How to start running your own bed and breakfast

It’s the dream that so many of us have, perhaps in our twilight years: purchasing a nice little house in the country and running our very own bed and breakfast business.

It’s the type of business that you get to operate from the comfort of your own home, constantly meeting new people – so seemingly a great business to start if you are a ‘people person’. But how do you actually go about making the dream a reality?

First of all… are you ready?

One of the first things to be said is that the actual operation of a B&B business doesn’t normally work out quite like the idyllic dream mentioned above. Yes, it is the kind of business that can be extremely rewarding to run, but are you genuinely comfortable with new strangers entering your house every day?

Running a B&B also entails waving goodbye to much of your previously taken-for-granted free time, including early mornings and weekends. After all, you will need to be constantly available to your guests, and not just when they encounter more serious problems.

Day-to-day life as a B&B owner is also extremely repetitive, with rooms needing to be cleaned, the breakfast made, laundry dealt with, any damaged or broken fixtures repaired and guests welcomed or bid farewell.

Prepare, prepare and prepare again

You will need to be very forward-thinking when contemplating running a bed and breakfast. While there is no question of the multi-billion-pound worth of the wider UK B&B sector, local markets can differ drastically.

If you have an eye on one of the traditional sun-drenched bed and breakfast hotspots, have you researched the prices of suitable properties in the area and what kind of clientele you would like to appeal to? The latter is crucial to distinguishing your business in what may be an intensely competitive local market.

Alternatively, a less fashionable area may have captured your interest. But how much business will your B&B realistically attract, and of what nature? Will your establishment be based in a location of potential appeal to business travellers, for instance?

Determining what kind of B&B you want to run

The decisions that you make at this early stage will crucially influence the property that you buy and how it is furnished or marketed. This is likely to be especially the case for those purchasing a property from scratch, rather than an already-existent B&B business.

Those taking the former route will need to carefully consider the size of property that would serve them best, remembering to factor in the number of bedrooms that they require for their own family not only right now, but potentially years into the future – anticipating any pitter-patter of tiny feet. A private living room could also be ideal for giving you a break from your guests.

The audience that you intend to pitch your B&B to will inevitably make a big difference to how it looks and feels from the inside, given that those booking a stay at a cheap getaway will have drastically different expectations to guests who have been promised a luxurious home-from-home.

If your B&B is the former, you might not even need to include a TV in each room – but if it’s the latter, your guests really will expect all of the ‘mod cons’. Either way, your marketing should make clear exactly what your B&B offers.

From staffing to money, there’s a lot to think about

You will never stop learning as the owner of bed and breakfast accommodation, not least as there are so many potential pitfalls. The good news is that many of these downsides can be avoided with the right planning and foresight.

It is incredible easy, for example, to overspend, so we would certainly recommend that you employ an accountant. Remember that along with the almost inevitable mortgage, much of your initial expenditure will be on insurance, with buildings cover, contents cover, public liability cover and employee liability cover just some of the products that will likely be needed.

Well-trained staff with a smile and good customer service skills will also probably be necessary if your bed and breakfast has more than four guest rooms – and then there’s the small matter of how guests will actually book rooms with you, and how you will manage all of the bookings.

Keeping on top of reservations can be stressful to say the very least, although there are thankfully many cost-effective B&B online booking systems now available on the market to take some of the burden from your shoulders.

Are you ready to finally go ahead with the formation of your own B&B business? Good luck! But before you do, click here for further advice from those who have already been there and done it.