Putting lifestyle into guest houses

This Tourism Week – brought to you by BnB Sure -South Africa’s most comprehensive insurance policy for B&Bs and Guest Houses.

This week: an article by guest writer Dave Jack offers guest house and B&B owners some food for marketing thought.

Putting lifestyle into guest houses

I consider myself fortunate in that in my spare time I ride a Harley Davidson, and it occurred to me recently that the Harley and the guesthouse have so much in common.

Why would anybody want to ride a Harley when there are so many other options? The Harley is expensive. It’s heavy. It’s slow.

In 1980 when Harley Davidson was on the brink of bankruptcy, the newly appointed CEO sat down with his team and said “what can we do?”

They knew that they had to have a good product and that it had to be different, and so they came up with the idea that they would offer their riders an experience they couldn’t get from riding any other motorcycle.

They offered them a lifestyle.

30 years later that idea is still working and Harley Davidson in South Africa, despite the so-called recession, is struggling to keep up with the demand for bikes.

So what on earth does this have in common with guesthouses?

Hotels are cutting their rates to amounts that would seem to be lower than those offered by the average guesthouse. But those rates in most cases exclude breakfast – which can range anywhere from R65 to around R125 per person. Add the cost of breakfast to the room cost and suddenly those ‘cheap’ rates aren’t that cheap after all.

It isn’t price. So what can guesthouses offer the tourist (business or leisure – foreign or local) that other types of accommodation can’t?

Lifestyle.

That ‘home from home’ feeling. A very relaxed atmosphere. Access to the owner (in most cases). You arrive as a guest and leave as a friend – the list goes on.

Guesthouses in these so-called ‘tough times’ have never been better placed to be running full.

We hear an ongoing shout of desperation: “Business people are not travelling any longer! They do everything by conference calling!”

Why then are all the local flights almost always full? Why then – if there is nobody to fill them – are new hotels popping up all over the place?

B&Bs and guesthouses, either in local associations or individually, need to sit down and find an answer to the question “What can we do?” – and when they have that answer, focus on offering something that other forms of accommodation can’t.

Find that answer and suddenly price is no longer the main factor. Just as it isn’t with Harley Davidson.