A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas
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A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas
Where Cyclists Stay: Bentonville’s Bike Inn
Welcome to A New American Town. In this episode, we’re talking all things two wheels and trail-friendly travel with Jeremy Rose, owner of The Bike Inn: a cyclist-focused boutique lodging and experience right here in Bentonville.
The Bike Inn isn’t your typical hotel. It’s designed by riders, for riders, with everything you need to roll in, clean up, relax, and get right back out on the trails. Whether you’re a solo adventurer, a weekend warrior with friends, or a family looking for a low-fuss, high-fun place to stay, this is where Bentonville’s trail culture meets modern hospitality.
Listen to this episode to find out about their special amenities, group tours, events, and more!
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Welcome to A New American Town brought to you by Visit Bentonville. I'm your host, natalie. Today we're talking all things two wheels and trail friendly travel with Jeremy Rose, the owner of the Bike Inn, a boutique mountain biking hotel built with you and your bike in mind, right here in Bentonville, arkansas. The Bike Inn isn't your typical hotel. It's designed by riders, for riders, with everything you need to roll in, clean up, relax and get right back out on the trails. Whether you're a solo adventurer, a weekend warrior with friends or a family looking for a low-fuss, high-fun place to stay, this is where Bentonville's trail culture meets modern hospitality. Thanks for joining us, jeremy.
Speaker 2:My pleasure and nice work there. That was a good intro.
Speaker 1:Thanks, I feel like I bring my news reporter voice out when I do it. So for someone hearing about the bike-in for the first time, give me the spiel. What do you want everyone to know?
Speaker 2:You pretty much nailed it we are a cycling destination built with you and your bike in mind. It's something completely different from every other lodging facility here in Northwest Arkansas. Your bike kind of comes first and the people are right there with them, and we created a space for you and your bike where you could be comfortable and have everything you need and have the supplies you need and get you on the trails as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it is exactly that I was doing some digging on your website and just the versatility of spaces that you have, cause looking at it from the road, there's like the traditional building with the awesome sign. You guys have a great logo, but then you also have three van camping pads and four glamping cabins, which are so fun. I love that aspect.
Speaker 2:I really want to be. I want to be affordable enough for everybody to come enjoy our space. So there's a mountain biking is an expensive sport, or cycling in general is an expensive sport, right? So I don't want to keyhole anybody else. I want the young 19 year old kid to come have a very cool place, to come stay and enjoy it. But I also want the different tax brackets to be able to come there and feel comfortable as well.
Speaker 1:So we are a four-star hotel.
Speaker 2:There's only three of those in town 21C and I believe one of the Sheridan is the other one and then us, but we're about $200 a night cheaper than all of those others.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like the ideal roll-in roll-out kind of camping place to stay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's perfect. So what kind of vibe do you want guests to have whenever they come, once they arrive, and why is it in the ideal location?
Speaker 2:We do a contactless check-in, so everything is ran through the website. So when you book a room, you get an email sent to you on your check-in day that gives you all the information you need to get to your room, access the property, wi-fi, details about the property, everything you need to make your way around. The website kind of acts as a concierge as well. We have all the trail information you need there. You can build your route, you can plan your route and we also offer a bunch of amenities that nobody else offers. So we offer guide services. We have our own rental fleets, we have a 24-hour bike shop, we have a shuttle van and we can support any adventure activity that you want to put together, whether it's mountain biking or river floats or hiking or just town tours around town with the bus. We can do that as well.
Speaker 1:That is epic.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That is amazing. Do you see all of your guests utilizing?
Speaker 2:that, yes, everybody utilizes it. I don't get to see everybody, so we don't have an office, we don't have a staff, so it runs almost like a virtual type place and we give our guests a lot of leeway so we try to treat them like adults and we expect them to give that in return as well. Like our bike shop is a complete honor system bike shop.
Speaker 2:Wow like our bike shop is a complete honor system bike shop. Wow, you can go in there. You buy merchandise uh trail nutrition, bike consumables like uh tubes or tires or chain links nice and it's all on an ipad. You just check yourself in, check yourself out, and we allow our guests to do that and for four years now it runs really well. It's really nice when you give that trust to people and they give it back to you totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, high tech. High tech that reminds me of the airport, like yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, red Barn, that real cute little neighborhood here in town. They have a little honor system, little grocery stores too.
Speaker 1:Except for their like farmer's stand, or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what inspired? You to make the bike in?
Speaker 2:We pulled in town and about three months after we got here this has been fall of 2020, we saw the motel for sale and I was absolutely blown away that something like that was still for sale. In town was what was happening, and we immediately contacted sellers and just dove in. And here we are, four years later.
Speaker 1:This is the need. It needs to be filled and I'm the guy to do it.
Speaker 2:We knew exactly what we wanted to call it. We kind of knew the layout, we knew what we wanted to do for it and we moved here from Oregon. So we've seen some of these outdoor recreation towns, kind of 10 years down the road and kind of the direction they tend to go, and we just jumped right in.
Speaker 1:So who's we when you're talking about? We, my wife, oh awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's the interior designer, so she did all the interior design.
Speaker 1:She did a fantastic job. Oh my goodness fantastic job oh, my goodness, it's beautiful. She's done a beautiful job. Yeah, she does a very good job. I love how people can store their bikes. Is it inside every room?
Speaker 2:all the motel proper. So the motel proper has eight rooms. All those and we have a cottage out back all those have indoor bike storage. So a single room will have room for two bikes, as we expect two people in those. Uh. Double room meaning two beds, all my beds are queens. A double room we have room for two bikes, as we expect two people in those. Double room, meaning two beds, all my beds are queens. A double room we have room for four bikes. And then the glamping cabins. They have exterior bike racks with locks provided.
Speaker 1:Wow, Indoor bikes are like a Benville thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I have recently learned that people, when they come travel here, are just so excited and blown away that they can store their bike indoors. When I've, yeah, met people and they're like where do I store my bike if I come into town, I'm like what do you mean? There's like bike valets or there's places to store your bike everywhere, and it's just so cool that that's become our culture. Were you guys one of the leading members of that, or did you see that kind of going around the community at the same time?
Speaker 2:I believe we were the first. That's amazing. Yeah, I figured we did a lot of stuff on social media and we tried to just keep everything as local as possible and we put out a group of like questionnaires right when we were getting started what do you want to see? And the number one response was we want our bikes indoor with us yeah. And we had the space to be able to do that. We worked with the local partners, Put Up USA. They created our beautiful modular bike racks, that's where we came from.
Speaker 2:I love local. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually, before we started this, Jeremy brought in some awesome local merch. Is this some stuff that you can expect to see at that shop you're talking about? It is.
Speaker 2:Our hats are done by Doug at Bomb Squad Central Union. He does hats, gloves, shorts, jerseys, pants. He does a little bit of everything. Find a lot of his stuff at Benville Bike Co. And then our jerseys are done by Brent over at Flow.
Speaker 1:Bikewear.
Speaker 2:He handles a lot of events around here for individual jerseys as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, got to get the swag. Yeah, got to get the swag.
Speaker 2:And even our mattresses are local. They come from Joplin, missouri. We have a friend with a mattress factory up there. The brand's called Forever Bed. Our cabins come from Noel, missouri, just up the road 30 minutes. They're all hand-built by a guy and his workers in a warehouse just 30 minutes up the road. Bike racks are local.
Speaker 1:That makes so much sense because it is such a unique experience at the bike inn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all about staying local. When you stay with me, your money stays in our community. If you stay at so many other hotels, you can't necessarily say the same thing. That's even true for our Airbnbs. I believe most of our Airbnbs like 60% are outside investors.
Speaker 1:Well, so let's imagine the perfect day at the bike-in, exactly how you are envisioning it going. Tell me about it. What does it look like?
Speaker 2:Perfect day at the bike-in. You check in, you arrive, you get your email, you show up, you walk into your room, you put your bike on the wall, you get settled. You make your way around to the back of the motel. You'll find our sauna, our cold plunge, our hot tub, our community fire pit.
Speaker 1:All included.
Speaker 2:It's all included, oh my gosh. And we have hammocks out back by the fire. You hear birds, you hear insects, you don't hear road noise. It's wonderful. You get up the next morning and you take a tour. This is probably the best place in the world to take a tour on a bike, because most places you go to you have a big trail you do it's called the whole enchilada or something else. You're going to go out for this one ride. Bentonville isn't really set up that way. We have 300 miles a minute long trails and they're somewhat hard to navigate. You're not going to get lost and you're not going to hurt yourself or go the wrong way. But there's definitely a better way to put them all together and it takes quite a bit of time to learn how to do all that. So you take a tour, I put you on an e-bike, I have Intercom helmets by Senna the Intercom brand.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're going to ride around on e-bikes, we're going to be able to chat with each other. I can point out history and trail names and art and take you around crystal bridges and hit the trail. We'll hit dirt, we'll hit pavement. We'll go to Kohler, we'll go to Bella Vista, we the rest of your trip. You can go back and cherry pick all the stuff that you really want to find.
Speaker 1:I want to go back there, yeah, oh, I want to explore more in the trails we didn't get to see over here, but now I know how to get back home and all of the routes. Yeah, because Benville is kind of a huge maze.
Speaker 2:It really is. It really is. Yeah, there's not one hole in.
Speaker 1:Chilanda.
Speaker 2:You're never more than a couple hundred yards from a house, but it feels like you're 50 miles into the woods. It's really really incredible what they've done here, True.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that experience I imagine is super customizable depending on if you're a mountain biker, a road cyclist, gravel Do. Most of your guests typically do all three experiences?
Speaker 2:Most of them come here with one discipline in mind and actually they usually have an idea of the planned route they want to do to or certain trails they want to try and hit.
Speaker 2:You know we have a lot of famous trails, like Berm Creek, built by Backyard Trail Builder and people like that. So they have an idea and then you get them out on the bike and I build. Every tour is custom built for the guests I'm riding with. I usually start out on the ledger building because it's beautiful, it's unique, it's a fun ride up and I can get a good idea of your riding capabilities by how you handle those 180 degree turns coming down and then I kind of base my tour off there and then we'll start dropping in and whether you want to stay on pavement or get a little bit of dirt, A lot of my tours are usually one person can ride pretty good and whether it's a spouse or a kid or something else isn't quite as good. But when you put that intercom on someone's ear and you can talk them down a trail or tell them what's coming and everything else, it really lowers the whole experience and makes it much easier for everybody involved.
Speaker 1:Wow, I imagine that our progressive trail design really helps with those tours too, because maybe someone wants to go on a blue with you, but the other person wants to stay on the greenway. You guys can just meet up at the end of it absolutely and I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 2:You know we get a lot of flack for our claim of being the mountain bike capital of the world and I will stand by and argue that point that that's the hill I'll die on, because there's an I've. I lived in bend oregon. I lived in River Oregon Two huge mountain bike meccas. You're never going to see a family, five generations, deep out on a mountain bike ride in Bend Oregon. It's just not set up for it. Here it is. You can go on a ride with literally you don't have to have any experience at all and be with somebody who can ride double black diamond trails and everybody can have fun with an eyesight of each other.
Speaker 1:It doesn't exist anywhere else. That was amazing. I love that.
Speaker 2:They've done a really really good job. Yeah, they have.
Speaker 1:That's great. Yeah, we love when our community jumps on and agrees yeah, cause I die on that hill too.
Speaker 2:We are the mountain bike capital of the world, and I'll say it forever yeah, it doesn't mean you have the single best trail or the longest trail or the most Epic trail, but it means you have the best infrastructure and availability for everybody to ride a bike.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow. So what are some more additional perks that you want to talk about that? Maybe we haven't hit on about the bike-in.
Speaker 2:Oh, man One. You're coming here to be in nature. You're coming here to ride bikes and be in nature. That's kind of how we're set up. I'll tell you our Wi-Fi code, because people aren't sitting in my parking lot stealing Wi-Fi, so it's not a big deal. But the Wi-Fi code is get outside, because that's what we want you to do. Get outside and go see some stuff, go have some fun. So you're going to show up.
Speaker 2:Most people aren't in the room, charlie at all. My place looks pretty empty mid on the trails. You come back in the evening time and all of a sudden you're around 20 or 30 other people that are there for the same reason you are. It's almost like a hostel vibe, like you have this common heartbeat. Out back around the fire pit there's an outdoor kitchen. There there's a keg ritter on tap, everybody's hanging out in the hot tub or the cold plunge. Or you're mingling and you're talking to other people that are here for the same reason and you're talking about other trails. Maybe you find out about Devil's Den Park or Hobbs State Park or something up in Bella Vista you haven't heard about. I've got, I think, 10 big trail maps all around the exterior of my property so you can walk around and you can point to the trails you rode. Or talk to a new friend you just met over a beer and talk about what you want to do tomorrow, or make some new riding buddies.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, that's awesome. It's like the perfect setup for individual travel so you can meet people, or renting out the whole place, which you guys also do.
Speaker 2:We do Huge groups.
Speaker 1:That sounds like so much fun, like family reunions or retreats. That'd be so, so cool.
Speaker 2:We've got a group of 100 coming out this fall All gravel riders 100 people.
Speaker 1:How many people do you sleep?
Speaker 2:I can't sleep. All of them. We have a big block me. The red roof in behind me is getting a bunch of them, and then a lot of them are just kind of spreading around town. Okay, andy chastain is doing the route, programming for them got it and they're just going to travel all over.
Speaker 2:We're catering all their meals in, so we got event tables for them, event tents and chairs set up all in the backyard and their meals are going to come in each evening and they're all going to come together and share meals and then break out and do different rides.
Speaker 1:The perfect landing pad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the full book out's a fun part, because we have 13 rooms, 16 beds and three RV spots and for $17.25, you get access. It's all yours, private, and then at that point there's no client hour. You can do what you want. We've had live music back there. We've had live music back there. We've had magicians back there. We've got a slip and slide have you had weddings.
Speaker 1:We have had weddings. That sounds like a fun wedding we had two ladies.
Speaker 2:They met at the bike-in and they came back a year later and got married in the backyard. Oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's so cool, Just how you've been able to make your own community at the bike-in as an extension of the Bentonville biking community Wow. So for visitors that are coming to Bentonville, they're coming to stay at the bike-in. What are your favorite?
Speaker 2:trails that they should keep in mind. My favorite trail if I had one trail just to ride here, it would be Fireline at Kohler. It's a little bit of everything. It's fast, it's slow, big burns, big jumps. You can wear yourself out on it and it's also smooth enough that newbies can kind of pick it up and make their way down it as well. I think our prettiest trail here is Cars Loop out at Hobbs State Park, so you're out in Rogers a little bit, so it's about a 40-minute drive, but it is spectacular out there and that's a trail you can ride in the pouring rain and a lot of people don't get to do that and talk about taking you back to your childhood when you ride a bike in the pouring rain like a nice warm summer rain splashes through the puddles.
Speaker 2:There's nothing like it.
Speaker 1:My husband and I were in France last year and rode e-bikes through the rain for about four hours and we were just giddy the whole time. It was so much fun. I agree, I love riding the rain and Benville has so many paved trails or all weather trails that you can do that in. Is that how that one trail?
Speaker 2:is that? One is yeah, you can ride anytime.
Speaker 1:You don't have to worry about mud or ruining the trail or anything. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, how do you feel like the bike ingrains itself in the Bentonville community.
Speaker 2:We're tied in about as deeply as you can be itself in the Bentonville community. We're tied in about as deeply as you can be. So I'm fortunate enough that I, you know I get to support other local brands like Bomb Squad and Flow Bikewear here. I push people to all the local eateries because they're not competition for me. I don't have really have competition.
Speaker 2:I'm very unique and that's my favorite place to be because I want to share everybody. I want people to go eat local food airship coffee, you know. Go get a pastry in the morning, go to Ozark Mountain Bagel and get a bagel before your ride. It's just a wonderful place to be because I can push everybody in every direction. I also get to support every event, whether it's a mountain bike event, a downhill series, an enduro series, or the Hill Camping Fondue that's coming here in the fall, or the Big Sugar gravel ride or the hill camping fondue that's coming here in the fall, or the big sugar gravel ride or the little sugar mountain bike ride. I get to support all those things and usually I'm tied in and sag vehicle support to a lot of those big rides. Um, bike fest, bike-a-palooza is coming up with brett. He's putting that together.
Speaker 2:That's a really fun event yeah and I'm fortunate that I get to take part in all of those different events.
Speaker 1:There is a lot.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot coming up too.
Speaker 1:It's about to be Biketober, so I bet I'll be seeing a lot of you around yeah.
Speaker 2:It's hard to keep track of there so much.
Speaker 1:That is true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would like to throw a little shout out there. We have a new group called NWA Bike Calendar. They do a very good job on social media putting out what group rides are, and that's something hard to keep up.
Speaker 1:It's hard to find.
Speaker 2:It's hard to keep up, yeah they do a fantastic job of putting out what what weekly group rides are coming up each week wow, that's a great plug I'm gonna go and follow them too. Nwa bike calendar cool.
Speaker 1:Well, um, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. It was so amazing to dive deeper into the bike in and what you're doing and really how you're getting the word out about our community and the mountain biking capital of the world. How can people get connected with you and come and stay or learn more about the bike-in?
Speaker 2:The website's the best place. Thebikeincom is the best place to go. You can make reservations anywhere Airbnb, VRBO, Expedia but all those those third party websites and apps always charge 20 more. That's how they pay for themselves. So your best rate is always at the bike incom and we have lots of resources on there. You can build routes, you can find routes. You can find um the current weather, a little bit of everything on the website. So much not just booking not just booking.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, well cool. Thanks so much. If you guys are looking to learn more about visiting Bentonville and or anything else in our town, go to visitbentonvillecom or follow us on social media at visitbentonville or at bikebentonville. Thank you so much. Bye.