Company History



Pamela Lanier started out in the Bed & Breakfast industry upon her return from a post college adventure in Europe. Throughout the trip she stayed at a combination of Bed & Breakfasts, country inns and pensions and fell in love with these charming personalized lodgings where she felt safe and secure.

It was just about then in 1982 when the Bed & Breakfast concept was beginning to take off in the U.S. She felt the industry needed a comprehensive resource directory similar to those "well thumbed" guidebooks of Europe. So she put one together and it was a smash upon release. The first edition of the guide was reviewed by the New York Times who wrote:

"All necessary information about facilities, prices, pets, children, amenities, credit cards and the like (are included in Pamela Lanier's B&B Guide). Like France's Michelin…"

"I couldn't believe it.", she said. "My guidebook compared to the same Michelin guidebook I read on my travels through France." She knew she had caught on to something.

The project developed a life of its own and increased exponentially as the B&B lifestyle grew from 1,200 inns in the first edition to over 45,000 worldwide on LanierBB.com today.
   BBIGI Highlights
1982 - First Edition of the Complete Guide to Bed & Breakfast Inns - 1200 Inns
1983 - Second Edition of the Complete Guide to Bed & Breakfast Inns - There has been a new edition every year.
1984 - Bed & Breakfast Cookbook from Running Press - 4 Printings in 1 year!
1985 - First Edition of Elegant Small Hotels
1986 - Cinnamon Mornings debuts and becomes an immediate cookbook bestseller. Winner of prestigious Philadelphia Book Fair Award for #1Best Cookbook.
1991 - B&B licensed to Microsoft for CD Rom Products
1992 - Online with AOL (At that point AOL had 250,000 members)
1993 - Online with Time Warner "Ask Pamela" travel section.
1994 - Online with Compuserve
1995 - Over 20 more internet Travel Portals Licensing our Members Information Including Netscape, Eworld, MSN
1996 - International Inns invited to join BBIGI
1997 - Netscape debuts our Bed and Breakfast Gazette e-travel newsletter, which soon has 50,000 e-newsletter subscribers.
1998 - Expanded relationship with AOL. Travelguides.com introduced in its 4th version.
1999 - - Pamela Lanier's Bed & Breakfast Guide on Travelguides.com is honored with the top Gold Star Rating by Yahoo! IL.
2000 - Familytravelguides.com ties with Disney for Best Family Travel Site on the Internet Access Award. Family Travel includes all of our family friendly inns.
2001 - Pamela writes and speaks at conferences post 9/11 about the importance of continuing to travel in our comfort zones, especially B&B travel. BBIGI offers members a free email from potential guests to book directly.
2002 - Cinnamon Mornings and Chocolate Dreams Cookbook is sold at Target and picked up by Scholastic Books for sale at school book fairs nationwide.
2003 - Pamela Lanier's Bed and Breakfast Collection ® of Furniture debuts at Highpoint, North Carolina. Our 20th anniversary edition of The Complete Guide to Bed & Breakfasts, Inns & Guesthouses International appears.
2004 - Exclusive, room-filling partnership with Hotel.com and IAC (i.e. Expedia, Travel.com, Tickets.com, etc.) The Full House Partnership is enthusiastically embraced and over 250 inns sign up in the first weeks alone.
2005 - The Full House Partnership continues and ramps to over 1,000 participating inns.
2006 - Yahoo! chooses Pamela Lanier to be a Bed & Breakfast advisor and BBIGI member inns are additionally displayed on Yahoo!.
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