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What strategies for a 21st-century economy can be employed by the proprietor of an inn built about 1738?
That is the question facing Jonna Paolella, proprietor of the Olde Rhinebeck Inn, whose bed and breakfast is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The answer is something of a contradiction: The inn offers old-fashioned elegance such as original plank floors and hand-hewn chestnut beams and such timeless attractions as a spring-fed pond full of bass and hammocks under trees. And it is equipped with such modern conveniences as satellite TV and wireless Internet, Jacuzzis and gourmet breakfasts.
But at a time when every business is facing challenges, Paolella says, her strategies to grow her business mean retaining the plush historic comfort guests love and teaming up with activities at the Culinary Institute of America and FDR Library, and on to sunset river cruises on the Hudson. She says it is a way of playing to the region”™s strengths and helping local businesses thrive together.
Paolella, 37, says she has wanted to be an innkeeper since the age of seven, when she and her family arrived at an old country inn in Vermont. “It was so much fun I declared then I wanted to live in an inn,” Paolella said, as a winter sun slanted into the inn”™s cozy living room.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Paolella loves her job in a business that has brought her a decade of success and a husband. Her husband David, whom she married in 2000, was introduced her to her by a guest at the inn.
Though he has outside income as a computer specialist, he also helps with the inn, which for Paolella is a family affair in more ways than one. When she was 17, her mother opened Bed and Breakfast on the Park, in Park Slope, Brooklyn in an 1890s brownstone. Later, Paolella graduated from Johnson State College in Vermont with a bachelor”™s degree in hotel/hospitality management, and moved to La Jolla, Calif., where she worked at a historic hotel and the private University Club in San Diego. She returned to New York to help operate her mother”™s B&B in Brooklyn and by 1997 had plans to return to California to pursue business ideas involving operating an inn out there.
But fate intervened when she served as driver for her mother”™s home tour of Hudson Valley homes. After a long day visiting properties, the final stop of the day was at an early American farmhouse built one room at a time by German settlers, starting three decades before the Revolutionary War.
“I remember being enveloped by this feeling saying, I”™m going to live here,” said Paolella of her first visit to what is now the Olde Rhinebeck Inn. “It spoke to me, it really spoke to me. Every room I walked into was like a gift.”
She dropped her plans for California and moved to the Hudson Valley. The structure had been restored before and was in good shape. “It needed to be made more comfortable,” Paolella said. She opened for business Memorial Day 1998. Having done “lots of behind-the-scene type things,” such as improving electricity and heat supplies and blowing insulation into crannies. With four bedrooms the facility sleeps nine.
Though she has hosted people from all around the world, “I get insane amounts of people from Brooklyn,” she said, adding that she does share a Web link with the Brooklyn B&B but said the number of customers from there defies easy marketing answers. “I wish I had an explanation but I have no idea,” she said.
Perhaps it is the pet goats, or the resident ducks whom visitors can row out to on the stream-fed pond stocked with smallmouth bass. Perhaps it is the country location near Rhinebeck and Red Hook and Bard College and excellent restaurants and shops and the national historic sites nearby. Maybe it is the fresh eggs from their own hens and those of neighbors, or the hammocks slung near the organic garden, but it”™s been a good 10years.
Peak season weekend an overnight stay is $275 per room and business has been successful enough that she has not had to raise her rates since she opened. “I”™ve been able to do that because I”™ve gotten busier each year,” she said.
Yet the challenges are multiplying. Paolella cites what she calls, “the Priceline mentality,” where people call her to make her an offer on an overnight stay. “The (hospitality business) environment has changed dramatically,” Paolella said, noting that books and publications “are encouraging people to wrangle” on prices for lodging.
Paolella is now advertising for the first time ever. “When there”™s less money coming in its hard to lay it out, but that”™s when you have to advertise,” she said. And she is cross-fertilizing Hudson Valley attractions.
Seeking to play to region”™s strengths and the national mood, she is offering a First Hundred Days package, with complimentary tickets to the FDR National Historic Site and Library as well as a book written about FDR”™s famous first hundred days.
Paolella also offer discounts off dinners at nearby restaurants for couples booking stays. And she is using the natural beauty of the nearby Hudson River to entice visitors to special delights, such as teaming with a sailboat captain docked in nearby Tivoli for sunset cruises on the Hudson River, with stops at the historic Saugerties Lighthouse.
The Web site is www.rhinebeckinn.com.
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