Bed and Breakfasts: Creative Accommodations On the Road or Nightmare on Elm Street?

I stay at big chain hotels too often. I’m diamond in one program and platinum in another, so now I’m working towards gold in a third. But I’ve had a couple of co-workers choose a different route when they travel, and I’m curious what you all think of it.

“Bed and Breakfasts” are basically frilly little homes populated by the retired set. They let you sleep on the same kind of lumpy bed in the same kind of potpourri-scented room your parents keep for you in hopes you’ll stay with them over the holidays. And they include the same horrid home cooking and tedious conversation at breakfast. What more could I ask for?

But I’ve had a few fellow consultants heading to “B-b-B’s” lately, so I decided to ask why they would punish themselves like that. Here’s what they said:

Women like bed and breakfast accommodation because it removes them from the predatory world of business hotels. Apparently we men can get downright ugly after a week on the road and too many gin and tonics, making lewd comments, following women around the hotel, and generally being pigs. I get this. Grandma and grandpa are less threatening than Bob from Poughkeepsie. But hotels are also well-staffed, have on-site security, and lack the dark back porch and garden of your typical bed and breakfast. Give me drunken salesmen any day!

Some also said they save money by staying in informal lodging. I can understand this to an extent, especially now that I’ve got my own company, so every dollar spent at the Westin could have been saved towards my Tesla. Some even soak their per-diem, banking the extra hundreds rather than handing it over to the hotel. I imagine they’re the same people who eat lunch at Taco Bell in Midtown. Not me.

Finally, some tell me about the friendliness of the bed and breakfast environment. Can you imagine being excited to meet the retired couple with the RV and the grandma visiting her son in college? What a benefit!

Oh well. I’m not staying in a bed and breakfast. How about you?

Bates Motel image used for purposes of parody