fake why characters from different worlds would interact with each other.
And, yes, the visuals! What a lovely place to spend 16 episodes!

It’s true that it makes a lot of sense when you think about it — but I wasn’t really thinking about it before you mentioned it 😂 Thanks for making me ponder!

Hotel Del Luna with the concept of a short stay before you pass on is probably one of my favourite.

Product placement? Promoting iconic places and tourism? Hotels are cheaper than building a set or more economical than filming in other types of locations?

Let's face it, hotel chaebols are easier to relate to than industrial chaebols (like a "Waste Management" chaebol or a widget manufacturer chaebol, etc.). Hotels are just another piece of escapism that the entertainment industry offers.

The professions and industries that K-dramas use are interesting, but very limited in the scope of work. The writers seem to be very unrealistic in terms of the workplace setting and professions they feature because the writers choose something that allows the character to freely move and interact with lots of different types of people.