Revenge of the Bed & Breakfasts

Imagine, in an absurd scenario, that a successful hotelier, à la Wizard of Oz, decided to bully smaller establishments out of business by.... closing down the Internet!

Yes, I realize you've just done an ocular double-take at that last sentence, but such a proposal was put forth by a hotel owner during a sector conference last summer. Attributing declining reservations at his hotels to the increasing number of local bed and breakfasts that were, in his words, "stealing business 'unfairly' because the Internet is unregulated," it makes you wonder if this bizarro diktat took place in North Korea, or any other country where the Web has a gag order. It didn't. It happened in Sicily.

Luckily this outrageous, painfully ignorant suggestion fell on deaf ears, and we don't know if it was ever taken seriously considering that, while this poor soul is blind to reality, many on the island are very fine tuned to the power of the Web to promote their businesses, and none more so than bed and breakfast owners, who forgo agency middlemen and do it all themselves.

Though the so-called "historical hotels" have been catering to glitterati and power brokers for decades, in this day and age of economic restraints travelers, even well-heeled ones, are trading in oft-overrated lavishness for cozier surroundings. We cannot guarantee that B&Bs are what they advertise to be - we've heard stories of B&Bs being, literally, bed and bugs. Others offer services that parallel 5-star concierges. Bed and breakfasts in Sicily are a viable, tangible alternative for those who don't want to spend a fortune on lodgings or seek a familial setting in the city they are visiting, something they would be deprived of at an impersonal hotel.

As Dorothy concluded, there's no place like home.