[WalterGR]

I’d never heard of the “Hotel California business model.” Googled it - for others: Hotel California is a song by the band The Eagles, which contains the lyrics:

  “Relax," said the night man,

  "We are programmed to receive

  You can check out any time you like

  But you can never leave!"

[DaiPlusPlus]

Can someone explain it to me, though?

Logically, after you check-out of a hotel you've surrendered your right to abode at that location - after that you're usually limited to common/shared areas like the lobby, bar, restaurant, maybe the pool - but excepting the lobby those places are closed at night - and they'd have security to remove people from the lobby if necessary - so as far as the Eagles' are concerned, what is it to "never leave" when you legally cannot stay?

[NobodyNada]

From Wikipedia:

> The song has been described as being "all about American decadence and burnout, too much money, corruption, drugs and arrogance; too little humility and heart." It has also been interpreted as an allegory about hedonism, self-destruction, and greed in the music industry of the late 1970s. Henley called it "our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles", and later said: "It's basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about."

Hotel California is, of course, not literally a hotel; it's a metaphor for an addictive and entrapping lifestyle, and your legal "right to abode at that location" is a real-world detail that doesn't really matter for the purposes of the metaphor. The singer wants to get out -- by "checking out" he has declared his intentions to leave the hotel, but the point of the song is that wanting to leave is not the same as actually leaving.

It's a bit more obvious if you consider the full verse:

> Mirrors on the ceiling / The pink champagne on ice / And she said: "We are all just prisoners here / Of our own device"

> And in the master's chambers / They gathered for the feast / They stab it with their steely knives / But they just can't kill the beast

> Last thing I remember, I was / Running for the door / I had to find the passage back / To the place I was before

> "Relax," said the night man / "We are programmed to receive / You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave!"

[cassonmars]

The song is a metaphor, though what the metaphor is has been debated — be it drugs or some other form of escapism. In any respect, the “check out” is a play on words of the euphemism for dying — your only way out is death, which is partly what makes the belief so popular that the song is a metaphor for a drug like heroin.

[Brian_K_White]

"check out" also has a slang meaning, not literally that you stopped paying for a hotel but get to stay anyway, and the song is not about a hotel.

[riffic]

It's not literal.