OUR STORY / WHO WE ARE

We're Linda and Steve, an American couple who moved to Rome in 1999 from Los Angeles to open a small, budget hostel called "The Beehive". Over the last decade we have grown into an ecological, stylish hotel with our own organic, vegetarian cafe. In our first years of business we turned away so many potential guests due to space limitations that we started our accommodation agency, "Cross-Pollinate", designed to help travelers find hospitable and economical alternatives to large impersonal hotels. Cross-Pollinate has expanded over the years to include Florence, Venice, Paris and Barcelona, and currently represents approximately 400 properties. Most of our daily operations are managed by Amy, who came aboard in 2002, while the multi-lingual reception staff at The Beehive offer phone support to anyone calling with emergencies. Along with travel, we're interested in good, healthy food, environmentalism, all sorts of history, arts, languages, and most importantly, surfing (at least for Steve)!

Our combined experience covers all the ups and downs of traveling at different stages of life: as backpackers on a low budget; as young singles; as newlyweds on our honeymoon; and with an increased budget as a family, first with 1 child, and now with 3. We've slept on every major continent in a variety of hostels, fancy boutique hotels, boring business-traveler hotels, roadside motels, Vegas-style monstrosities, and even on beaches and park benches. We know what it feels like to have plans altered or ruined by strikes, delays, natural disasters, getting stuck in a strange city, having to endure terrible accommodations, being sick, pickpocketed, and lost (and often many of the above combined in a potpourri mix of horrors). We know how it feels to travel under just about every possible circumstance and are therefore sympathetic to your needs and willing to help as much as we can to reduce or remove these stresses. Despite the unpredictable possibilities of traveling, the greater experience is certainly memorable; hopefully educational; and definitely not regrettable.

WHAT WE DO

The properties we represent are not hotels, but are guesthouses, B&Bs and private apartments, the kind of accommodation that becomes an extension of the tastes and personality of the host. They are an ideal option if you consider yourself an independent, intrepid, experienced traveler, or are the sort of person who wants to immerse yourself in the "foreignness" of the place you are visiting - the language, the culture - and experience what life is really like for the people who live in the city you are visiting. The result is a richer experience on your travels, taking you out of an antiseptic, universal, standardized comfort zone and instead experiencing and appreciating the differences in the way people live in other parts of the world.

What makes Cross-Pollinate different from other reservation systems is that all of our properties are personally researched, inspected and revisited so we can confidently recommend places we feel reflect the best value for your budget. Our online system is thus the best of two worlds - it is technologically advanced, permitting our reservations to be quick and efficient, and yet there are real people behind the scenes to make sure everything is clearly and thoroughly explained and professionally and personally handled.