L'albergo fornisce gli asciugamani.

Because albergo starts with a vowel. In Italian, the masculine singular definite article il becomes l' before a vowel.

So:

• il albergo → l'albergo
• il amico → l'amico

This is just the normal elided form, like smoothing the pronunciation.

It is masculine singular. You can tell from the article l', which here stands for il, not la.

So:

• l'albergo = the hotel
• plural: gli alberghi = the hotels

Many Italian nouns ending in -o are masculine, and albergo follows that pattern.

Fornisce is the third-person singular present indicative of fornire, meaning to provide or to supply.

Here it matches l'albergo, which is a third-person singular subject:

• io fornisco = I provide
• tu fornisci = you provide
• lui/lei fornisce = he/she/it provides

So L'albergo fornisce... means The hotel provides...

Because Italian normally does not require subject pronouns the way English does.

In English, you must say It provides. In Italian, the verb ending already tells you the person, so a subject pronoun is often unnecessary.

In this sentence, the subject is already stated explicitly as l'albergo, so there is no need for any extra word like it.

Because asciugamani is a masculine plural noun beginning with a vowel, and the correct masculine plural definite article before a vowel is gli.

Compare:

• i libri = the books
• gli studenti = the students
• gli asciugamani = the towels

So gli is required here because of both the gender/number and the sound that follows.

No. In this sentence, gli is a definite article, meaning the.

You can tell because it comes directly before the noun asciugamani.

• gli asciugamani = the towels

When gli means to him, it works as an indirect object pronoun and usually appears before a verb, as in:

• Gli parlo = I speak to him

So in your sentence, gli is definitely the article, not the pronoun.

The singular is asciugamano.

So:

• l'asciugamano = the towel
• gli asciugamani = the towels

This is a normal singular/plural pattern:

• -o in the singular
• -i in the plural

In hotel contexts, asciugamano usually just means towel, even though depending on context it can sometimes be understood more specifically.

Because Italian uses definite articles more often than English does.

In a sentence like this, gli asciugamani sounds natural and complete. Italian usually prefers the article when referring to specific things provided in a situation, even where English might sometimes be less explicit.

So L'albergo fornisce gli asciugamani is the standard, natural way to say it.

Yes. Hotel is also very common in Italian, so L'hotel fornisce gli asciugamani is possible.

The difference is mainly lexical:

• albergo = a native Italian word for hotel
• hotel = also widely used in Italian

For a learner, both are useful, but albergo is a very standard everyday word.

A rough English-friendly pronunciation is:

lal-BER-go for-NEE-she lya-shoo-ga-MAH-nee

A few notes:

• l'albergo sounds like lalbergo in connected speech
• ce in fornisce sounds like che in chef
• gli is a special Italian sound with no perfect English equivalent; in slow learner-friendly approximation, lya is close enough to help at first

So the whole sentence flows smoothly as one unit: l'albergo fornisce gli asciugamani