Having reached the time of life when the “offspring” have
well and truly left home and set up homes of their own, with the mortgage
looking like it could be paid off in the near future and a milestone birthday
looming, we have decided to take the leap of moving to the country and opening
a bed and breakfast business. This has
been a secret dream of Mr Wannabe B&B Landlord and I for quite some time,
as we have stayed at various hostels around the UK, and even carried out some
research in France whilst buying our weight in wine!
A few bold friends of ours tried to pin us down to find out
the level of research carried out and the extent of our findings. Well obviously, the first step was to check
out the back catalogue of the Channel 4 television programme “4 In a Bed”. We quickly came to the conclusion that if some
of the brave souls who take part in the programme have been able to do this,
then as we can offer a comfortable bed and a reasonable cooked breakfast, we
should be able to do it ourselves (I will remind myself of this when I’m
cooking four different types of eggs, whilst juggling toast, cafetieres and
bacon!). Having been pushed further by
said friends, we compiled a list of our “loves and loathes” when we are away
from home for business and leisure, which we hope will help us find our unique
selling point:
·
Loves:
o
Fresh coffee;
o
High-grade cotton sheets;
o
Wi-Fi;
o
Accommodation with personality.
·
Loathes:
o
Small beds – less than 5 foot beds;
o
Wire coat hangers;
o
Pre-packaged biscuits and UHT milk;
o
Tinned tomatoes.
To move the pipe-dream forward, we booked ourselves onto a weekend
B&B training course, as we thought this would be beneficial for us and would
hopefully highlight the joys and pitfalls to working in this industry. The course we chose was with Karen Thorne,
who has run a successful B&B for the last ten years, and has been running
courses on setting up and running a B&B for the last seven years (see http://www.bedandbreakfastacademy.co.uk/
for more information). We found
ourselves alongside a small group of likeminded B&B newbies, examining the
finances, marketing, and legal requirements of running a B&B, as well as
hints and tips of dealing with the occasional difficult guest and the most
effective way of servicing a room!
Having not been put off our dream, we have put our house on
the market and are awaiting offers, so that we can start looking at potential
businesses. I will keep you posted on
our journey!
