What Does It Mean to Dream of a Hotel?

No matter how comfortable a hotel might be, it’s not quite home. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the circumstances.

Your hotel dream may show how you feel about the prospect of getting away from your usual daily activities.

Hotel Dream Symbolism

Impermanence

Most hotels are not places where people settle down to live for the rest of their lives. Instead, they are typically used for short-term stays.

Dreaming of a hotel could therefore symbolize that there is something impermanent or transient about the way your life is presently set up. You might be in a living arrangement, school program, or job that you know will not last longer than a year or two. Given that, you may be conflicted about how deeply to put down your roots.

Travel

People often stay at hotels when they are traveling. If you are planning a trip, or if you just got back from a trip, your hotel dream could be processing that experience.

Your hotel dream might also symbolize that you have a craving for the excitement of travel. If you can’t travel physically at the moment, you may need to find another way to see something new.

Being Taken Care Of

When you stay at a hotel, you don’t need to do things like wash your sheets or clean the bathroom, because the hotel staff takes care of that. Dreaming of a hotel could therefore symbolize that you are, or wish you were, being taken care of in some way.

Lacking Control

The downside of being taken care of by others at a hotel is that things might not be done in the way you would do them yourself. A hotel is not your house that you can run the way you want.

In this sense, your hotel dream could symbolize that you lack control over your environment. This interpretation would be more likely if the hotel in your dream was dirty or otherwise unpleasant. See also roach dream symbolism.

Relationship Problems

Somebody might stay in a hotel if they’ve had a falling out with their live-in partner. People also sometimes go to hotels to have extramarital affairs. In this sense, a hotel dream could symbolize that you are dissatisfied with your primary relationship, though this interpretation would be more likely if other factors in the dream also supported it.

Money Issues

Staying in a hotel often isn’t cheap. If you generally think of it as something you can’t afford, dreaming of a hotel could symbolize that you are closer to achieving financial stability than you might think.

However, hotels come at a variety of price points. Sometimes people who have trouble affording housing wind up staying in low-quality hotels while they are between residences. In that sense, which other factors in the dream would have to support, dreaming of a hotel could symbolize fears of poverty.

Impersonal Situation

A hotel room isn’t a space you may decorate to your choosing like your house or apartment. Instead, the rooms are usually standardized, sometimes across large multi-hotel chains. If you’re a business traveler who frequently stays in hotels, you might have trouble knowing which city you’re sleeping in, as it can be hard to tell from inside some hotels.

Dreaming of a hotel could therefore symbolize that you are involved in a situation that has an impersonal quality. The good of this is that you might be able to make a logical decision without a lot of distractions, but you may also be missing a human touch.

Common Hotel Dreams

Dream of a luxury hotel

The dream meaning of a luxury hotel, especially if this is not a place where you would usually stay, could refer to your feelings about wealth and money. If the emotional atmosphere of your luxury hotel dream is negative, this might reflect that you are jealous or resentful of others who have more money than you do.

Alternately, an uncomfortable dream of a luxury hotel might show that you feel like there is something distasteful about wealth, to the point you wouldn’t want more money even if you could have it.

You may be afraid that getting rich will somehow turn you into an unpleasant person. However, a mindset like this can hold you back from achieving financial stability that would actually be good for you.

A pleasant dream about a luxury hotel could symbolize that you feel a sense of abundance in your life. Whether or not this is primarily a financial sense of security, the effect might be that you are comfortable with relaxing and taking care of yourself when you need to.

Dream of a dirty hotel

The dream meaning of a dirty hotel could be that you don’t feel responsible for your surroundings. When you stay at a hotel, you generally expect the hotel staff to keep the room clean for you. If you get there, and the room is messy, that’s not your fault.

Interpreting a dirty hotel dream can go in a couple of different directions from there. One possibility is that you legitimately do not have control over some circumstance in your life, and whoever does have the power to do something about it is not doing their job. An example might be a situation where you are renting a house, and the landlord is refusing to take care of necessary repairs.

Another possibility for a dirty hotel dream meaning is that you are not taking responsibility for something that actually is your responsibility. You might be reluctant to put effort into improving a situation that seems temporary, but doing so could make your experience better for however long you are there.

Dream of a haunted hotel

Some people say there really are haunted hotels, and the stories often trace back to a disturbing incident that took place at the hotel many years ago, whether or not the building was used as a hotel at that time. If you have actually had an experience involving paranormal activity at a hotel, your dream of a haunted hotel could be processing that experience.

Otherwise, your haunted hotel dream meaning could refer to a broader sense of being influenced by others. You may feel like your ability to control the direction of your own life is limited, perhaps by traumas that are not even your own. For example, if a member of your family was wounded by something upsetting that happened to them, the way they handle their trauma might have an impact on you.

Dream of an abandoned hotel

Hotels are usually at their best when things in the world are going well enough that people feel like they can travel freely. If a hotel is abandoned, that may be the result of a serious problem affecting the larger society, like economic malaise or a pandemic.

Your abandoned hotel dream meaning could therefore reflect a sense that something is wrong in society in general. You may feel like you are not able to pursue the things you want to explore, or connect with people in the ways you want to connect, due to circumstances beyond your control. You might also feel lonely and isolated, as hotels are supposed to be full of people.

Dream of being lost in a hotel

Any hotel dream can symbolize a sense of impermanence, but a dream involving being unable to even find your own room in a hotel could especially emphasize that you feel like you can’t put down roots. See also searching dream symbolism.

If your dream of being lost in a hotel is more focused on looking for the bathroom, a lot of dreams of looking for a bathroom just reflect your physical need to go to the bathroom. Bathroom dreams can also represent a need to express emotions.

Another dream meaning of being lost in a hotel could be that you are struggling to find your place in society. You might feel invisible and lost in a crowd that doesn’t seem to care about you.

Conclusion

For good or for bad, things in your life might not be boring at the moment if you find yourself dreaming of a hotel. Even if the way you were removed from your regular routine was not what you wanted, try to find what you can learn from the experience.