The simplicity of this hospitality formula do not allow to establish the birth of the B&B. We can suppose that the B&B confirms its position into the society thanks to a natural human needs, who develops in the past centuries due to logistic difficulties, such as bad streets connections and slow transportation system, which oblige peoples to stop asking dwelling.

What is behind this successful formula? What is a Bed and Breakfast? At the first vista could be easy to find explanation since the name incorporate already a meaning. A room along with a breakfast to prepare. Those are the basic elements.

The reasons why private houses are changed into hospitality home may find different causes, mainly it happen when a house is furnished with extra rooms and to improve family income or for a natural social needs of the owner which press him/her to meet new people from all over the world.

Beside the material characteristic above described there are human aspect that distinguish this formula. The B&B allows tourist to understand the typical aspect of the hospitality with family, the simplicity combined at the same time with a truly genuine offer of a warm feeling of staying at home. Another advantage is the opportunity to know directly and quickly the area. The traveller has the possibility to know the territory from the owner knowledge, from this opportunity is able to know alternative activities and typical unique offer, authentic events, sometime completely unknown.

This allow the visitor to immerse in the local culture and lifestyle of the area, with the possibility to get in a unique contest that otherwise would never have been discovered. The B&B represent the link between the tourist and the territory under all aspects, though the owners knowledge the visitors can find museum, concert, arts, emotional landscape scene, and everything else that with a normal hotels stay will not be possible.

The B&B in Italy

The evolution begin on half of the nineties, when in Italy arrives the first stranger operator of B&B. This experience didn't have a fortunate starting within the Italian hospitality business. The administration wasn't prepared with any low, and the emptiness in this matter gave a lack of confidence to those who wanted to start this activity.

At the beginning of the 1997 there is the first legal recognition by Lazio Region, a natural bureaucratic speed up due to the upcoming Jubilee, which involved a peaceful invasion of pilgrim. This opens to a major large law regulation that will recognize the activity of B&B all over Italy with a rapid consequential increase of the number of B&B on the territory.

Today there are more then five thousand B&B registered into the regional offices and main national category guide books. In Lazio region there is the major concentration of B&B, mainly in Rome, then in Veneto there is the 10%, Emilia Romagna, Piemonte and Tuscany has a 7%. The other region are all lower then 5%.