What counts as normal wear and tear in a motel room rather than guest damage?

The distinction is not about severity, it is about causation. Wear and tear is the cumulative effect of ordinary, expected use across time: carpet flattening in traffic lanes, paint scuffing at chair height, grout dulling, a mattress reaching the end of its service life. Nobody is responsible for it because it is what happens when a room is used as a room, and its cost belongs in your capital replacement cycle. Damage is the result of a discrete event that a specific occupant caused, which is why the ability to point at an event is what separates the two categories in front of a judge.

That gives you a practical test before you spend a filing fee. Can you say what happened, roughly when, and why this guest rather than the previous thirty. A cigarette burn in a duvet passes. A stained carpet in a room that has not been deep cleaned in two years does not, however genuinely annoying it is. The grey area is accelerated wear, where an occupant used the room far harder than normal, and there your only route is comparative evidence: this room against your others of the same age, or this stay against a documented condition record from before it.