Foreign Perspectives

What should you pack to go on a short trip?

One thing’s for sure: don’t think that you can just replicate your packing for a full-scale holiday because you’re just going to run up a bill for excess baggage for no reason at all. If you’re going for a long-weekend it’s just being silly to even consider a full-sized case that needs checked in: carryon is the only way to go.

What should you bring though?

In terms of clothing, that depends on the temperature difference between where you live and where you’re going. Clearly if it’s Winter at home and Summer at the destination (or vice versa) that will dictate you having an extra change of clothing above what it would otherwise.

Essential items should be trimmed down to the minimum. That minimum should include:

1. passport;
2. credit card, debit card and cash card, all international versions (ie with a Visa/Mastercard on the credit/debit cards and Plus/Cirrus on the cash card). Make sure one is Visa and the other Mastercard as acceptance isn’t equally widespread in all countries and max three cards in total in case they’re stolen.
3. driving license (even if you don’t plan on driving);
4. plane tickets (or their electonic equivalent ie the booking number);
5. electical adaptor for foreign electrical sockets (get a “world” version rather than just a “european” one to cover all the bases);
6. guidebook (sometimes they’re not available locally in English)

And, of course, personal items such as contact lens solutions, glasses, sunglasses, womens items, and the like.

Ideally, all the stuff you’re taking should fit in a supermarket carrier bag. Any larger, and it’s definitely too much for a weekend break!

Whilst we had loads of housebuyers staying with us in 2004 and 2005, 2006 saw none of them at all.

Who knows why? The UK interest rates weren’t much higher than they were the year before nor did there seem to be a big difference in the UK house prices.

It’s the same this year too ie no big difference. Yet, we’re just into the main house-hunting season (usually October to March) and already we’ve had three separate house-buying families call in with us. Whether this is the sign of a major buying spree is a good question but at least it’s a sign of the start of a movement in the French market.

OK, so you’ve got a lovely B&B, brilliant location and beautifully decorated but what about attracting some guests?

That’s usually the step that fells most B&B owners as they generally get into the business by accident, figuring that if they have a lovely place then loads of people will come to stay.

Unfortunately, it rarely works like that and before long they start looking around for places to advertise this “heaven on earth” that they’ve created. Sadly, some of the owners leave that step far too late: you should get going on your marketing efforts as early as possible, even if it means that you are advertising the place before it’s ready and need to add “ready next Easter” or whatever.

As usual, we’re getting going on our own marketing for the new year fairly soon. In addition to the annual upgrade of our family of listings sites (OurInns) we’re rolling out two new initiatives in that area: Whole Earth Guide already and soon Inns4U. All are free listings sites so if you have a B&B or self-catering (vacation rental) place now’s a good time to add yourself here.

It might sound like a silly question but what you’re selling at the moment might not be what people think you’re selling.

For example, we consider our place a hotel/restaurant ie a place that has accommodation that you can stay in plus a restaurant that you can eat in. However, we have had people staying who consider it a B&B and others who consider it a hostel. Someone today even let it drop that it’s a pub-restaurant which, argueably, is exactly what an inn is.

Those differences should, of course, be matched with corresponding marketing campaigns as there are at least four different types of people who would consider staying or eating with us:

1. As a hotel/restaurant, we should expect to have a fairly high proportion of overnight bookings and individual stand-alone meals sold;
2. As a B&B the expectation is that the owners are there to chat to the guests over meals;
3. As a hostel, it should be cheap with no limits on the number of people per room and perhaps with cooking facilities for the guests (none of which we provide!); and
4. As a pub we should provide “pub grub” at lunchtime and a bar in the evenings (neither of which we currently provide, though we’ve considered them).

There are entirely different ranges of websites that we should be listed on to match each of those views of our product. We’ve largely got the hotel side covered, but don’t run to a lot of B&B listings really. As for hostels? Well, the main problem we find is that hostels are “supposed” to be in the city and we’re not which makes for a divergence in expectations compared to reality that isn’t good.

If you want to avoid unpleasant surprises on the feedback front, it’s best to ensure that what you’re selling is the same as what people think they’re buying!

Once we get about half-way through October, our Winter development programme usually starts to get into its stride.

For this year, we have a whole host of things on the to-do list:

1. A general tidy-up of the original version of the inns family of sites. First-off on this front is a major spring-clean of the UK listings before we start firing our marketing e-mails off. We’ve recently added the Inns4U domain which may take over as the primary domain for these sites although it’ll likely be a very gradual changeover.
2. The upgrade of the new-generation sites over at OurBedAndBreakfasts.com will be continuing in tandem with the expansion of our Whole Earth Guide.
3. The Whole Earth Guide will be expanding quite rapidly, initially concentrating on the areas already covered by the inns listings. Once we get enough content onto Whole Earth, we’re planning on incorporating content from it into the other listings sites which should help the ranking of those too.
4. More blogs will be coming onstream over the next few months. We’ve changed over to Cultured Views and have been working on both An Age of Magic and On a Postcard on and off over the Summer.

Somehow I think that’ll keep us pretty busy this side of Christmas!