Hospitality
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“The friendly and generous treatment of guests or strangers” Oxford Dictionary.
Hospitality would seem a good topic for the festive season and was associated with welcoming, caring and feeding in New Testament times. So what has this to do with B & B, particularly when the assumption from New Testament times would be not to charge or make a profit from your hospitality and the whole purpose of owning a B & B would be to do exactly the opposite? It is the words welcoming, caring, feeding and generous that are important.
Welcoming means making sure that you have good booking procedures in place so that you are not caught by surprise when the guest arrives or worse to be fully booked when the guest arrives. Overbooking may be a reasonable practice in a large hotel but can be dangerous when you only have three rooms. A large manual diary is sufficient when you have such a small number of rooms as you can divide each week into three columns, one for each room.
Remember to keep the diary clear and up to date, crossing out cancellations as they arise and do not have it stuffed full of too many pieces of papers or Post-It notes. I mention this because the worst mistake I have made in not being prepared for someone was due to the fact I had accidentally stuck a Post-It note over their name with a message regarding something else. This practice does nothing to improve relationships with your partner in the business and is difficult to laugh off even with lines from ‘Fawlty Towers’, such as, “I made a mistake. I am so sorry I am not perfect.”
Caring means looking after the party, finding out what they want to eat, any extra considerations such as more pillows, blankets, towels, details of local attractions with directions and approximate driving/walking times, pointing out if a floor has just been mopped etc. Whilst the last one comes under your legal ‘duty of care’ the emphasis should be on the satisfaction of doing a good job rather than legalism.
Feeding is an extension of caring with particular attention to be paid to any special dietary requirements. People will generally tell you if they have an allergy to nuts etc. but it never hurts to ask if there is anything they do not like. The food needs to be well presented whether in a basket or set out on a dining room table.
Generosity is the garnish to leave a particularly pleasant taste with your guests; always provide good value for money, rather than try and squeeze every cent out of them. People do not mind paying as long as they perceive that they got good value for their money. If they drive away with that memory the chances are they will tell others to come and stay.