BedandBreakfast.com Review — Hotels Comparison (2012)

bed&breakfast.com is an online booking site for bed and breakfast establishments and small inns. As opposed to the numerous hotel booking sites, bed&breakfast.com offers a service which is not often found online – a condensed collection of over 11,000 small travel accommodation options worldwide. On Bed&Breakfast.com you will find:

• Search options to get you exactly the B&B you are looking for – gay&lesbian friendly, family, business, disabled access, pet friendly etc.
• Clear definitions of the various B&B terms (homestay, B&B, country inn, host home) so that you can understand what kind of accommodation you are booking.
• Over 100,000 customer reviews of the B&Bs sharing both the pros and cons.
• Regular special offers and discounts on numerous properties.
• You can buy gift cards for any of the B&B's that allow online booking.

• The key benefit to using bed&breakfast.com is that you don't have to search individual establishment's websites or local B&B directories, instead you have a compilation of all B&Bs with relevant information and objective facts.
• bed&breakfast.com covers not only the US but the entire world so that even if you have decided to use B&Bs in a foreign country you have a reliable source of information at your fingertips.
• Renting a room in a B&B can often be hit or miss so for the apprehensive traveler not wishing to push their luck there is the Bedandbreakfast.com Diamond Collection, a collection of B&Bs which consistently meet high standards of quality and service. You no longer have to rely on the B&B owner's self evaluation on their own site.
• If you don't want to book online there is a telephone booking option.
• The guest reviews on Bedandbreakfast.com include both positive and negative opinions and you can read what type of traveler (family, single, elderly) wrote each review to best approximate your own travel accommodation needs.

There are plenty of local B&B booking websites specializing in a specific city or country, like bnbbookings.com for South Australia and Bedandbreakfasts-uk for Britain but international B&B booking sites are less common.

Bedbreakfasttraveler.com provides the same service as bed&breakfast.com but from the landing page the graphics and layout are confusing and off putting. Only bedbreakfasttraveler.com offers the site in many languages and rates in many currencies, an important feature considering the site offers travel accommodation worldwide. They also include hostels in their search options which bed&breakfast.com does not. It appears that bed&breakfast.com is aiming at the more refined traveler as they list only B&Bs and inns. bed&breakfast.com also distinguishes between B&Bs that provide information about the property and B&Bs which only list their name and contact information. bed&breakfast.com has the Diamond Club which offers a higher standard of quality and bedbreakfasttraveler.com has hostels offering a lower standard of travel accommodation.

When comparing search results for a B&B in London, England bed&breakfast.com showed 32 B&Bs and bedbreakfasttraveler.com 16, surprisingly the site's results were for different B&Bs! I found the same with numerous searches in different locations, the two sites showed different properties and bed&breakfast.com consistently showed more listings while most of bedbreakfasttraveler.com listings were hostels.

When searching for a B&B in Greenwich, New York, USA both sites showed the same property but bed&breakfast.com gives a link to the B&B site, where as Bedbreakfasttraveler.com asks you to fill in a booking request and there is only information on site with no external link.

bedbreakfastraveler.com audaciously states on their front page "cheaper than bed&breakfast.com" which isn't hard to do if you offer different and lower quality listings.

• Great for International travelers who need accurate detailed information about accommodation in distant locations. Bed&Breakfast.com is an excellent travel tool for international travelers who would prefer not to stay at generic hotels and would rather meet the locals and actually experience staying in one of their homes. It is much easier to find a hotel in a distant location than to find a B&B so Bed&Breakfast.com provides a safe and reliable source of information and choice for travelers booking smaller travel accommodation from a distance.
• For those unfamiliar with this type of travel accommodation Bed&Breakfast.com describes the distinctions between the various types of properties in a clear and precise manner. Those new to B&Bs will learn the difference between an inn a B&B and a homestay. Photos of the B&Bs are shown, available amenities and details of the B&B's plus and minuses like for example pet friendly B&Bs, whether they have a fireplace, WiFi and smoking rooms.

Using the Bed&Breakfast.com site is very similar to using an online hotel booking site you write in your location and travel dates and the search results are displayed showing each property, it's amenities, a brief description, room rate, customer rating and reviews and a link to the B&B's website. The B&B's locations are also shown on a map.

There are plenty of photos and descriptive details of the travel accommodations including the objective customer reviews. Using the search filters you can narrow down your search results to only B&Bs which suit your needs.

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Bedandbreakfast.com and the feature which makes it a worthwhile site is the guest reviews. Although the B&B owners are given an opportunity to reply to negative reviews the negative reviews are still published. Along with this it is refreshing to get contrary reviews for the same property:

For example the reviews for B&B Casa Sedona included both "What a place! If anyone deserves a five star rating this place deserves it." and " we expected more quality and better service."

There tends to be an impression of B&B that they are less reliable than hotels and rightly so as the B&Bs are being run independently where as hotels seem to have more monitoring bodies overlooking their quality and services. This is why it is preferable to book through a website where you get a fuller picture of what you will be receiving and where the B&B has already been assessed by a reliable site and the less desirable properties have not been included in the search results. On bedbreakfast.com you can book a B&B anywhere in the world with more confidence.