Are there any hotel owners / experts on here?

[LondonPleaseButJustForOneDay]

A total pipedream but after banging my head against a brick wall I've decided what I would do for a living if it was remotely possible. Which it isn't. Because buying a five bedroomed property is completely out of my reach and will be for the next five hundred million years.

I would absolutely love to run my own little guest house by the North Yorkshire seaside. It would have four bedrooms and each one would be season themed. The winter one would be white and silver, the autumn one would be orange and brown. There would be a hanging basket by the green front door and a leather bound visitors book in the hallway. I'd gradually build up regulars and look forward to greeting them again every year. I'd serve a cooked breakfast in the morning with pork and leek sausages, button mushrooms and hash browns. Thick wholemeal toast. Fresh fruit would be on the side and you could help yourselves. I'd have a little radio on in the background playing Smooth FM or Absolute Classic Rock. I'd advise my guests on where to go but leave them to eat in peace because even though it's well intended people trying to be hospitable when you're eating is so fucking annoying! Lol.

Now the hard stuff. Tell me about costs. Insurance, tax, anything else in the real world I'm unaware of. I know the glittery description above is slightly dreamy. I know I'd be lugging hoovers up and down the stairs all morning, changing bedsheets every day, dusting every day, dealing with twatty guests sometimes and being the one who has to worry about roof leaks and broken toilets etc.

I'm assuming my "million years" prediction is absolutely correct and this can't be done without a shit ton of money. Especially as I'd be doing the entire thing alone. No husband, no partner.

Anyone care to chip in with some cold, hard advice please? Do you do this for a living? Is it as lovely as I imagine? Is it a constant worry that you won't attract enough custom to pay your massive mortgage every month? Do all the B&B owners on the same row all hate each other or is it a friendly community? Does it bother you that you can probably only go on holiday in the beginning of January if you already live in a tourist resort? Etc etc?

Tell me your story 😀

Anyone?! I'm impatient

I don’t own a hotel/b&b but I worked in one and became friends with the owner, different location up on the nc500 but they’ve recently shut down and selling because they couldn’t afford to keep going, it’s very seasonal and all the insurance etc
my limited advice from knowing a tiny bit about it is really think how you can get people in the rooms the rest of the year not just summer time.

We ran a holiday business (not a hotel) for many years. The reality is a lot of grunt work and a lot of stress. It is working every weekend and never really switching off. It is having to answer the phone at all hours and reply to emails as quickly as possible (otherwise you lose bookings). It is having to make sure everything is as perfect as possible all the time. The grass has to be cut, the windows have to be clean.

It is telling guests about all the lovely things to do in the area but never getting time to do them yourself. Cashflow is a big problem in the low season, we were still pretty much fully booked but not at the same prices.

And after the initial investment you need to keep enough money to be able to keep everything up to date.

Basically what @Definitelylivedin has said.

Plus:

Imagine you serve breakfast between (for example) 7.30 and 9.30 - people are on holiday after all. You have to be up very early to cater for the 7.30 crowd, but if you then have to cater for the 9.30 guests who sit around for the best part of an hour then half your day is gone before you even start on sorting out the rooms or getting anything else done.

Guaranteed that if you actually make plans for your free-time (hah!) then someone will definitely ask to arrive in the middle of what you are doing so that you have to cancel and then they will invariably arrive outside of that time so you could have gone after all........... "oh we were having such a lovely time that we decided to stay longer and grab a bite to eat". I'll just chuck your dinner in the bin then (we did offer evening meals - don't do this) and I'll wait up until stupid o'clock when you decide to rock up.

Obviously you factor in an appropriate amount of time to do changeovers, but that all goes to pot if the guests have "feng-shued" the room as it didn't feel right, or taken the room kettle with them etc etc.

Can you tell I've done this before?

It's hard, very hard and I don't miss a single minute of it.

Watch a few episodes of The hotel inspector with Alex polizzi. And Four in bed.

Thanks and I really appreciate your input. Did you like anything about it though?

Was it a caravan?

No, 3 holiday rentals with a total of 21 bedrooms.

Did you like anything about it though?

@LondonPleaseButJustForOneDay

Yes, we had some fun, but not enough to balance it all out. You certainly won't get rich.

Like @Definitelylivedin we had a mixture of b&b and holiday rentals. If everyone was changing over on a Saturday I had 18 beds to do - not much wiggle room there to sit chatting over breakfast!

Has anyone mentioned the Health and Safety requirements?
Kitchen inspections?

How's your knowledge on storing refrigerated items?
Do you know how to Clean Down a kitchen?

My sister and BIL run an 8 room hotel, with bar and dining room.
She's on her feet 7am to gone 11 when the bar closes.
All day, every day. They have 2 weeks off in January and a week in October.

And they have staff.

People steal stuff. I'm not talking towels or cushions - pictures. Bedspreads. TV.

Guests have shit the beds a few times (too many beers at the nearby racecourse).

This isn't some seedy flophouse in Jaywick. This is a very naice hotel (£180 per night) in a very naice location.

Watch The Hotel Inspector

I don’t do this myself (though I did work in hotel housekeeping as a student), but have three friends who owned and ran BnBs of various types for many years, all of whom got burnt out and stopped.

One (30 years a BnB owner) admits quite frankly now that it was the single worst decision she and her husband ever made , and that, while he worked away, she had neglected their young children, who had to be sent to Reception in a taxi daily, because she was busy doing the breakfasts and couldn’t do the school run. Her older children remember they had no privacy, and were always ‘on’.

Another, a couple, had an old farmhouse by the sea and raised vegetables — they had four rooms where guests got a gourmet dinner of their own produce at a collective table and breakfast, Bib Gourmand listed etc. They just got burnt out over the years by the enforced proximity to often demanding overseas guests, and it wrecked their marriage. They now sell their produce to restaurants and live separately on their farm.

The others I know because I lived in a cottage on their land for about six months — they lived in the coach house and had run the ‘big house’ for years as a luxury B and B — by the sea, foodie area, very high-end hotel-style rooms, option for dinner as well as breakfast. It was a full time job for both of them, but costs were so high it was only a workable business model if they did everything themselves, which wasn’t sustainable. The wife had a nervous breakdown, they shut, and reopened as a luxury Airbnb, where people had to book the entire house for a minimum of five nights (in high season). I no longer live there, but from what I see, it is still an incredibly hard job — they are always having to come up with new money-making schemes, especially off-season, like live-in cookery courses, supper clubs, small weddings etc.