WOW FACTOR / GUEST JOURNEY

Our final section will explain exactly what you should consider to add to the ‘wow factor’ of stays at your Bed and Breakfast, that will make guests want to come back.

What is a 'guest journey'?

Putting yourself in the place of a customer and following their journey through the stay. It's a well-known and common tool used by marketers to iron out any issues.

Example:

• One owner used to work her way through the guest experience and go from parking her car, picking up keys and following all the steps a customer would take when entering the property.

• At each stage, she asked, “Are there any demons?" and "What improvements could we make here?”

• Examples could include a welcome pack here, a plant there, wood for the fire that's easy to fetch.

What is a 'WOW factor'?

Your wow factor will depend on you and your property. You can use anything that is slightly unique or personal to you and your story or the story of the business.

Example:

• One owner described the wow factor she wanted to create, similar to putting on a performance at a theatre when the curtains go back.

• Monkstadt 1745 is a B&B on the Isle of Skye which heavily emphasises their ties to the history of their building and location. One (of many) of the things they do is they have a piece of original stonework in one of their main doorways. This has a big chunk in it and was originally used to sharpen knives/swords.

Summary Of Chapter 4b

That brings this chapter to an end, which introduced you to the jobs and responsibilities you should assign, information on staff, emergency planning and the wow factor/guest journey. The next chapter (5A) will introduce you to information on income/outgoings, configuration/ capacity, the market/competition, finance, property, renovations, storage and furnishings.

Welcome to Chapter 5 of our ebook series on how to set up your own holiday rental. This chapter can be used a checklist for your property. We have outlined the different aspects of getting yourself set up online so that you know what your options are and what is available. Use this checklist to help you get your online platform up and running.

Contents:

1A: Intro to holiday rentals

1B: Intro to financial considerations

2A: Business Plans & Legal Entity

2B: Further Financial Considerations

3A: OPERATIONS - Provisions, Access and Storage

3B: INTERIORS - Furnishings and Tech

4A: Booking operations

4B: Management - staff & planning

>> 5: Checklist: Setting yourself up online

Website

Options for building/creating a website:

Hire an agency or a freelancer

• Ideal for someone who isn’t interested or feels they don’t have the technical knowledge, hire someone to build a site for you. Use website builders such as Wix or Squarespace

• Very easy to use and can make a great looking website. They often contain specific business templates to make your life easier. Use Wordpress and a purchased template

• Wordpress is the worlds leading CMS (Content Management System) and runs about 30% of all the websites in the world.

• Wordpress uses web design templatescalled themes - that can be purchased for little money. Once installed you then follow the setup to produce your own website. Use holiday rental specific website builders

• E.g. https://www.amenitiz.io/ or https://www.siteminder.com/

• The advantage of these is that they often come with a number of other useful marketing tools - e.g booking engine, channel manager.

Social Media

• Setup accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram early to ensure you ‘grab’ your profile names before someone else does.

• Consider which social media sites you’re planning to use and how. Create a strategy.