hotelHotel Impossible · Season 8, Episode 8 · Aired October 2, 2017
Cape Hatteras Motel
Buxton, North Carolina
It is still up and running.
What happened after
Private-beach motel 1mi from Cape Hatteras Lighthouse; official site active.
What happened on the show
On the Outer Banks, near the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, Melchiorri found owners who had concluded they had no choice but to sell their motel, only to be told by Anthony that their asking price was unrealistically high. The episode, Outer Banks-Ruptcy, layered a sale dilemma on top of communication breakdowns between the staff and management. A beachfront motel a mile from a famous lighthouse has a genuine draw, so owners ready to give up needed a reality check on both the property's value and its fixable problems. Anthony looked past the surface at the operation while pressing the owners to lower their price expectations and to repair the staff-management communication that was dragging the operation down. He returned to the truth the format kept surfacing for a discouraged ownership: a property with real assets is often worth saving rather than dumping at a fantasy price, and fixing how the team communicates can restore the value the owners had written off.
After the cameras left
The Cape Hatteras Motel is still open on the Outer Banks. As of our 2026 verification the private-beach motel, about a mile from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, is operating, with an active official site, though its address at 46556 North Carolina Highway 12 is in the village of Buxton on Hatteras Island. It ranks in the middle of the local hotel field. The owners who wanted to sell appear to have held on, keeping the property in business more than a decade after the show. Confirmed operating as of 2026.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.