I previously mentioned two important milestones on our B&B project plan: open for bookings and open for business.
To be open for bookings we needed to be very confident we would be ready for guests by May, we also needed enough of the guest bedrooms and guest areas ready for photographs, and we needed to be online with our website and the booking platforms.
We had, of course, good weeks and bad weeks during the restoration, upgrading, painting and decorating, but overall we were doing really well and our confidence was increasing, so during February we went live for bookings. Tom did a fantastic job on getting all that set up, especially with our website – I had tried to get something good up and running a few times over the winter but failed. By this time, through word of mouth in the village we already had a few bookings for the summer which made it feel very real!
To help ensure we were ready for paying guests in May, we invited Tom’s side of the family over (there are quite a lot of them…) to fill the house for a week during early April. In my previous life I’d have called it a ‘Field Trial’ or ‘Operational Readiness Testing’. It was great to see all the guest rooms full, people making full use of the guest facilities in the house, the pool & garden, to try out our breakfasts and the other services we wanted to offer our guests. At times it got a bit stressy of course, but it was also a lot of fun, very helpful, and lovely to have the house full of family.
Having lived briefly in each of the guest rooms ourselves, we were pretty confident that we were ready with comfortable beds etc. but it was great to know, for example, that everyone could take a shower at the same time with no problems and there was plenty of hot water left for the rest of the day.
After everyone had left, we made the step change from ‘getting ready to open for business’ to being ‘open for business’. No more major projects (apart from getting the decking around the pool finished!) Just fine tuning and getting ready to welcome our first customers.
Reservations were starting to come in quite quickly by this time and before we knew it, we were welcoming our first guests. I have to say, I was feeling anxious about it all as we were waiting for them to arrive, but they were a lovely couple who have since been back to stay with us again and have now booked to come and stay for a 3rd time later this month.
We certainly didn’t get everything right first time, and 3 months in we are still learning, but it was great to be up and running with some very positive feedback coming in…as well as some € 🙂