The term “bed & breakfast” has been garnering more and more excitement over the years.  Every corporation, small business, mom and pop shop, wants to gain in their marketing and advertisement so they add things that are totally irrelevant to their businesses in the hope that you will be fooled into thinking they are “bed & breakfast” and will patronize them.  You can then be acculturated into a definition of bed & breakfast which has nothing to do with the actual concept.

Let’s take a look:

There are VACATION RENTAL HOMES.

These have nothing to do with “bed & breakfast”, but some unscrupulous, or ignorant merchants, PR people, media, etc. will put them under “bed & breakfast” because they have something to gain – if nothing more than to not have to think and write at the same time.

A Vacation Rental Home is a house which is put up for rent – furnished, with everything you need to move in and set up housekeeping for one week, two weeks, a month, sometimes an entire season.  No one else shares the house with you.  They are put together for the purpose of renting to those who want a time away from home, but in another house near the beach, near the mountains, in a historic location, etc.

There are ROOMING HOUSES

These are still popular and much used, but they are never advertised as such.  The term, which once referred to a temporary community of people, living together in their own rooms with – usually – the local widow providing breakfast and dinner fell into disrepute.  As generations passed, the breakfast and dinner fell by the wayside, the community disintegrated into a collection of disparate people who were temporarily down on their luck and rooming houses became what are sometimes known as “flop houses” and so the entire industry fell on hard times until some enterprising “Rooming House” owner discovered he or she could rent their “Rooming House” easier if they called it a “bed & breakfast.”

There are HOTELS

The hotel corporation has been pretty vicious about getting rid of the competition.  So, when it became clear – as more and more people travelled, particularly to Europe and especially England – “bed & breakfast” was discovered in the United States and a growing number of people wanted to travel “bed & breakfast”.

Seeing this growing number of people and losing many paying guests, hotels added “bed & breakfast” to their name.  Sometimes to a part of the services they offered – Smith Hotel and Bed & Breakfast.  Grand Dame Hotel, also offering bed & breakfast.  And more such appellations appeared – more and more frequently, until today we think nothing about the conflict of a Hotel and a “bed & breakfast” being conflated into one place.  We see “bed & breakfast” advertised by a hotel and do exactly what the marketing and public relations people expected us to do – go for it bringing the romance and reputation of the “bed & breakfast” into the hotels circle.

There are INNS

Once the “Southern Lady” of the accommodations industry, INNS had a romance around them that began to be moved into the sphere of “bed & breakfast” so INNS started calling themselves Smith Bed & Breakfast Inn.  Or sometimes, the Smith INN bed & breakfast.  Trying to get back the romantic and historical reputation it once had until they got knocked off their pedestal by actual bed & breakfasts.

There are GUEST HOUSES

This category never quite got itself together since the marketing and advertisements were and are usually done by the owners rather than the professionals so they went all over the map.

These are usually private homes which have gone commercial.  The owners would normally live in the house, but they live in it the way a funeral home owner lives in a funeral home.  There are places in the house which are ready for their close-up and other places where the owners and the help reside and/or work.  They can have a restaurant, rent parts of the house out for parties, weddings, etc. and just generally pretend to be a private home/hotel.  They vary all over the map, but most call themselves – what else – “bed & breakfast.”

There are the “AIR” people

Started normally in the living room of the apartment they rented from someone else with an air mattress on the floor of the living room which they rent to strangers, this has gotten all out of hand and Attorney Generals, cities, villages, counties, states, are getting into the picture to regulate such.  Except they generally don’t know what it is they are regulating.

The “AIR” people have begun to include all of the above, plus more as they define their business and characterize themselves as “bed & breakfast” which has totally disrupted the “bed & breakfast” industry as well as all the rest.

Since some of the “AIR” people started their companies by stealing the concept from others and moving on without any acknowledgement, compensation, or permission of any kind,  their ethics have not improved as they develop the concept pushing out others and acting like the mafia of the industry.

There needs to be some authority which sorts out all of these groups and has them identify themselves as what they are rather than trading on a marketing and advertising concept which fools the public and attempts to confuse everyone to their advantage.

So – let’s look at what is actually “bed & breakfast”.

It is a stay in a private home.  Where people actually live on a daily basis, going about their lives as we all normally would, except those who offer bed & breakfast welcome guests along the way who are traveling from one place to another.

They do not offer a place for a wedding, party, meeting, corporate retreat, etc.  They offer a place to stay for a few people.  They do not have 30 or more rooms where people can stay, they have just a few rooms with just a few people staying.

Every culture has had some form of bed and breakfast.  In India – those traveling on a religious pilgrimage had places to stay which welcomed those making a pilgrimage – and more.  In the United States bed & breakfast comes mostly from the “Bishop’s room”.  The place in a home reserved for the Bishop, when he was in town.  When the Bishop was not in town, the room was used by the home owners to welcome other guests.  The guests left a discrete offering on a side board, quietly, so as not to embarrass the homeowners.  That offering could be a chicken for supper, etc.  It was also sometimes money.

One family got to know many travelers and the travelers got to know a local person, generally one with whom they stayed in contact over the years.  It was a way to reach beyond your circle of friends, your class, your race, your everything into an area you would not reach otherwise.  The people who travelled and the people who welcomed them met serendipitously and there a community was formed.  You had a contact in another area to whom you could write, later on as telephones came in – you could call – if you needed something or some influence that person with whom you stayed – could provide.  It was and remained a personal, one-on-one arrangement.

During the time when African Americans were not welcomed in hotels, motels, inns, etc. they travelled bed & breakfast.  There was a list of people in different cities who welcomed guests, who you could call and make reservations to stay for the night or for several nights during your time in a particular area.  One of the reasons some African Americans grew closer with people they would never have met otherwise.  A community was formed across the country as people who couldn’t get a glass of water from a restaurant found a way around a stone wall.

This has all gotten out of hand as greed pushes us to make ever more money on someone else’s back – on someone else’s concept – inconveniencing many who were perfectly willing to accept a neighbors bed & breakfast, but appalled at the streams of people now appearing, the loud music from the parties, the intrusion into their lives which has happened as the “bed & breakfast” industry is now being destroyed by those who don’t begin to understand the concept, but understand the money they can make by using the name – concept be damned.

“Bed & breakfast” was and is a way for many to use their homes to supplement their incomes and sometimes even to carry them through hard times.

We have helped people get out of mortgage foreclosures, evictions, and more by using the original “bed & breakfast” concept – which is also what it was meant to do.

We hope, that as you read this and go through your life with a better understanding of “bed & breakfast” you will help to calm down and maintain an industry which has meant a lot to many people and should not be so exploited as it is today.

If you want a corporation; a business; which makes reservations for other kind of accommodations, then have that and call it what it is, don’t trade on “bed & breakfast” to promote a fraud.  Don’t have a business where people arrive expecting breakfast only to discover they are in a commercial setting and there is no breakfast nor really, no bed & breakfast, but something else they didn’t expect.  Don’t have a business which someone who just wants money and has figured out a way to use this concept with your help to rent apartments which they then re-rent to others for “bed & breakfast” reducing the housing – especially affordable housing available in a very tight area.  Don’t facilitate the destruction of a wonderful industry because of your out of control greed and empire building.  Don’t rent your living room to someone with an air mattress on the floor because you want to do this rip off thing instead of living comfortably and honestly with your neighbors.

It is time for all of this to stop and for the world to come to its senses.  Chasing after – greedy for – hurting others – it is enough.  It has led to people’s homes burning down because of guests who were ill prepared for where they were staying and got the idea they could use the accommodation anyway they saw fit and consequently didn’t respect the homeowner or the neighbors; muggings because people arrive at these accommodations knowing there would be no one home and instructions given when they rented the place to look under the porch for the key – only to find someone else knew about the emptiness of the house and was inside waiting for them and relieved them of their belongings, money, dignity.  It is time to take care with whatever business you call yourself and stop pushing to the point where people using your services feel free enough to rent a house for one thing and instead have a party bus pull up and destroy the house using it as a cheap place to have a loud, destructive party which winds up tearing the house apart and destroying someone’s home which was onlyrented for the night to a couple.

IT IS ENOUGH and time to deal honestly with who you are; what you are doing; and to show respect for the rest of the world by naming yourself correctly and not trading on a concept which has nothing to do with your business.

For the above reasons and others we are putting AirB&B in Bettina’s Hall of Shame.

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