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Why are our guides Special?

We began publishing in 1994 with French Bed & Breakfast. It seemed to press the right buttons, assuring British travellers of an open-hearted welcome into the homes of French people; 10,000 people cleared the books off the shelves and a publishing company was born. Since then our publishing list has grown each year, the word is out about the quality of our recommendations and we have sold over one million books across all titles in the Special Places to Stay series. There is a loyal group of readers now who trust what we say and of owners who know that our guides will deliver just the kind of guests that they are looking for.

What owners, readers and the press have said about our guides:

“Special Places to Stay has found its place as our number one magnet – especially of the best guests.”

British Bed & Breakfast owner

“Guests who came through your guide were civilised, interesting and friendly people who wanted to fit into our family life without invading and were endlessly curious about the French way of life. People I should like to see more of.”

French Bed & Breakfast owner

“95% of my clients have come via Alastair Sawday Publishing. Though the work has sometimes been hard it has been amply rewarded by the excellent relationship with Sawday's and the charming people who buy the books.”

Spanish owner

“The guides are quite simply wonderful, every bit as good if not better than having the information passed on by a trusted friend.”

Reader

“I love Alastair Sawday’s Special Places to Stay books. I’ve had some of my most memorable weekends at a featured hotel or pub. So far, they’ve always lived up to, or exceeded their write-up, oozing character and charm.”

The Observer

Our Websites

www.sawdays.co.uk and www.specialescapes.co.uk

On the unfathomable and all too often unnavigable sea of online accommodation pages, those who have discovered our sites have found them to be islands of reliability. The sawdays.co.uk website gets a phenomenal 27 million hits per month. We get over one million unique visitors to the site per year. Those visitors saw nearly 8 million entry pages, leading on to a million and three quarter clicks through to owners' web sites: that's an average of over 110 visits and 27 clicks per entry per month. We get excellent rankings in search listings too, so that we are often one of the first sites listed when people are searching for places.

Sales and Marketing of our guides

Our books are sold in the UK, Europe and beyond by Penguin Books. In the UK you’ll find them in branches of Waterstones, W H Smith, Borders, Blackwells and independent bookshops. In the US we have a publishing partner, Globe Pequot, that sells the majority of our books. So, there’s good worldwide distribution although most of our book sales are in the UK.

The books and website are regularly covered by the UK press where we often feature in articles recommending particular special places to stay. Recently, we’ve had coverage in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Observer, all of which have run feature articles about the places in our guides.

We also regularly promote our guides and website to the subscribers of our e-newsletter and our mailing list of past buyers.

What makes a place Special?

Our books are founded upon a passion for the unpretentious, the genuine and the unique. Our criteria for deciding whether a place is special may appear obscure – we have no “star” system and do not include somewhere just because it has all the right “facilities”. What counts, for us, are people, architecture, history, views and above all, atmosphere. A faded 17th-century palace run by a generous spirited family would be chosen in preference over a slick, designer hotel with all the five-star trimmings but surly staff.

We like owners who know what they’re doing but, perhaps more importantly, we like owners who enjoy what they’re doing and who are generous with little things. We like flexibility and a willingness to consider people’s needs. We know that an encounter with genuine kindness and an easy welcome live longer in the memory than any number of “facilities” that have earned gold or silver awards.

More Information

Frequently Asked Questions »

Forms here are in either PDF or Word document format. If you do not already have the Adobe PDF Reader, download it here »

New projects

To find out more information about our new project Special Places to Stay: French Vineyards, click here »

To find out more information about our new project Green & Organic Europe click here »

To find out why owners and the press trust us to promote sustainable travel click here »

Apply to be in our books

British Bed & Breakfast

British Hotels & Inns

Bed & Breakfast for Garden Lovers

Pubs & Inns of England & Wales

French Bed & Breakfast

French Hotels & Châteaux

French Holiday Homes

Paris Hotels

Ireland

Italy

Spain

If you'd like to apply for a guide that you can't see listed here, please download and complete our Application Form (Word Document) and email it to apply@sawdays.co.uk