I have been in the hospitality industry since 1983. In my previous life I was a conference manager and decided 5 years ago to invest those hospitality skills, along with with my marketing and accounting background in Ambleside Inn Bed & Breakfast where I could provide hospitality to our guests on a more personal level.
2. What is your favorite part of the job?
My favourite parts of the job include meeting and greeting our guests and I love the marketing.
3. What is your least favorite part of the job?
My least favourite part of the job is making beds and cleaning toilets. Having said that, I take pride in how it is done. Many of my friends wonder how I can do that part of the job each day, but as I’ve often told them, when I worked in the office, I didn’t like doing my own filing or reconciling my long distance account but it was part of the job. I think every job has its enjoyable parts and tedious parts. We just have to accept that and make the best of it.
4. What is your best marketing tip?
If I may, I’ll offer my 2 best marketing tips. First of all, invest in a well constructed website. If you aren’t comfortable or knowledgable enough to construct your own website, pay a professional to do it. It is an investment that will pay you back a hundred fold.
Secondly, build good working relationships with bed and breakfast hosts in your area. Refer your overflow out to each other. You’ll find that it will pay back dividends, will assist visitors to your area and will help to keep those visitors from running off to the nearest hotel.
5. Do you have a staff or do everything yourself?
I do most things myself. That includes the cooking, cleaning, bookkeeping and reservations. I’d be lost without my husband, Tom, who is still working full-time. He does all the bed and breakfast laundry, our personal laundry and keeps our suite clean, which means I can concentrate on the guest areas. Tom also does our guest shuttle service from the airport, train or bus, when he is home.
6. What type of marketing do you find most effective?
If we are talking about technology, I think that web based marketing is the most effective. Its effectivness far outways any print advertising me might do. It enables to literally reach the world.
Of course, it goes without saying that there is nothing better than word of mouth advertising. If we can get them here to Ambleside Inn, they will take the word away and spread it far and wide. In this business, there is nothing better than welcoming back previous guests or those referred to us by others. In fact, I believe that we survive in this business based on our repeat business. We grow based on the new guests we attract and what better way to do that than through a referral from a previous guest or a well placed website.
7. Do you attend seminars? Buy B&B Guides?
We belong to FOBBA (Federation of Ontario Bed & Breakfast Accommodation) (www.fobba.com) . We attend their Annual General Meeting where there are always a variety of interesting and informative workshops and presentations. It helps us to keep up with what is going on provincially within our industry.
We also belong to CanadaBBHosts, (www.canadabbhosts.com) a web based network of 125 bed and breakfast properties across Canada. They have had 2 conventions and a third convention is in the planning stages for Spring of 2006. On a daily basis though, belonging to this group is like attending an ongoing seminar! There is always a lot of sharing of information on marketing, dealing with daily chores, taking care of guests, taking care of business and a recipe archive to die for!
8. Which recipe do you always get rave reviews for?
We have 15 menus that we rotate through. Our cream cheese filled or banana stuffed french toast are always well received, as is our warm egg salad on english muffins.
9. If you weren’t a B&B Innkeeper what would you be doing?
If I weren’t a Bed & Breakfast Host, I think I’d be and Inn Sitter. I’d enjoy the travel and still have the pleasure of meeting guests from all over the world.
10. Tell us about your most memorable guest?
We have so many memorable guests but one that particularly comes to mind is a young man who is a very gifted cellist. Until he went off for his post secondary education, he came to us about 3 nights a month for some special lessons at the University. When he came he would practice mid-morning and afternoon in our guest livingroom. As I was making those beds and cleaning those toilets, it was like having my own personal concert. When he becomes world renowned, we’ll be able to say we knew him when………
11. Do you have any horror stories from past guests?
There aren’t many horror stories here, but when we came back from vacation in 2003 I went to look in on the CanadBBHosts message board. In the thread entitled Bad News, there was a posting about a guest who had stayed at a bed and breakfast in Western Canada and had stolen a credit card and passport. There was a photo of the guest posted on the thread. To my horror, that guest had stayed with us the previous year. There was no incident here, but it did give us a fright when we thought about what might have happened.
12. What do you think the biggest misconception is about staying at a B&B?
I think that the travelling public is much better educated these days about what a bed and breakfast is, and that bed and breakfasts are much more sophisticated than they were a decade ago. For those who are still unsure about trying a bed and breakfast, I think they are under the misconception that there is a certain lack of privacy because the average bed and breakfast is located in a private home.
13. What would you like to change about the industry?
In the accommodation industry, I think that bed and breakfast properties are often viewed as less significant than their larger cousins, the hotel/motels, and yet who can be better good will ambassadors for the tourist region/city than the bed and breakfast host. We meet our guests one on one and direct them to the attractions, restaurants, theatres and sports facilities that will give them the best value. When tourism dollars are being distributed I’d like to see our industry being taken more seriously.
14. Do you have any time saving tips or marketing treasures that you would
like to share?
One of the best time saving tips I’ve learned in the past year is to set my standard e-mail replies, i.e. stock answers to availability and rate inquiries or confirmations, up as a signature template. That way, when I reply to those e-mails I simply have to insert the “signature” I want and fill in the blanks. It also helps to cut down on those typo errors because I can make sure that my response is perfect on the template.
One of our best marketing strategies was to set up an advertising co-operative with a number of good quality bed and breakfast properties in our area. This takes a certain amount of trust on everyone’s part but it helps stretch our advertising dollars farther than we could do individually and by referring ouroverflow out to each other, we help each other fill our rooms.
15. What makes your B&B unique?
This is the hardest question to answer! I like to think that we give a 5 Star service that we can feel proud of. I do know that we feel passionate about what we do and our guests tell us they can feel that passion. That probably doesn’t make us unique but does bring our guests back to us time and time again.
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