How Duluth’s A.G. Thomson House Made It to the Top of TripAdvisor

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This year, TripAdvisor gave the A.G. Thomson House its Travelers’ Choice Award, naming it the No.1 B&B in the United States for the second time in four years. The travel website also ranked the B&B No. 10 in the world. Bob Berg, our managing editor, caught up with co-owner Tim Allen to ask how he and his wife, Angie, brought the inn to the top.

LSM: When you took over in August 2007, the B&B didn’t have the best of ratings. How did you turn it around?

Tim: There were not as many websites then. I had contacted (TripAdvisor) and said, “Here’s the thing: I want to buy this property, but I’m a little concerned about its history.” Then I found out most review sites will let you start out with a clean slate if you prove that you’re the new owners. That made us feel a lot better about it.

We knew we could fix it up. It’s on a dead-end street in the East End mansion district. I mean, who has 2 acres of land in the middle of the city? We just knew it had a ton of potential if we could just get our hands on it. … Angie and I used to flip houses when I was in the military, as a hobby. So I knew I could fix this one up.

The house had some issues, mostly it looked tired and worn and dated. A lot of it was cosmetic. There were some plumbing issues, which I’ve repaired. We stripped the wallpaper, repainted everything. We did put in some new bathrooms. Top to bottom, the whole grounds needed to be updated. We’re finally to the point where 90 percent of our projects are now done, so it’s gotten a lot easier to run the place.

And now we have a little more help. We have some women who are college students here that work for us. For the first several years, Angie and I even did all the housekeeping ourselves, on top of the cooking and the grounds and maintenance. There are lots of things you’d rather not do. Scrubbing bathrooms. But my wife just loves to cook. The interaction with the guests is fun, and just making people comfortable. They didn’t have to stay here. People always seem so happy and pleased with the experience they had in Duluth.

Another thing we try to do is explain how things work, and the history and a little bit about ourselves. We just make sure they know where they’re going to eat, what they’re going to see and do in Duluth, just to help them plan out their whole trip. People appreciate that, too. To get from a local what we would do, where we would go eat. Especially younger people, they really want the authentic experience of a city, and we help steer them in the right direction, give them a list of our favorite restaurants, that kind of thing. We even make their reservations, if they want.

LSM: What does being ranked No. 1 by TripAdvisor mean for you?

Tim: The first time it happened (in 2012), it actually crashed our website. … We did not expect it either time, and to win it twice, we never thought that could happen. I will say this: It’s all due to the fact that our guests write wonderful things about us in reviews. It’s based mostly on their site and the content.

If you go to TripAdvisor, you’ll see that we have 670-ish reviews. Most are perfect fives. We’re proud of that. When people stay at our place, we want to make it special for them. Even when we’re having a bad day, Angie and I always try to remind ourselves that this might be this couple’s only getaway for the year. So no matter what, even if something rubs you the wrong way, make it special for them.

They chose us. They didn’t have to come to Duluth, and when they did come to Duluth, there are thousands of other lodging rooms across this city. I know most lodging (operators) don’t meet their guests in the parking lot, but we do that. And we help them carry their bags in, and welcome them because I also recognize it can be a little difficult – you’re coming to stay at somebody’s house. I’ve stayed at lots of B&Bs, and you have to go up to the front door and ring the bell. This just breaks the ice. We go out the backdoor of the house and greet them, have a little chat. We always make sure Angie’s downstairs at checkout time, to say goodbye to everybody and just let them know we appreciated them staying here. But on the other side of that, once we’ve checked them in, we also tell everybody that this is your getaway, it’s your vacation. We do try our hardest to blend in, to stay out of your way and become invisible unless you want us.

LSM: What’s your secret to success?

Tim: I think it’s a lot of things. I’ve stayed in enough B&Bs that you can kind of tell which owners have checked out on this job. They burned out. And we’re still both very enthusiastic about it. I’m retired from the Air Force. (This summer) it’ll be nine years since we started, and we’re still having fun. We agreed the day we decided to own a B&B that the day it’s not fun, we’re putting a for-sale sign in the front yard. Because life’s too short to work this long and this hard, and it is a lot of work. For six months, you don’t get a day off. And they’re 14-hour days, so you better really enjoy what you’re doing. We have seven guest rooms, so there are 14 people here pretty much for six months. Everybody who comes here is so nice. And it’s a different kind of clientele that comes to a B&B. They do like the social part of it. We try to do some unique things, like for breakfast we do several courses, but we give everybody the option of either eating in the dining room, like every other B&B, or if they prefer, we package up that same breakfast into a big basket – drinks, everything’s in there – and we knock on the door and leave the basket.

LSM: You’ve stayed at many B&Bs. Where do you like to go to be pampered?

Tim: We do travel a lot and we do still stay in a lot of B&Bs. Every time we stay anywhere, we try to figure out what they’re doing that we like and see if we can incorporate some of the practices that some of these successful places are doing. We really like the Rittenhouse Inn over in Bayfield. We’re good friends with the original owners, and now their son (Mark Phillips) has taken over. We do like more of a historic place to stay. But then, we just got back from Las Vegas, and we stayed in a big Hilton property. So it just depends on what we’re doing.

LSM: What projects do you have left to do at A.G. Thomson House?

Tim: Last year I started building this gigantic waterfall and ponds as a landscape feature. I’ve still got to finish that. And now we’re trying to contemplate our exit strategy from this. … We’re looking at, in the not-too-distant future, actually selling it. We want to get out of it when we’re still enthusiastic and having fun, and still be able to do something else.