Hotels and far away accommodations are the delight of many travelers around the world and across cultures. To be away from home, but not feel like comfort and a good night’s sleep are so far away, is the hallmark of creating a great hospitality experience that many corporations and individuals try to balance. While it may be easy for a multi-million dollar corporation to provide granite bathroom countertops in all of its rooms, this is harder for the individual hospitality manager. But what you lack in glitz and glamour you can make up for in a cozy bed and breakfast experience.
The ambiance of a cozy bed and breakfast is truly something that still cannot be replicated by mass marketers and industrial capitalism. It is within the domain of a unique individual to provide to their fellow humans, and does not necessarily require taking out jumbo loans to finance (though such a financial opportunity can never hurt). It can be done with a large or small property, in almost any area on earth, with the right attitude and work ethic. All that it really takes is a willingness to provide an amazing and restorative experience for the individuals that stay with you. Not only because that’s the correct way to do business, but also because it may make them lifelong customers!
In this article we’ll explain how to create a bed and breakfast if you’re a first-time hospitality manager, or make your existing cozy bed and breakfast into a truly delightful experience for any traveler that happens to grace your doorway. Tips and tricks will include everything from the practical (such as replacing wood fences around your property) to more sublime and detailed pieces of hospitality ambiance like room decor and more. Hopefully, you will have more than enough inspiration and practical tips to get started right away without feeling stressed or overwhelmed.
Give Your Guests a Reason to Ditch the Hotel Chains
To many weary travelers, a bed and breakfast is a much different atmosphere from a commercial hotel establishment. In lieu of a fancy restaurant in the marble lobby, they have opted to stay in your larger home for a more intimate experience. Part of the appeal of staying in a truly cozy bed and breakfast isn’t just bacon and eggs in the morning, it’s the ability to be in someone’s living room and a more natural environment. Sterile hotel sheets and tiny soaps are exchanged for a more homey experience that feels “lived in” and “just like home to many people.” Why not open a small restaurant right in your bed and breakfast? Since 96% of Americans say that vacation time is important to them, this should be a point of concern for you to both rejoice in your control and pay attention to details.
To some degree your guests really are living in a home, but a home in which floor cleaning is practiced more often than we probably do on a day-to-day basis, among other cleaning protocols. While not all “bed and breakfasts” strictly offer breakfast, they do usually entice customers with some sort of meal. Whether you want to make a gourmet breakfast or offer a wine and cheese night is strictly up to you and your tastes, but what you are simply after is a cozy bed and breakfast experience that will elicit positive feedback from your (hopefully) many customers.
Whether you indulge your guests with gourmet food, unique experiences or simply wonderful rooms that have amazing scented candles, you can always give them a reason to ditch the hotel chains. After getting in the swing of minding your own business, you’ll surely be surprised at the level of customization and quality experiences you can provide that would simply be glossed over in any larger hotel experience. When you’re the boss, you have the ability to delight your guests in every way, shape, and appropriate to your business. Opioid addicts use Tramadol to reduce withdrawal symptoms after quitting heroin or opium. cheap tramadol online However, this just delays the appearance of withdrawal, transforming dependence on one drug to another.
Cultivate a Comfortable and Welcoming Atmosphere
When your guests arrive to stay at a cozy bed and breakfast, they certainly expect a comfortable room and a meal. This is standard, and something that even basic hotel chains can offer nowadays. But when you give your guests an incentive and experience beyond what a budget hotel chain could offer, you not only incentivize them to come back, but perhaps leave an impression that prolongs their stay for longer than they’d planned.
You might even anticipate that guests might have trouble sleeping in the new environment of your bed and breakfast, no matter how comfortable it might be. This is a natural function of human psychology and only has a bit to do with your establishment. Luckily, there is something that you can do. In this respect, you can offer natural sleep and relaxation aids in your rooms such as herbal tea, CBD oil extract, lavender aromatherapy, or whatever might be local to your area. It may not seem like much, but these tiny additions will truly make your space stand out as a cozy bed and breakfast that people may even take pictures of and positively share on social media.
Part of cultivating a comfortable and welcoming atmosphere might also be curating experiences for your guests. Bed and breakfasts can be located anywhere, from urban to rural areas, and they all come with their unique experiences that guests might want to indulge in. If you’re in wine country or an area known for a local crop, your guests might want to sample the goods or tour the fields. In an urban area, they might want to know some of the best cafes or where the parks are located in order to people watch. You know your area best for these types of excursions, so you can provide the best data.
Keep Your House Up to Date for Maximum Profit
If you’ve never operated a bed and breakfast before, you’ll need a property in which to do so. There really is no standard square footage or design that a bed and breakfast requires in order to operate, although your local state or city might have their own regulations you need to follow. Usually, a bed and breakfast consists of a couple of rented rooms, along with the room (or wing of the property) that you live in yourself as the caretaker. It’s helpful if your bed and breakfast conforms to these basic specifications to start out.
In order to charge the fair market rate (and perhaps special rates for holidays, weekends, etc) you’ll want to make sure that your property is in tip-top shape. This means a full housing inspection even if your rooms are ready to rent out and seem fine. The last thing you want is a guest complaining about bad A/C or ventilation issues in their room when you could have easily queried HVAC companies for a quote on how to fix the issue before it started. It’s important to make sure the house is up to code, has no leaks/drafts, pest issues, and is safe to inhabit (especially if it’s a historic house).
If you are buying or restoring a historic house, it can be helpful to preserve some of the furniture or finishes as part of the appeal. While it might not be cheap, you can enlist the help of a furniture refinishing service that will help you preserve historic pieces so that they can actually be used and appreciated by guests instead of rotting away in a museum. This may also allow you to increase the price for which you charge guests, giving them pieces of “living history” to interact with. Not only will it help keep your house up to spec, but it will also differentiate you from the bed and breakfast competition.
Make Sure the Rooms Are In Tip-Top Shape
Probably the most important part of creating a cozy bed and breakfast experience is making sure that the actual rooms your guests will be staying in are in tip-top shape. Some other parts of the property can be in various states of disrepair, but it is unacceptable for the rooms to be anything but flawless. This means having clean and soft sheets, no bad smells or odors, comfortable lighting, https://manhattanvalleypediatrics.com/online-tramadol-sandoz-50mg/ and providing basic amenities that help your guests feel at home.
You may want to make each room have a unique theme or color scheme to help keep things easier for you. If your property is historic, you may want to include historical items about the property in each room so that guests can feel as if they are a part of something larger and more interesting before they turn the light out. If your property is supposedly haunted or used to be owned by historical figures, that is also something worth pointing out.
Only you can decide whether including modern “essentials” like WiFi or TVs is part of the cozy bed and breakfast you’re trying to offer, or if you’re trying to make your bed and breakfast a retreat from modern society. You can always query your guests later on whether these amenities were needed and get more detailed feedback. Sometimes things like hand lotion or mints are appreciated, but you probably don’t need to include a full coffee maker in each room. After all, that’s what breakfast is for!
Differentiate Yourself From the Competition
When differentiating yourself from other bed and breakfast providers in your local area, you may want to consider how you stand out. This doesn’t necessarily mean gimmicks, although some of the great motel and hotels of the American past utilized clever signs with the help of commercial electrical services to win over guests. While your bed and breakfast probably doesn’t need a large colored neon sign, it’s something worth thinking about. Any way that you can quietly (or overtly) differentiate yourself from the competition will win over guests and help you to create the bed and breakfast experience both parties desire.
You may cater mostly to older people or younger couples on vacation. Solo travelers or international guests may become your specialty, there really is no “right” way to view this. You can reap the benefits of meeting many amazing people while also making money if you simply put your nose to the grindstone and figure out how you’d like to achieve your goals. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to run advertisements or anything either, but you can certainly promote your bed and breakfast through a variety of channels. Nowadays you don’t just have to utilize traditional media, and through social media and other sites, such as Airbnb, you can attract a wide variety of guests at a price range that is acceptable to all.
Invest In the Gourmet
The food options at bed and breakfasts are so varied and wide, that once again there is no standard you must live up to. If you want to market yourself as the “steak and eggs” bed and breakfast, then you can simply learn how to cook amazing steak and eggs to serve to your guests with gourmet sides. If you’d rather have a rotating menu of breakfast items that your guests can choose from, that is also an option. Most guests consider a cozy bed and breakfast experience to include some sort of hot home-cooked meal, even if it is not necessarily gourmet. Having freshly ground coffee and local jams won’t hurt, and it’s always nice to think of these extras.
You can be ahead of the game by searching for local ingredients to put in your cuisine, especially if the area your bed and breakfast is located in is known for something. Local wine grape jelly is an excellent substitute for the mass-produced, as is local honey. Farm fresh eggs are usually easy to include and will put a smile on most of your guest’s faces, and if you can learn how to make your own bread your bed and breakfast will surely be a hit for many fellow travelers to come.
Listen to Feedback With an Open Mind
After your guests have gone, it can be tempting to simply ask them to leave a review of your cozy bed and breakfast out of routine. Sometimes you get so busy that you don’t even have time to look at the reviews before your next guests arrive, let alone analyze them for tips and tricks that could help you along in your bed and breakfast journey. As always, take reviews with a grain of salt unless something truly poignant pops out at you – positive or negative. Guests aren’t entitled to like their experiences even if you’ve provided everything under the sun for them, and you don’t have to host them next time.
You may get comments that seem far fetched, like “this property would be amazing if it only had a pool outside.” While that may be an expense that you don’t want to indulge in, at some point if you receive that comment from enough visitors you may seriously want to consider pool installation as a feature to add to your property. Any expense that you incur by improving your bed and breakfast can eventually be offset by higher prices from satisfied guests. If you learn to manage your money correctly, you truly can have it all.
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