hotelHotel Impossible · Season 7, Episode 10 · Aired June 27, 2016
Big Bear Motel
Cody, Wyoming
It is still up and running.
What happened after
Family-owned motel less than a mile from Cody Stampede Rodeo; official site active.
What happened on the show
In Cody, Wyoming, the gateway town to Yellowstone and home of the Cody Stampede Rodeo, the Big Bear Motel greeted Melchiorri with a familiar mix of trouble: a dysfunctional family running the place, mediocre rooms and a bed bug problem. The episode, Tiny Horse, Big Problems, leaned on the family dysfunction as the driver behind the physical failings. A motel less than a mile from a famous rodeo in a Yellowstone-gateway town has strong seasonal demand, so mediocre rooms and an infestation are self-inflicted, rooted in a family that could not run the operation cleanly. Anthony worked the rooms and the pest problem while pushing the family to function together and hold basic standards. His read reinforced the show's recurring theme that family dysfunction shows up in the guest experience, and that a motel with a built-in tourist draw fails only when the people running it get in their own way.
After the cameras left
The Big Bear Motel is still open in Cody. As of our 2026 verification the family-owned motel less than a mile from the Cody Stampede Rodeo grounds is operating, with an active official site, and it ranks in the upper-middle tier among the town's couple dozen hotels with a four-star average. The dysfunctional-family property with the bed bug problem has stayed in business more than a decade after the show, still catching the Yellowstone-bound traffic. Confirmed operating as of 2026.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.