S2 Ep5: Do You Know What Your Guests Really Want?

How Bed and Breakfasts, Guest Houses and Inns Can Make More Money with Less Work

Hi I’m Yvonne Halling from www.BedandBreakfastCoach.com and in this video I want to ask you a question:

Do you know what your guests really want?

Many B&B owners I speak to insist that having “stars” or ratings by organisations who grade them are the most important reason people choose them, and I’m here to tell you today, that it’s not!

Not at all!

But hey, I thought that too, and I fell into the same trap as everyone else and got a rating from my national organisation, Gites de France. Gites de France came to my B&B, focussed on all the things I didn’t have, like TV in the rooms, private parking, difficult access etc. etc. and gave me a 2 star rating. They then told me how much I could charge which was around €60 euros a night, which is about $50. Well €60 a night wasn’t going to cut it as far as my bills were concerned, so I dumped Gites de France, who didn’t bring me any of the guests I wanted to welcome anyway and put my prices up to €95 a night!

And my business exploded!

Guests are not interested in your grading, your stars, or your awards. Look how Airbnb has exploded with pretty much no-one having any ratings at all at the start. You want to know why – no-one cares

So before you spend another penny on upgrading your bed linen, installing TVs or splashing out on expensive toiletries, let me share with you the results of a study done recently by Hospitality.net which revealed some very interesting information about what guests really want.

#1 they want what’s called “enhanced perspective” which means a sense of expanding their horizons, learning about something new, the feeling that their time has been well spent. A kind of fulfilled experience.

#2 They want “liberation” which means getting out of their daily habits and thinking patterns, so they have the feeling that they really did get away from it all, at least for a little while, with you.

#3 Relationships, which means they want to interact with owners, find out stuff, learn the insider secrets to the area, interact with like-minded souls.

Isn’t that interesting?

You’ll notice that smart TVs, beautiful views and expensive toiletries didn’t feature on the list.

Now without getting too psycho here, more and more, people are travelling to improve their life experience, and right now in the 21st century, with all our lower human needs already met, such as shelter, warmth, security, we’re looking for more experiences of being alive, learning, understanding the world and these are all internal rather than external elements.

What guests really want is an emotional connection with you, and now, if you know what you’re doing, you can easily create this using the power of video, online technology and mankind’s greatest invention so far…. The internet.

I’ve created a framework for this that I’d love to share with you, so if you’re interested in paying less commission to the online travel agents, ending the cashflow worries of the low seasons, and giving guests what they truly want, so everyone can have a great experience, then join me on my next Masterclass, where I’ll show you how to make more more money while working less and having a heck of a lot more fun than you may be having right now. Click on the link below to register now and I’ll see you there!