Moments of truth.
Moments of truth are a series of moments that guests experience when they stay in your B & B and needless to say you should try and make all of the moments positive. You might make a list for your own business and they are likely to contain the following:
- Approach to the property
- Greeting by the hosts
- Help with the luggage
- Cleanliness of the room
- Comfort of the bed
- Tea/coffee making facilities
- TV
- Bathroom cleanliness, towels, robes etc.
- Breakfast
If any of these let the experience down overall then it clouds the whole visit in the eyes of the guest, so it is no use having a beautiful room if the guest then goes down to a sub-standard breakfast. Should the opposite be the case and the guest gets more than s/he bargained for in the positive sense, you have provided the person with ‘delighters’, that s/he is likely to take away as a memory of a particularly enjoyable stay and which s/he will tell friends and others about. That is the sort of ‘word of mouth’ advertising that you want spread around.
Try and be your own critic and consider the good experiences as those that provide positive exemplars and the poor experiences as those that provide negative exemplars. Guest comments and particularly the gracious acceptance of criticism with the intent of sorting this out to the satisfaction of the guest is a good way to improve your performance.
Choose the correct answer from 1 - 4 which illustrates a positive B&B exemplar.
| 1. You have promised your spouse a weekend away with cooked English breakfast. On arrival you are each given a small package containing a rasher of bacon, one bantam egg and half a tomato and told that there are cooking facilities in your room. | 2. You arrive at the B & B and the first glimpse up the driveway is an overgrown lawn, several dog droppings and an overfull wheelie bin. |
| 3. You pull back the covers of the bed to turn in for the night and feel sure that either the bed has not been changed or someone mistakenly replaced sheets from the dirty linen pile. | 4. After a long drive you arrive along a tree lined and manicured lawn to be greeted by a delightful couple who take you to a beautifully prepared room with flowers and a bottle of chilled champagne on the bedside table. |
Correct answer = 4. No prizes for explaining why the other three are negative exemplars of B & B hospitality.