Travelers' Accomodations

Travel is one of the staples of Fantasy stories.  In these tales, our creations wander the world, experiencing it all with fresh eyes to pass on to our readers (or something like that).  Often times, amongst our party of wanderers is a crafty woodsman (or lady) who can do for our intrepid creations.  They can construct a lean-to or find an abandoned cave (or simply clear the occupants).  Getting from one place to another is often simply an obstacle to be overcome, but it need not always be so.  Not every night in the wilderness needs to be spent out of doors and each little hamlet you pass through will be distinct from the others in some way.  Out-of-the-way places are opportunities, like any other, to grow your characters in front of your audience.
    Currency is an important issue, before we get any further along.  Smaller villages will probably not have much on hand, especially if they are not along a trade route.  Cash is not especially useful in a place that has little extra.  Barter is the normal method of exchange in a small community.  "I'll help you press the grapes if you give me a share of the wine."  Gold will not feed a family or till a field, so travelers may have to pay in with work or goods (feel free to be creative).  Currency is a limiting factor in all businesses dealing primarily with travelers.
    The first important question is, "What kind of place would cater to travelers?"  The simple answer would be, "Any place that has something to gain from them on a regular basis."  A small village might have an inn or a tavern if it is along a main road.  When a king builds a fortress, a pub might spring up to accommodate the garrison.  Basically, there needs to be a profit in it.  I once traveled a long dusty road in Brasil.  We stopped for a bite in this narrow building, left open to the wind.  Chickens wandered the parking lot.  All they had on offer were pre-packaged goods and quick fried (though tasty) morsels on display in a glass case.  For a North American example, I'll point you toward the roadside burger joint and its greasy repast.  These places will offer you enough to sustain you on the road, but little more.  What then might you expect in an older time?
    Passing through a small town where they don't often see strangers, your adventurers may need to stay in a barn.  Private residents might handle irregular trade if they have a guest room.  This is common today when you travel to small towns (plus you can get some great deals and fantastic home-cooked meals). Recently popular destinations also boast this kind of accommodation when no inn or hotel has yet sprung up to cater to the new visitors.  Now they may advertise, but at the time you would have to knock on doors or ask someone in the street.  If you want competition for your travelers' coin, you need to have an excuse for redundant services, otherwise it should be more along the lines of, "I hear the widow Jones hosts the odd traveler or you could try the Petersons.  Their son just went off to join the army"  
    There might be a pub in the town if it is large enough and the locals deal in currency, instead of bartered goods.  When I was traveling in England, I came across a town that had no hotels, but some locals (who gave me a ride into town from the train station) pointed me to a pub, which had rooms to rent upstairs and served an appropriately greasy English breakfast.  Pubs are a staple of many small towns today, serving as meeting places and community centers.  Lodging is a secondary business for a pub, so might be perfect for seasonal farmhands or visiting travelers.  The important thing to remember is that to run a pub in this small town, you must be able to supply the stock and have money in the community (local or transient) to support it.  
    Inns are another possibility for accommodation.  In larger towns there might be centers of government or the locals may host regular markets, which could necessitate accommodating travelers.  Size would naturally depend on the regularity of visitors.  Rooms would be much like modern hostels, offering private rooms and/or shared dormitory style rooms.  Much like restaurants today, inns would be difficult businesses to develop.  Start up costs are large for such an enterprise and staff would be hard to come by.  Cooks, especially, are worth their weight in gold.  Remember, there was no market research and there were few banks to provide capitol for new ventures.  Starting a business was a mixture of hope, faith and ignorance (with who knows which quality being the most important).  Even in a relatively large settlement, if there is no through traffic, there may be little call for an inn.
    Hotels (differentiated from Inns by not offering food) would evolve only in the most developed of cities.  Restaurants of similar quality are requisite companion businesses.  Traditionally, visiting dignitaries would stay with the local Lord, so hotel guests would primarily consist of businessmen and traders.  Logically, the decor would be of finer quality than neighboring inns.  However, since they offer less in the way of services (no food), a given hotel may simply be a cut-rate room for the night (think rooming-houses).  In other words, economic development does not equate to quality.  Additionally, because a hotel may require less staff, it is a less risky business than restaurant (which has perishable supplies as well), so an underutilized hotel could hang on for quite some time, creating a rather atmospheric setting for your travelers to stumble upon.

    Once you have decided where your traveler will stay, you can decide what they will experience (or maybe you work the other way around).  How are customs here different than what they are used to?  What are the plates made out of?  Do they use utensils?  Are the beds made out of straw, corn husks, goose down?  Maybe the proprietor will ask your adventurers to help slaughter the pig for dinner (it's an honor in this town).  Adventurers are novel, or dangerous, or glamorous, or not to be trusted, depending on the locals and their experience.  Will they be robbed, or picked on, or murdered in their beds?  Maybe the cook takes a shine to them and packs them a little something to tide them over on the road.  The owner's son might start pretending to be a great warrior to get some attention.  For some reason, strangers often bring out our deepest fears and desires.  We fill up the spaces in them that we don't understand with our own dreams and prejudices.  There in no limit to what we can learn from that.

    Last week I stumbled across an article (see below) that inspired the meat of this post.  It discussed great cities birthed along the African coast (probably) in response to developed trade routes.  It is thought that traders visiting these cities did not stay at hotels or inns, but in the homes of its residents.  Permanent, semi-private spaces were thought to have been used as markets.  This makes sense when you consider the seasonal nature of the business, with traders traveling annually on the monsoon winds and only staying as long as they have goods to buy or sell.  These were not holiday getaways and they were not stopovers to the interior, so there would not have been the traffic necessary to support independent businesses.  Local people saw an opportunity and took advantage.  Traders may have had a pervasive impact, but it was seasonal.


http://www.archaeology.org/issues/116-1401/features/1634-swahili-coast-towns