Keeping it fun is important, and learning something new every day is a big help!

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If you're lucky, you learn something new every day! Today my big discovery ended my frustration with survey B&Bs that don't allow instant access to their availability calendar (the Bissell House in South Pasadena being the most disappointing, because their occupancy is especially relevant to my current project!).

Turns out that if you request a 14-day reservation, the Webervations system will usually tell you that the dates you have selected won't work, then offers the 14-day calendar to enable you to pick alternate dates if possible.

That being so, I can't imagine why all B&Bs don't make calendar access the default. I reset the Artists Inn default from the start because I could not see the appeal of the alternative, which tends to limit a potential guest's choices and eliminates the image of the Inn as a bustling, popular enterprise.

The good news is that I will no longer have to invade Pat's privacy by logging on to her Webervations settings panel. I always felt a little guilty about doing that, but persuaded myself that I was doing it with the very best of intentions (and, of course, I still believe that, even if Pat does not!).

Things are actually picking up at the AVI, which is great news. Pat's 10-day reservations stand at 42rn, which is a very healthy 42% even if a big chunk of those nights (16/42 = 38%) are provided by the Kraft couple who man (or woman) the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile and pay $65 a night. I assume Pat hasn't told any of her other business regulars that she is charging the privileged pair about half the special deal she gives everyone else ($125 to $150) and, gasp, even less than the $69 minimum rack rate at the fleabag Alhambra Inn Motel!!! (One review of the AIM suggests that guests would do better with a bedroll under a local freeway bridge).

I have spent some time reading through other B&B blogs, notably by PAII's Jay Karen and Quantum Hospitality Group, and find them illuminating even if I don't agree with everything they say. Mr. Karen suggests cozying up to what he describes as "GLBTs" and I do not see it as good business or even remotely necessary to advertise a B&B as "gay friendly" (why would it be gay UNfriendly, I wonder?). I used to tell the occasional guest who made a point of probing for potential homophobia that Jen and I were "people friendly."

The Quantum couple shares Janet's view that deep discounts are a terrible idea, and given the big improvement we achieved for the bottom line at the Artists Inn by reversing that policy, I think I'll ignore their advice, thank you!

The contradiction for B&B owners or managers is that an Inn should appear to be an intensely personal experience but should not ignore basic business tenets.

Jenny and I are horrified that the Bissell House has lately introduced "self-serve breakfasts" on weekday mornings and that Pat offers a very unfriendly "self check-in" arrangement so that she doesn't have to be on the premises herself from 3-6pm every day.

Both inns are in essence breaking away from what a B&B is all about--a warm and friendly host presence that contrasts with the cold, clinical cookie-cutter ethos of big-name hotel and motel chains. What comes next, I wonder - "Make your own bed!" or "Cook your own breakfast and clean up afterwards!"

I have said before that guests do not expect and would probably be turned off by a toadying, ubiquitous innkeeper, and Jen and I did not feel bad about leaving an envelope containing keys and directions to a room for guests arriving after 8pm.

But requiring guests to do without a personal greeting when they arrive, plus a rundown on good places for dinner and other local info, is just plain rude, in our view.

We shrank the check-in window from 3-6 to 4-6 at the Artists Inn specifically so that we could always be sure of being there (Costco shopping trips were a twice-weekly reality and getting home by 3pm was invariably a wasted scramble because hardly anyone ever wanted to show up on the doorstep before 4).

Perhaps in the end the question that counts for every innkeeper, whether an owner or a manager, is Why are you doing this? If it's just about the money, there are ways to make more and work shorter hours, and if you feel that guests are a nuisance and should be avoided as much as possible (per the infamous Brassers of Long Beach!) then you really should be doing something else for a living.

The sad news is that both Pat at the Arroyo Vista Inn and Juli at the Bissell House are trying to run their B&Bs pretty much alone, at least when it comes to frontline contact with guests, and perhaps that does make the job less enjoyable than it should be.

In Long Beach and South Pasadena, I checked guests in and answered all their questions and Jen was the primary contact at breakfast next morning. As a result, Jenny could breathe easy in the afternoons, and if I didn't want to be around first thing in the morning, I didn't have to be.

Our arrangement spread the load pretty equitably, and nothing was etched in stone.

What mattered most to us was that we were not both forced to be "on parade" from the crack of dawn to bedtime every day, but at least one of us was always around to make guests feel welcome and at home.

Little tricks like call-forwarding make life easier, too--at the Artists Inn, we could take time off for a leisurely lunch when we felt like it, and I would have the cell and my notebook handy so that inquiries could be promptly and cheerfully dealt with.

The way we see it, guests are doing us a favor by bringing us their business, and deserve to be treated accordingly. They don't expect 24-hour room service and a round-the-clock office presence, and in many cases would consider such excesses out of place. The majority of guests like to feel that they are visiting a family home that happens to make strangers welcome, and they respect the concept of downtime and privacy for the owners/innkeepers.

There are always exceptions -- guests who think that $200 a night buys them whatever takes their fancy -- but they are rare birds indeed. Dennis loved to tell a tale about a woman who booked more than a week at their summer B&B in Maine and quickly became a major pain in the neck, loud and complaining at breakfast every morning, nosy and intrusive with other guests. After a couple of days, Dennis put a refund check on a plate and delivered it along with her blueberry pancakes and news that there was no longer a room for her at the inn.

It must have felt good, but what makes Jen and I happiest is that we have never had to deal with a guest that awful.

I had to play a stern grandpa at 6:30 one morning when I heard three bratty kids jumping on their beds, and the tongue-lashing I delivered was directed at the parents, not the little ones.

Yesterday I saw a line in one inn's management policies that echoed exactly what we would say to inquiring guests: "Children are welcome as long as they bring well-behaved parents." Translation: We are not babysitters or schoolteachers!

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