Hi

My wife and I have been thinking for a while about selling our house and buying a bigger one that we can run it as a B&B to help pay the mortgage etc. Does anyone on here do that or has any one done so and have any horror stories to tell? We’re thinking of moving to somewhere where there’s good biking/walking etc and focussing on that market.

I’m keen to speak to some people with experience of this before we got too far down that road.

Any advice greatly appreciated

Cheers

bump!

Have you ever done any service industry stuff similar before? Long days involved – early starts to get that fry up on, cleaning and washing the bed linen and then waiting for them to roll in from the pub at night. Have to be nice to arseholes.

House will need fire certificates and all that stuff, need to advertise it somewhere.

advice sent via PM

A bit different from B&B (we run self catering accomm.) but many of the same issues to think through. Have a squint at our site and blog, and feel free to get in touch – happy to chat through our experiences.

😀

Wife mentioned this to me last night so any advice on here would be useful

I’m just about to start a self catering holiday let venture – any advise would be welcome!

sorry if this is a bit doom and gloom, but anyone considering entering the service industries should think long and hard and, as folk above have offered, seek advice from those in it.

i went to catering college when i left school (i wanted to travel and knew that it would get me a job pretty much wherever i wanted) and to that end it served me well for 6 or so years. but make no mistake the hours are long, pay awful, conditions horrible and the customer ALWAYS ‘thinks’ they are right. would i buy my own place these days? definitely not!

whenever i see the shows where people want to change their lifestyle and buy a pub/ski chalet etc, or become a chef, i do believe that most are delluding themselves and that reality will slap them hard.

so, BB. when i’ve considered it this is my thought process… main point, you will be giving a bunch of random people access to your house and in many cases they will likely abuse it, plus you will be on call 24hours a day in case you are needed (lost keys, drunk and can’t find the BB, changed my mind about breakfast time, medical emergency etc)

then up at 5, maybe 6am is you are fast to prepare breakfast and set tables. cooking/serving breakfast until 9am’ish (and you will always get people who believe its their god given right as a paying guest to come down last second or demand food well after you have turned off the grill and cleaned down) then cleaning down until 10am.

straight into room cleaning, changing beds and cleaning toilets (remember that it is the exception that treat a hotel/bb bathroom, and indeed room, like it is their own, the rest figure they are paying so what the heck) which, depending on how many rooms, will take you until early afternoon. they you also have laundry and ironing to keep on top off. interspersed with all this you will have to check out guests, answer a million and one repetitive questions as well as take fresh bookings.

into the afternoon you can expect people to start arriving, so you will have to check them in and again answer a million and one repetitive questions. shared toilets/bathroom will also probably need a freshen up early evening, but if i were you i’d keep checking them all day.

add to all his daily shopping for fresh goods, book-keeping, ensuring hygiene standards/health & safety, marketing etc etc etc

the worst part… all of the above is SEVEN DAYS A WEEK!

It’s something me and the missus have thought about for the future. Just maybe 5 beds. By then we’d have had kids so yay, free labour.

Ok, I think that I’ll be a postman then.

On the plus side you can make extra cash by harvesting businessmen who come to stay for their fat and make high quality tallow for sale to the cosmetics indistry. Best get a BB with a basement.

There was an article recently in one of the paper’s (Guardian or Observer I think) about running a B+B, and it seems there is an awful lot of red tape/health and safety type stuff to take care of – basically the same kind of standards are supposed to be required as for a hotel. Put me right off the idea anyway.