Not Anonymous

I read with interest an article in your section, “Selecting the Right Guidebook Can Help Travelers Make the ‘Inn’ Choice,” Oct. 6. As the publisher of a newsletter that covers the bed and breakfast inn industry, Yellow Brick Road, I have some comments.

It’s a red herring to tell travelers that the best guidebooks are written by authors who visit inns anonymously. The bed and breakfast inn industry has grown up. It’s as much a beat for travel journalists as is the cruise portion of the industry. Writers who cover bed and breakfast inns are known to the innkeepers. By now these writers know what to expect when they visit a property and may be less impressed by an innkeeper’s efforts to impress than someone who usually covers some other beat. As writer James Yenckel implied, writers who cover the bed and breakfast industry do compare notes with one another.

Beyond that, by now each of us has developed ways of determining the level of hospitality offered at particular properties, even if we do not spend the night. I, for example, watch very carefully how other guests are treated; I’m especially skeptical if I get attention while a paying guest is left waiting (actually, it happens fairly frequently).

Writers of articles of the sort you published frequently make a big issue out of the number of free nights we get at inns. I can assure the traveling public that this is work. If we’re doing our jobs right, our powers of observation are on duty 24 hours a day. I come home from a trip after seeing and sorting out as many as 15 inns in five days totally exhausted . . . in need of a vacation.

Finally, some advice about selecting an inn from a guidebook. This is difficult, especially when you don’t know the territory. Our research indicates that prospective guests are frequently confused about locations of inns, especially in connection with where they want to be and what they want to see. They’re also most concerned about hospitality issues, often hard to define, observe and report. I advise my readers to pick more than one book and compare write-ups (public relations-conscious innkeepers will see that all write-ups of their inns are similar, of course). I also advise my readers to maintain clipping files of inns that strike their fancy or places they want to visit. Indeed, for most people in the long run, making that choice is as much serendipity as anything very objective.

BOBBI ZANE

Fullerton