Business Opportunities Weblog

What It’s Really Like to Run a B&B

By on May 16, 2013 in Ask the Readers / Featured

Grumpy Maid

A reader wrote:

My wife is interested in starting a Bed & Breakfast. She think’s it’ll be all roses, but I’m not sure. Do you have any information about what it’s really like?

I do. In fact, in today’s Wall Street Journal, there’s an article that attempts to dissuade potential bed and breakfast owners from entering the biz. Here’s one horror story:

She realized that B&B management often required her to be more friendly than she felt: “There was an artificial instant intimacy to be affected when my paying guests arrived.”

Burned out by what she saw as guests’ demands for her company, Ms. Shelley-Grielen began to avoid them when possible. “I would retreat to the kitchen and close the door, with its sign that spelled out, ‘Private.’ “

But some guests just wouldn’t leave her alone, Ms. Shelley-Grielen says. Too often, she heard the invitation: “I hope you’ll be joining us.” She came to view such offers as “command performances” from which “I didn’t have the option to bow out.”

Beyond that, chores that she envisioned as routine proved more daunting. For instance, when laundering sheets and towels, she donned disposable gloves. “This is the part of the business I hated most,” she says. “I tried not to think about [it].”

Just as she saw the guests intruding on her privacy, she felt she was encroaching to clean bedrooms and baths. Worse, she felt demeaned. “No matter how many times I reminded myself that I owned the place, I still felt like a maid,” she says.

Photo by SFC/ShutterStock.

b&b bed and breakfast maid

Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,203 posts to the site.

Another Idea: How to Start a Bed And Breakfast Business

  • http://www.BandBCoach.com Susan Poole The B&B Coach

    There seems to be a big gap in how one determines whether or not one is suited to the role of B&B owner – before doing the rest of the homework as an “aspiring innkeeper” If you search carefully and are honest with yourself, there are excellent tools out there – the best one is to talk with people who actually own a B&B – even better offer to help them out to experience the 24/7 life!

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