Running a Bed and Breakfast

Providing traditional bed and breakfast accommodation, as always been high in U.K. home business opportunities.

It’s really quite easy, if you fancy a day off tell everyone who phones you're fully booked.
If you don’t like it, remove the sign.
Easy to start and easy to stop, without loosing vast amounts of money.

My wife and I having been running our bed and breakfast accommodation in Manchesgter U.K. for quite a few years and just picking up the phone and taking a booking off the cuff can not be done so before you take a booking make sure you have everything in place to take it.

There's quite a few software company's out there wanting to charge you anything from £20 per month and upwards to use there automated software attaching it to your web site and have potential guests book there own rooms and save you time.
This may work for large hotels with a few hundred rooms to sell but in the guest house world you need full control of your rooms when your starting out, the last thing you want to happen is someone takes one of your rooms on a Wednesday that knocks out the working week ether side.

It's easier to understand if I tell you in the accommodation world there are two distinct business sections to the week; Monday to Thursday is manly business, and workmen who work the week and then go home at the weekend. Weekends: Friday to Sunday which attracts all different types of people usually for pleasure, visiting family, weddings, the theatre and sports events. So if you have 5 rooms and you receive two automated bookings for a Wednesday that could take out the rest of the week in those rooms and with only five rooms it's not very cost effective.
It must be said that things are looking towards on line booking as people using the Internet want bookings sorted out immediately like their shopping habits; so if you go for an online booking system make sure you have as much control as possible without going to the extent of making it unfeasible.

All you really need is, open office.org, or Google docs, any spreadsheet will do, a pen and a pad. Don't try to type in all the information you’ll need to have in your computer while on the phone to a potential guest, unless you are a red hot one handed typist, use the pad.

Have your Spreadsheet on your desktop and your computer on, if possible have your spreadsheet open ready to use.

Your phone manner should be happy and light; try and make the person on the other end feel at easy, they may not book a hotel room very often but you will be taking bookings on a daily basis, I hope.

While being light and happy you must take control of the situation with a set of questions you need to ask, people will go on at length at what they want but you must keep going back to your set of  questions.

Date & Days

• The first thing you need to ask is what date their thinking of. Weekend guests tend to book in advance while business men usually book the week before they need the accommodation, and work men are 50/50 in booking the week before or leave it till the last minute to book.
  So you have the availability and the price as been agreed.

Name and Phone No of the person who is making the booking.

• You need the name of the person who's making the booking even though it's not the person who may be staying; just in case there are any complication with the booking at a later date.

Name and Phone No of the person who is the guest.

• It's quite possible that the person making the booking may not have the phone number of the person who is staying.
  

Male or Femail.

Most Important is there Credit Card No

• “And could we have your credit card to confirm your booking”

• There's a number of things that can happen when asking for a credit card and a couple
  of exceptions that I will go into later, for now I'll just say that if I ask for credit card information and the person does not want to give it, I will not take the booking, very plightly saying.
  “I'm sorry I can't take the booking without a credit card”

Time of arrival

• You may need to pop out.

Anything you should Know

• Deaf, Blind, Vegetarian, Old aged, all good to know to make your guest stay as comfortable as possible

Last of all

• A email address to confirm the booking and more important to add to your contact list.

You must have seen the adds on the Internet, 'Work From Home Business'.
There's some really good one's out there you just have to do you're research but most of the time it's;

• Stuffing thousands of envelopes.
• Sewing 100's little dresses.
• Telesales.
• Putting thousands of little items in little boxes.

A little boring to say the least

How about tweaking it a little, instead of 'Work From Home Business' how about
'Turn Your Home into Your Business'

Your literally seating on it, with what must be one of the lowest business start up costs there is.