Читать книгу Start & Run a Bed & Breakfast - Richard Taylor - Страница 3

Have you ever thought about operating your own bed and breakfast? Perhaps you have just taken early retirement and want to run a small business to supplement your pension. Or you may have family obligations that keep you at home and you are looking for a home-based source of income. Maybe you have stayed at a B&B and were attracted to the lifestyle of the owner. If you already live in a tourist area, you are ideally situated to cash in on the passing trade, and if you like talking to people, you probably have the right temperament to become a successful B&B host. If you have a nice home and one or two extra bedrooms, why not give it a try? We did!

We took early retirement and purchased an old Victorian home in a small tourist town. We quickly realized that we were in an ideal spot to open a B&B but we didn’t know how to start. We looked in libraries and bookstores for a how-to book, but there weren’t any. We talked to a few B&B operators, but they all had different points of view. In the end, we opened for business not fully understanding how to proceed, and we were blissfully unaware of the many pitfalls and problems that we would face. We wasted time, energy, and money, and we learned the trade by trial and error. Thank goodness we had forgiving guests that put up with our mistakes, and some of them even offered helpful suggestions and gentle encouragement.

After our first year in business, we realized how simple the whole process would have been if we could have hired an experienced B&B operator to guide us. As we gained expertise and confidence, many of our guests began to ask advice on how they could start their own B&B. In response to this evident need, we decided to write a book for anyone who was thinking of starting a B&B business.

Operating a bed and breakfast can be a very interesting career and it can be financially rewarding. For most people the start-up cost is within reason, since they can use their existing home. But if you are thinking about starting a B&B, you owe it to yourself to investigate all the pros and cons and to consider all the implications before you proceed. After you have read this book, you will have a thorough understanding of the B&B trade, you will have assessed your skills as a potential B&B host, and you will have calculated the dollars needed to start your business.

With your enthusiasm and our help, we know that you will become a very successful B&B host. To make this book even more enjoyable, recipes for some of our own house specialties precede each chapter.