Sorry I provided daily baked goods to our guests for free. Same with drinks. Just part of my service. If you put together special occasion kind of things, you could have folks add in a "goodie basket' for birthday, anniversary etc etc.
Lots of folks do Choc.covered strawberries. What about your macarons? do you get takers on those?.
Pretty much at the top bracket, so throwing in extras will just lower my profit. I can't really add much to my price. So I think adding it as an add-on is the way to make money.
Sell quite a bit of macarons, not as much as I would like, but we even have guests taking boxes home. Or ordering a second set. I want to stay away from anything that I have to run to the store for, like flowers. But I can produce home made tuffles. Other baked goods like canale, madelaines, lemon bars, pumpkin bread, banana bread, pastries. I don't want to give anything more for free. I'm pretty much fully booked and earning my top dollar room wise. I just want to make more money by selling things they may want to make their stay better.
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I wont go into detail about free things because I think you have made up your mind all ready. Nothing wrong with having addons. In the last few years we have been offering a ton of freebies and it has increased our room rentals by over 20%. So I see it has a big plus. But we also offer Gift baskets with many different things in them. Sparkling cider, meat, cheese, choc, crackers, fruit and so on. We sell them for $79 each and sell a lot of them. We also offer in room massage and make a nice bit off of those for not really doing anything except setting it up with the massage lady. Our biggest shocker money maker is Early Check in fees. This really does not cost us any money and we made enough to take a really nice family vacation for 5 of us last year for a week. This vacation money was just from early check ins. We charge $35 for this and its crazy how many people buy this. Just some ideas for you.
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It's not about making up my mind, it's about the fact that I'm already pretty high on the bracket for the other properties in my class. So, if I add something I have to put up the price. We have thought about it, but we have to be careful on price. (To give you an example, my cheapest room is a few dollars more than my competition's least expensive room.) And maybe I can put my rates up by $5 to $10 a night. (We do this in May, usually). But I need to be careful to not price myself out of the market as I have seen some of my competitor do. Remember, I'm inner city and B&Bs outside of the US are usually considered the alternative to hotels, below hotels in stature.
What do you put in your gift baskets and how do you store it?
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I understand where your thoughts are coming from. You are doing it right by looking at your competition. But take a step back and think for a min. If you are a customer and you are looking at several Bed and Breakfast to stay at and they are all priced the same within $10-$15 how will you decide? Easy, you decided on what you will get for the money you spend. The more you offer, the greater a customer will pick you over other properties. Then while they are making a reservation you offer them pkg. Then they end up booking add ons. More reservations = more income. Anyway, its kinda scary to think about giving freebies away but it really works. People love Free Gifts! For the baskets, we have most everything already and all I need is fruit. Most of the time we have that for breakfast anyway. So Its not really that big of an issue. The baskets are about a %50 return. We are always trying to think of extra was to make money and some work and some don't. But like I said, it needs to work for where you are and who you are selling to. It also needs to work for how much time you want to spend on them. I hope this helps.
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I see your point, but especially in the shoulder seasons it's all about price around here. A $10 difference can make all the difference. In the summer where I'm over 90% booked that's one thing, but in the winter, I have to be on price. It's not the same guests at all. I can put up my summer rate and pretty much guarantee that I'll be booked. Some summers it's a competition to see who can book. In the winter, those giveaways would cost me money. I can't get my average price up.
Two other things, I'm very urban, so everything is in walking distance. The other thing is that I attract a lot of foodies. I make a lot of reservations for some of the best restaurants in town. For the most part, these people aren't going to skip a meal out. So, what I need is for things that will be either be for when they get back and before they go out for dinner, or for after dinner. I can keep a few bottles of wine and sparkling cider around. I can even keep some specialty beer around as well, which they may not be able to find since only a few stores stock the local microbrews. But I also have to be realistic. That's why I was thinking that maybe something that they can add themselves, like a basket of goodies for the room...
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