USA Today Features Positive Story on B&Bs in Recession

B&Bs welcome recession-weary travelers
By Laura Bly, USA TODAY

When the Great Depression forced wealthy summer residents of this bucolic New England enclave to abandon their opulent, late-19th-century "cottages," the homes' transformations to bed-and-breakfast inns gave city-weary, romance-minded travelers a vicarious glimpse of the Gilded Age.

Now, even as the Great Recession prompts mainstream hotels to slash rates in a scramble to fill rooms, most of Lenox's two dozen B&Bs look to October's explosion of color in the surrounding Berkshire Mountains — and a corresponding influx of leaf peepers — with guarded optimism.

"There was a lot of panic earlier this year, but I can't remember a single weekend this summer that all inns didn't sell out," says Stan Rosen, head of the Berkshire Visitors Bureau lodging committee and owner of Hampton Terrace Bed and Breakfast in Lenox. Bookings at his 14-room, 110-year-old inn are up by nearly a third this year, with an average nightly rate of $200.