Trends

Business traveller chooses bed & breakfast

Business traveler in a B&B

Bed & breakfasts in Europe are becoming ever more popular with business travellers.

More and more business travellers choose a bed & breakfast instead of a hotel. About one fifth of the guests in European B&B’s spend the night there in relation to their job. This is one of the most striking outcomes of a Pan-European research Bed & Breakfast Europe held amongst 6.659 B&B’s in Europe with a mention on Bedandbreakfast.eu, Europe’s biggest B&B site.

Fine facilities
The most important reason for this popularity among professionals probably is that the facilities in a bed & breakfast nowadays are no longer inferior to those in a hotel. Even better: because of the personal attention and extra service, a B&B offers even more value:

  • Nowadays, privacy is the standard: the vast majority of the B&B’s offer their guests a shower (81%) and toilet (88%) for private use.
  • Internet is available for the guests in 78% of the B&B’s. Guests seldom have to pay for their internet use.
  • Bed & breakfasts are often easy to reach. Whether you are looking for a place to stay in town or prefer the outdoors, there is always a bed & breakfast nearby (on Bedandbreakfast.eu, there are now over 50.000 B&B’s).
  • In general, a B&B has more favourable rates than a hotel. The average price of an overnight stay in a bed & breakfast in Europe is € 74, – including breakfast.
  • Bed & breakfast is a sustainable form of stay accommodation. Companies find CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) ever more important and bed & breakfast suits perfectly to that.

Nice to come home to
Without a doubt the small-scaleness of a bed & breakfast forms another reason why this type of accommodation is so popular among business travellers. After a long day in a conference hall or at the conference table it is simply nice to ‘come home’ to a charming bed & breakfast where the host or hostess personally welcomes the guest.

Research 
The results of the research are published in the report ‘Bed & Breakfast in Europe – Occupation, turnover and other key figures (2010) by Bed & Breakfast Europe in cooperation with research agency NRIT Research.

About the author

Janneke Scheepers

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