Jessie & Jay (B&B in Canada)

At our B&B we greet each guest upon arrival whenever possible. Sometimes they do not provide an ETA so three days before they arrive I send them an email with their own code for the smart lock on the front door and my personal cell number. I ask them to let themselves in and that I will be home shortly. During the orientation, I explain that my wife and are very social and if they want some company to join us in the common areas. If they want their privacy that we totally respect that too. During their stay I make sure to ask daily if they have any questions or need anything, usually just as they finish breakfast.

I like Akwador 's idea of putting a bell with a sign as mentioned above. I may try that.

Hi Angeluanna,

Thank you for your follow up. As I only have Adobe Acrobat Reader (Free version) I cannot edit PDF's with Acrobat. However, I have photo editing software (Photoshop) that will allow me to edit it. Another option would to print it. Cover over the commission with white-out or correction tape and then scan or take a photo of it and then send it to the guest.

Angeluanna

This is a great method to print an invoice when the customer pays booking.com. I did notice that when I tried it on my extranet that the commission that BDC takes is shown. Minor point but it would be nice if this information was not visible to guests. Perhaps BDC will give us the option to print without the commission field included? (They already ask us if we want to also print the Policies when printing the reservation details.)

We do not normally go into the rooms and when we do was inform the guest. If guests are staying more than 3 days then on the 4th day we will offer fresh sheets and towels, empty garbages and look for anything else that needs immediate attention. The guests are advised of this during the orientation. We also advise them that if they require anything including a change of towels or linens then just ask. No complaints so far.

This being our first year of operation we only had one guest show up early. Our check-in time is from 3 PM to 10 PM unless arranged otherwise ahead of time. They arrived at 11:30 AM. Thankfully the room was ready as we had just finished it. Guests, if they book the room on BDC themselves the check-in time is clearly stated. After they have booked their room we email them our Guest Policies which states the check-in time. The day they are due to arrive I typically send a text message re-iterating the check-in time but stating the room is ready and they can check in any time. Another guest really appreciated it is they had flown into town really early and had not had much sleep. So they checked in and were able to catch a few hours of sleep before starting their vacation. They mentioned it in their 10/10 review.

When we recommend restaurants we ask our guests to say we recommended them just to get our name out there. We have not yet set up any formal agreements with any other businesses.

M Adamopoulou A personal welcome message from your granddaughter would be something special and something I would never forget. Jessie and relocated from a small town just north of Toronto to follow our dream of opening a B&B.

This is our 1st year of business. Our first guest was an acquaintance of ours who we had met on a vacation to Isreal a number of years ago and we have kept in touch with. She had never travelled alone and was wanting to start travelling now that she was retired. She chose to book with us so it would not be so intimidating. We had a great time as we were able to spend some time with her showing her around.

We also have had a lot of memorable guests. We ask each to sign the guestbook to help us remember them. We have a lot of one night stays and it makes for a lot of names and faces so I have also started adding little notes about them in a file so that if they book with us again I can remember some details about their previous stay with us. Some guests you really connect with and are sad to see them go.

I am not sure our set up will work for you as you mention that you have multiple properties. We operate a small bed and breakfast in Canada. We have a Channel Manager and Property Management System (PMS) that integrates with a payment processing gateway (stripe.com). The guest books through Booking.com *BDC), the reservation is forwarded to our PMS (cloudbeds.com) which captures the credit card information and, updates our calendar as well as updating our other OTA calendars. We then process the charge through the PMS software for each booking. We need on to enter the total amount to charge the credit card, the credit card details are automatically submitted to the payment processing gateway. So unless you enter the incorrect amount there is little chance for error.