Of Bed & Breakfast and alternate accommodation… 

Lyf&Spice is honoured to have Ambuj Saxena from BnBNation write a guest post for us.

Before we hop in, here’s a quick introduction:

Ambuj Saxena is the co-founder of BnBNation and Social Buzz. He is passionate about all things digital! He has been in the Hospitality industry for quite some while and provided a hospitable experience to guests from all over the world. His company, BnBNation cherry picks premium quality homestays in India that helps travelers around the world mingle with the local community and experience a safe and culturally immersive India. He is not anti-hotels as the blog might make you feel but he feels that BnBs add more value to the traveler’s experience.

Over to him…

We all love to travel and explore new places, don’t we? Staying home all the time gets boring and mundane. It’s fun to take a break from our hectic work schedule and hit the road, visit a new place and soak in a new culture. So how do you like to travel and where do you like to stay?

I have been in the Tourism and Hospitality industry for a while and I have seen a trend that suggests that hotels are a thing of the past. It is the sort of accommodation that has been done and dusted. I mean just imagine checking in to a hotel in Miami in USA, Milan in Italy, Bali in Indonesia, Tokyo in Japan or closer home in India. The drill is the same. The look and feel of the hotels is the same. Now, how does that make your trip unique and refreshing?

In the paragraphs to follow, I shall share with you a few ideas that you can use for booking your accommodation for your next trip.

Bed and Breakfast rooms in India

Bed and Breakfast (called BnB or Homestays) is a relatively new concept in India. The homestay or Bed and Breakfast accommodation require you as a home-owner to convert your home into a homestay after fulfilling a set of criteria and applying for registration with the government (State or Central). Post your application for registration, your premises and facilities offered shall be verified by a team before accepting your application. So, not every homeowner can get registered as a Homestay or Bed and Breakfast. The positive side is that most of the BnBs are run by warm and hospitable Indian families and offer a unique value to the traveler. It’s just like staying in a home away from home plus the safety and privacy. Read my blog on BnB in Delhi.

This is what Ms Maureen from UK had to say about her stay in a BnB.

Houseboats in Kerala

I had gone to Kerala to attend a Homestay Travel mart. Believe me, Kerala has an active Homestay association and it’s pretty good for the local community. There I met a lot of people who were doing a lot of innovative things with respect to enhancing traveler’s experience in India. Some of them would take the traveler to the wilderness and teach them how to cook an Indian spice and some would teach a couple of steps of Kathakali, an Indian classical dance form. So, I stayed in a houseboat, owned by a progressive entrepreneur who was also a paddy cultivator.

The experience was truly amazing and enlightening! It was a real value-add to my travel experience! Read more about my experience in a Houseboat here.

Shikara in Srinagar

I visited Srinagar a couple of months back to attend a friend’s wedding and its’ truly amazing. When you go there you’ll know, you have never seen something like this before. However, the place is usually tense and let’s hope that the tension dies down in the weeks to come. There is a beautiful Dal lake in Srinagar. I stayed in a Shikara, which is a houseboat in Srinagar for a night and totally loved the experience. It was much better than staying in a boring hotel.

We hope you enjoyed reading the post as much as we enjoyed publishing it. As you can clearly see, there are so many alternate modes of accommodation than regular hotels, so the next time you travel, make sure you check out these wonderful BnB and homestays.

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