For one week earlier this month, the Shorelight Inn and the Inn at Benicia Bay had a special visitor — a simple, red, wooden chair.

But it was no ordinary red chair, said Peg James, property manager at the Shorelight Inn, 153 West E St.

This is the red chair that has been traveling since 2012, when Beth Colt, who keeps the Woods Hole Inn near Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., took a picture of her simple red chair on ice behind her house.

She posted the photograph on Facebook, and the picture began getting many “likes” and “shares.” Julie Ann Cromer, a Santa Barbara photographer, posted the picture on her own Facebook page, then decided to visit Woods Hole Inn, where she took a picture of the chair at a nearby beach.

Colt decided to share the red chair with other innkeepers, starting with those in the Cape Cod area.

The chair was sent to six New England states late in 2013. That’s when Colt said, “It’s time for the chair to branch out.”

In fact, she decided it was time to send the chair “coast to coast.”

The chair is accompanied by a red suitcase, into which brochures and information are placed at every site the chair visits, James said.

It’s fast becoming a traveling icon, she said. Its travels are chronicled on blogs and on the website www.redchairtravels.com.

The chair even has a travel coordinator, who contacted James and asked if the Shorelight Inn would be interested in being a host.

“The lowly wooden chair has been elevated to celebrity status,” James said. “It’s all part of a consciousness-raising experiment among innkeepers.”

The chair arrived Aug. 12 in Benicia from its previous stop, East Brother Light Station Victorian Bed and Breakfast, 117 Park Place, Point Richmond.

While in Benicia, the red chair stayed at both the Shorelight and the Inn at Benicia Bay, 145 East D St., both of which are in the city’s historic downtown shopping district.

Guests were allowed to sit in the chair when it wasn’t being photographed at such landmarks as the Benicia Capitol State Historic Park, 115 East G St.

James’s own dog, Keeper, also had a chance to rest on the chair’s red seat.

Host innkeepers pick up the chair’s traveling tab. It next went to the Inn at Locke House, in Lockeford. James said she and that inn’s operator met in Stockton for the transfer after the red chair finished its Benicia stay Aug. 18.

James said about 500 innkeepers and operators of bed and breakfast accommodations have registered as chair hosts.

“I thought it was a fun opportunity to be one of those hosts in its shore-to-shore travels,” she said.