Foreign Perspectives

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You might think that we’d see long term guests more than we see overnighters but in fact it’s the reverse that’s generally true.

There are two different reasons for this.

Firstly, the long term guests who come out of season are generally staying with us because they’re visiting relatives who live nearby. This means that they basically disappear right after breakfast and don’t come back ’til quite late in the evening.

The long term guests that come in the Summer season are quite different. In general, they have researched the area very well and know exactly what they want to see and how long it will take them to get from here to where they want to be each day. We don’t see much of them because they never need to ask us what there is to see locally nor do they need to ask directions.

In fact, it’s usually those staying two or three nights that we see the most. They’re generally not quite so knowledgeable about the region and neither know exactly what there is to see nor where they would go to see it.

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As a general rule, places in towns require a little more in the way of directions than places in the country and therefore it’s natural that directions to hotels and whatnot vary in the amount of detail that they include.

We’re in the lucky position of being the only building on the road between two villages so we say that we are 3km after one of them or 7km after the other depending on the direction that people are coming in. You really can’t miss us. The building is right on the road and it’s massive. The winery next door even has a truly massive sign painted on the side of it.

So what happens? Well, despite us being the only building on the road, despite us being massive and despite us being well-lit, we’ve just had yet another couple zoom straight on past us. Twice!

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Many places tend to treat repeat customers specially through offering discounts, extra services, or whatever.

However, they remain customers and one of the key things about that is that you need to get money off them for whatever goods or services that you sell, even if they are both a repeat customer and a large one.

One trap to fall into is to be more lax with the payment terms. Unless you habitually offer credit then you shouldn’t offer it to even the best of customers as sooner or later it’ll just cause needless friction between you and a good customer. If it’s pay on delivery for everyone else then that should be the case for even the best customers too as your sales contract probably doesn’t allow for any credit in such circumstances: a recipe for trouble collecting the cash if ever there was one.

So, yes, offer better discounts to better customers. Yes, offer, additional services to better customers. But, NO, don’t change your payment terms.

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