Everything you've always wanted to know about running a Bed & Breakfast but were afraid to ask

I read an article in the International Herald Tribune last week about the latest trend in vacations in the U.S. - paying good money to spend your vacation rising at 7.30 to make beds, pour coffee and clean at someone else's Bed and Breakfast. Imagine that! Some people out there - who obviously have more money than sense - are willing to pay top dollar to be allowed the privilege of performing the tasks which Rene and I either do ourselves or pay someone else to do on a daily basis. I never saw talking to guests, cleaning floors and washing towels as glamorous before- but hey - waddaya know - other people out there do. I was not surprised that the crafty B&B owner profiled in the IHT article was one of those ever furbo and reluctant to pay "real" wages Italians! And my hat's off to him. Now Rene and I need to get in contact with some travel agents in the U.S. so that we can start our own B&B "internship" program (just kidding!)

This article got me thinking though- apart from the enticing possibility of having other people pay us to do our work for us- there seems to be a lot of curiosity out there in the 9 to 5 world about the glamorous business of running a Bed and Breakfast. In fact several of our guests have asked Rene questions about the day to day running of the B&B and have expressed an interest in starting one themselves. So, to satisfy the curiosity of my blog readership, who I'm sure have been wondering about the ins and outs of this whole bed and breakfast business themselves, here are some interesting Bed & Breakfast running facts:

1) I hate to break people's bubbles but I'd better get it over with. Running a Bed and Breakfast is hard yakka. Rene gets up at 7.00 am seven days a week to buy fresh bread at the bakery and get breakfast ready. And it never really stops - people arrive, leave, have questions, things get delivered, emails must be responded to, website must be fixed, breakfast food and cleaning products must be bought all day every day. Weekends and public holidays? The same as regular days only busier. And yes, it's a full time job. Rene does not have another job on the side.

2) As with any customer service job, you have to be good with people. Rene is great at putting people at ease, making visitors feel at home and answering questions about Rome - and he speaks seven European languages fluently (Dutch, English, Italian, German, Spanish, French and Danish) so can usually speak to his guests in their own language (OK, unless their native language is Finnish or Urdu or something...)

3) Very rarely but sometimes you have to deal with "bad" guests - and we do have some stories. Like the young American women who burned cigarette holes in the brand new bed covers, the Russian guys who got drunk and sang songs in the middle of the night and the Italian girls who snuck their boyfriends in without paying and then insisted that they had just come by early in the morning to pay a visit and just happened to have fallen asleep in their beds. But this is rare - most of Rene's B&B guests are truly lovely people.

4) Yes, we do have several "regulars" who have become good friends over the years. There is the American retired academic couple who come to Italy to escape from their snow covered college town every January, the garrulous German Latin teacher who comes to Rome 4-5 times a year and sends the B&B lots of German schoolteachers and the Australian woman who booked for a month but ended up staying several months as she took a year off and travelled around the world after retiring from her job at the tax office.

5) When people leave things behind, we usually keep them. For example, if you leave a half finished bottle of shampoo, we will either use it ourselves or give it to one of our cleaning staff. If you leave booze or food we will eat it or drink it. If you leave us a tip, we'll go out to dinner and spend it (and people do leave tips sometimes.)

6) Which brings me to my last point. It is Murphy's Bed and Breakfast law that people will leave things behind which aren't to your tastes. For example some lovely guests last week left us these two bottles of wine:


A very nice thought - but too bad neither of us cares for sweet, sparkling rose wine!