BED AND BREAKFASTS FIND NICHE IN AREA TRAVEL INDUSTRY

Michelle King spent one night at Trisha's Bed & Breakfast, and now she'd rather stay at a bed and breakfast than a motel anytime.

The St. Louisan and her husband spent a night in April in the restored 1905 Victorian house in Jackson when her husband came to preach at a local church. "We were there for a new experience, because we heard they were better than motels," King said.

"It wasn't like going to a motel where you sit around and watch television all night," King said. "It's a place where you can sit and talk."

King talked to Gus and Trisha Wischmann, the house's owners, about the wood stove and the antique cabinets displayed in their parlor. King, a native of Potosi, said she felt at home with the Wischmann's antiques because she grew up in the country around furniture like that.

Trish's Bed & Breakfast is crammed full of antiques. Walk in the front door, and you'll see a flowered music stand holding up a guest book, a wall clock with a pendulum and weights hanging down, a piano with a candelabra and china on it and pictures of the Wischmann's ancestors on the walls.

King was impressed with the level of service there. It was the weekend daylight savings time started, the Kings had to leave by 6:30 a.m., which felt like 5:30, and the Wischmanns fixed the couple an elaborate breakfast with waffles, a pear heated in caramel sauce, bacon, juice and coffee.

If King were to come this month, she might be treated to dishes with strawberries Wischmann's mother picked that day at Illers strawberry farm.

"It wasn't like a continental breakfast with coffee and doughnuts," King said.

Running a bed and breakfast is not like running a motel either. The Wischmanns, father and mother and two teen-age sons, live right there, meet the guests. Gus Wischmann has an outside job because, although the family makes money from the guests, it doesn't clear enough to support the whole family.

Fred Hoelscher, co-owner of the Bellevue Bed & Breakfast in Cape Girardeau, and immediate past-president of Bed and Breakfast Inns of Missouri, said few bed and breakfast owners do. To do so would take more than the four rooms, the Hoelschers and Wischmanns have, and almost constant occupancy.

Trisha Wischmann said there may be one or two in Ste. Genevieve that are the sole support of their owners.

To be successful, you have to love it. And you have to welcome the guests as guests in your own home. Because that's what they are.

Jeannie Stout lives at and runs the River Walk Bed & Breakfast at 444 Marie St. in Cape Girardeau. Hers is more like a modern home than Trisha's.

Walk in the front door and you'll see a modern comfortable couch and chairs, book shelves flanking a fireplace and a television with VCR. Guests often will watch television or read and sit with Jeannie and her mother, Jeannie said.

Or they will stay in their rooms with their beds with posts and ceiling fans.

"This guy from New Jersey said this is just like my aunt so and so's home," Stout said, adding that that is precisely the kind of atmosphere she wants to provide.

She modeled it in a way like her Aunt Jannette's house. "When I went there, I always had the run of the house," she said.

And her aunt would wait on her.

Stout remembers some guests who brought dinner back to her home from a restaurant and sat on her screened-in front porch to eat it. She saw them and came out and brought them trays, dishes and silverware.

Like the Wischmann's, Stout goes the extra mile on fruit. She has cherry trees and strawberry vines on her lot. All the preserves and jams she serves for breakfast, she cans herself.

Because a bed and breakfast is more than a just a place to sleep, some actually attract travelers to a town, Hoelsher said.

Stout had two Germans stay at River Walk recently who were singing in a chorus that was touring the United States. They had time between dates in Chicago and New Orleans and rented a car to see the country and looked for a bed and breakfast to stay in along the way.

Hoelsher said that studies have shown that the typical bed and breakfast patron spends more than $100 a day in town in addition to the cost of the room.

"They eat at Mollie's or N'Orleans or Jeremiahs," he said. "They don't eat fast food." And they often shop for antiques.

Because a bed and breakfast is not cheap, the clientele tends to be well-to-do.

Although a bed and breakfast seems old-fashioned, increasing numbers of guests find their bed and breakfasts through the World Wide Web.

The owners seem to enjoy the guests as much as the guests seem to enjoy staying there.

Wischmann said having the guests in her home has exposed her sons to people they wouldn't have met otherwise and has helped make them more respectful of people than most teen-agers.

And the guests treat her well.

"In 8 1/2 years, I have never had a towel or a washcloth or a picture taken," Wischmann said. "People are very respectful because it's your home."

Local bed and breakfast establishments

The Anderson Guest House, 39 Water St., Commerce, 264-4123.

Bellevue Bed & Breakfast, 312 Bellevue, Cape Girardeau, 335-3302, three rooms.

Neumeyer's Bed & Breakfast, 25 S. Lorimier, Cape Girardeau, 335-0449.

River Walk Bed & Breakfast, 444 Marie, Cape Girardeau, 334-4611.

Rose Garden Bed & Breakfast, 735 Perry Ave., Cape Girardeau, 335-6004.

Trisha's Bed & Breakfast, 203 Bellevue, Jackson, 243-7427.

The White House, 802 E. Washington, Jackson, 243-4329.