If you want to appreciate your host on holiday, it certainly helps to have been soaked through, chilled to the bone, arrested, insulted by the rudest maitre d' in continental Africa and terrified by a drive of truly inventive danger and unpleasantness. Almost any welcome will feel warm after that.

Being offered sweet tea and cakes in front of a roaring log fire, in a snug salon stuffed with decorative rugs and pouffes doesn't hurt either.

But what truly turned our recent trip to Morocco from a holiday of comical catastrophe to an absolute delight was the irrepressible warmth, generosity and, yes, hugs of Jacqueline, the owner of our Marrakesh riad. Her home was our home, she insisted. She was our Moroccan mother. It was so wonderfully overwhelming we couldn't help but be charmed into submission, and before long we were making plans for cocktails in the Strand the next time she came to London.

Confession: I am not much of a hugger of strangers. I am not someone who has a mother in every port. And yet - doesn't it just make a holiday when the person running your guesthouse has a gift for hospitality that goes far beyond clean bedlinen and directions to the local nightlife?

What experiences have you had of hosts who are more welcoming than most?