budget, even with spreadsheets, but if you are more precise with your estimates than we were and factor in enough margin for overruns, you can avoid surprises like these:
Certainly itâs possible to buy an up-and-running bed-and-breakfast, if you can afford that. Either way, be sure to consider
why
people would want to come and stay at your place. It should be near a resort or tourist area, on a popular travel route, or in proximity to other attractions, such as a historic town, a college, or areas of natural beauty.
What, then, can you expect if you find a place, obtain a license (in our town the house has to be historic or deemed âinterestingâ by a county agency to qualify), open for business, advertise, and eventually guests start to come? To make money, the general rule is that you need at least five rooms with a decent occupancy rate. A key factor is how many nights a year you can reasonably expect to be booked, based on other inns and businesses in the area, and on what you are offering. Fewer than five rooms can be borderline and is often considered a hobby, though an income-producing one. Fewer than three rooms is considered companionship. Technically, we were at the hobby borderline, but hoping to cover expenses and get lucky, with plans of one day making a go of it. More recently, with the higher cost of real estate, this has become trickier to do.
Another factor to consider is furnishing the place. A bed-and-breakfast requires that charm quotient, an elegant aura of the romantic, the bygone, the exotic, or the rustic, a pleasing suggestion of âelsewhere,â that allows guests to escape from the everyday. And that, everyone who knew of our scheme warned, is really going to be expensive.
No, it wonât, I answered, because I knew our budget and the secondhand shop in our village where unbelievable finds awaited anyone willing to do a little work on the furniture you bought there. I also knew the family attics. Between my father-in-law and my own mother, I calculated that there was a staggering 178 years of living to draw on without even counting what had been passed on to them by their parents. So I started with what we already had and planned a short shopping list of lamps, linens, and new mattresses. Bed-and-breakfast guestsrank good beds second only to private baths on their list of preferences, according to industry studies.
Another preference among guests, as it turns out, is for an absence of teddy bears, chintz, and bric-a-brac. Some guests will specifically inquire about this before booking as a prelude to asking about dust and allergens. For others itâs a question of aesthetics. This was lucky for us, because my own strong preference was for a suggestion, an evocation of the past, not a full-blown set piece.
Even so, we were going to need a certain amount of stuff beyond my short list of basics. After exhausting the attics, I took frequent walks down to Julieâs Oak Creek Sales to hunt for fixable chairs, tables, dressers, mirrors. In time we had to look further, stopping at thrift and used-furniture stores wherever we happened to be, usually on trips to and from the hardware and lumber supply stores.
The idea of saving a house that would otherwise bulk up a landfill is hugely appealing. Old houses also hold history and secrets that you can sense at every turn, in their nooks, their hand-hewn beams, windows, mantles, and unpredictable corners. I used to avoid impassioned conversations among home renovators, but I came to understand. It becomes an obsession with addictive rewards if things go well, a kind of gambling. No wonder saving old houses is an industry and a culture all its own, with blogs, Web sites, magazines, newsletters, TV shows, clubs, and stores.
The same rewards lie in preserving smaller objects, and an unexpected advantage of starting a bed-and-breakfast is that what could be a time-consuming, not to say expensive, hobbybecomes your business. After
Certainly itâs possible to buy an up-and-running bed-and-breakfast, if you can afford that. Either way, be sure to consider
why
people would want to come and stay at your place. It should be near a resort or tourist area, on a popular travel route, or in proximity to other attractions, such as a historic town, a college, or areas of natural beauty.
What, then, can you expect if you find a place, obtain a license (in our town the house has to be historic or deemed âinterestingâ by a county agency to qualify), open for business, advertise, and eventually guests start to come? To make money, the general rule is that you need at least five rooms with a decent occupancy rate. A key factor is how many nights a year you can reasonably expect to be booked, based on other inns and businesses in the area, and on what you are offering. Fewer than five rooms can be borderline and is often considered a hobby, though an income-producing one. Fewer than three rooms is considered companionship. Technically, we were at the hobby borderline, but hoping to cover expenses and get lucky, with plans of one day making a go of it. More recently, with the higher cost of real estate, this has become trickier to do.
Another factor to consider is furnishing the place. A bed-and-breakfast requires that charm quotient, an elegant aura of the romantic, the bygone, the exotic, or the rustic, a pleasing suggestion of âelsewhere,â that allows guests to escape from the everyday. And that, everyone who knew of our scheme warned, is really going to be expensive.
No, it wonât, I answered, because I knew our budget and the secondhand shop in our village where unbelievable finds awaited anyone willing to do a little work on the furniture you bought there. I also knew the family attics. Between my father-in-law and my own mother, I calculated that there was a staggering 178 years of living to draw on without even counting what had been passed on to them by their parents. So I started with what we already had and planned a short shopping list of lamps, linens, and new mattresses. Bed-and-breakfast guestsrank good beds second only to private baths on their list of preferences, according to industry studies.
Another preference among guests, as it turns out, is for an absence of teddy bears, chintz, and bric-a-brac. Some guests will specifically inquire about this before booking as a prelude to asking about dust and allergens. For others itâs a question of aesthetics. This was lucky for us, because my own strong preference was for a suggestion, an evocation of the past, not a full-blown set piece.
Even so, we were going to need a certain amount of stuff beyond my short list of basics. After exhausting the attics, I took frequent walks down to Julieâs Oak Creek Sales to hunt for fixable chairs, tables, dressers, mirrors. In time we had to look further, stopping at thrift and used-furniture stores wherever we happened to be, usually on trips to and from the hardware and lumber supply stores.
The idea of saving a house that would otherwise bulk up a landfill is hugely appealing. Old houses also hold history and secrets that you can sense at every turn, in their nooks, their hand-hewn beams, windows, mantles, and unpredictable corners. I used to avoid impassioned conversations among home renovators, but I came to understand. It becomes an obsession with addictive rewards if things go well, a kind of gambling. No wonder saving old houses is an industry and a culture all its own, with blogs, Web sites, magazines, newsletters, TV shows, clubs, and stores.
The same rewards lie in preserving smaller objects, and an unexpected advantage of starting a bed-and-breakfast is that what could be a time-consuming, not to say expensive, hobbybecomes your business. After
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