Bed and breakfast accommodations welcome St. Landry visitors

Bed and breakfast accommodations welcome St. Landry visitors Main Photo

10 Feb 2020


In St. Landry Parish “hospitality” is more than a word coupled with “industry.” It’s part of who we are, and visitors will find that especially true in the bed and breakfast cottages and homes nestled near some of the parish’s favorite places to visit.         

            A dozen little inns in communities such Arnaudville, Eunice, Grand Coteau, Opelousas, and Washington, are experiencing growth driven largely by retirees and millennials, who are price conscious and are seeking home-like comforts as they travel to St. Landry Parish, where the number of visitors has been steadily increasing in over the last decade.

            According to industry research, more and more travelers are showing a preference for the home-like, comfortable, and affordable accommodations offered by bed and breakfasts, and St. Landry providers are poised to take advantage of that trend.

            “The two most important factors of bed and breakfasts are their uniqueness and sense of social environment,” according to a recent industry study by the Small Business Development Corporation. The study also found that “one common characteristic of bed and breakfast operators is that the motivation for starting a bed and breakfast is their love for people.”

            That is certainly true in St. Landry Parish, where accommodations range from antebellum homes in Washington to a converted barn in Grand Coteau to a “shiny, tiny house” designed by local artists in Arnaudville.

            Places like the Steamboat Cottages and Crawford House, once the home of a steamboat captain, in Washington reflect the days when the little town on Bayou Courtableau was an essential inland port. The cottages are next to the Steamboat Warehouse Restaurant, once an important part of that commerce and now one of south Louisiana’s favorite places to eat.

            Les Deux Mondes (Two Worlds), in the French-speaking town of Arnaudville is a group of seven cottages on historic Bayou Teche that are being carefully restored as architectural gems, and decorated with work created by local artists associated with the NUNU Arts Collective. The Shiny Tiny House is also comfortably near the NUNU collective, which regularly hosts a variety of cultural events. At the Cajun Cabin Guest Cottage, also in Arnaudville, visitors can make arrangements for a customized excursion into the Atchafalaya Basin, one of America’s great wilderness wetlands.

            In Eunice, the Keller House was once the home of J. C. Keller and is just steps away from the world-famous Liberty Theatre that he owned and operated and from the adjacent Prairie Acadian Cultural Center.  The 1920s-era theater was originally built for silent movies but now reverberates with the accordions, fiddles, and ti-fers of Louisiana French music each Saturday night.

            At two other Eunice guest houses, Le Village and the Cottage at Cyprus Grove, one can relax and watch the birds or sit back and enjoy the beauty of five or more beautifully landscaped acres. From Cyprus Grove, it is only a short trek to the nearby Chapelle Country Store, said to be one of the last places the notorious Bonnie and Clyde tried to rob.

            The front porch of Mama Sue’s converted red barn in the Grand Coteau Historic District, looks out on the pretty and peaceful grounds of St. Charles College, the first Jesuit college established in the southern United States. Likewise, Casita Azul on Church Street is in the center of one of Louisiana’s most historic communities. The Frozard Cottage midway between Grand Coteau and Arnaudville is on the grounds of a historic plantation that was established in the 1840s.

            Shirley’s Guest House in Opelousas is a modern cottage in a quiet subdivision just minutes away from antique shopping and historic attractions

“Where else in the United States can you experience natives who speak French, a historic steamboat town, homegrown accordion music that wins Grammys, bayou wildlife and food that the late Anthony Bourdain called some of the best in the planet. That’s St. Landry Parish,” said Herman Fuselier, executive director of the St. Landry Parish Tourist Commission.

“Our bed and breakfast inns put you right in the middle of the action and they’ve been doing it before it was a trend. They’ll help you find a new world, with all the comforts of home, in St. Landry Parish.”

            Details about individual sites can be found at: https://cajuntravel.com/where-to-stay.

Three things to know about this story:

  • According to industry research, more and more travelers are showing a preference for the home-like, comfortable, and affordable accommodations offered by bed and breakfasts.
  • A dozen little inns in communities such Arnaudville, Eunice, Grand Coteau, Opelousas, and Washington, are experiencing growth driven largely by retirees and millennials,
  • Accommodations range from antebellum homes in Washington to a converted barn in Grand Coteau to a “shiny, tiny house” designed by local artists in Arnaudville.
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