The summer we had no help I hated everyone. Once our summer help goes back to school I hate everyone. So, having help is good for everyone.CL has a point. If you are the only one doing it all, and are pinioned to the house most of the time, that's different than having employees to do all the grunt work. I wonder what the average length of tenure is for those that have staff and those that don't?
Yes, our place is for sale, but do I sound burntout to you? Do I bitch about my guests, or about the house? Our reason for selling is family related, and so cannot be categorized as "burnout".
JB's ire about this thread is related to the fact that you assume that all Inns for sale are on the market because their keepers are burnt out..
Aw c'mon, it's not that bad, not even to me. I like this job, but there are days I definitely don't. I think what we miss on here is that there is no forum group for office workers to do what we do here. OH, NO, office workers get a WHOLE show they can watch, a comic strip they can read, etc. We've got each other.Arkansawyer said:and not everybody is as unlucky as poor Morticia
You can liken it to having kids who never leave home. Or having your parents have to move in with you. You were seeing a light at the end of the tunnel (kids go away, parents have their own home, yippee you get the whole house to yourself) and suddenly you realize the light is a freight train headed right for you. (The grumpy, idiotic, overbearing guests who ring the bell, call your phone, bang on your door all day and night.)Arkansawyer said:Little Blue said:...you assume that all Inns for sale are on the market because their keepers are burnt out.toddburme said:...the B&B crowd is living with their customer 24/7, well then 7 years seems like maybe a stretch.So you're saying that "burnout" is the wrong word, and it's more a situation of undesirability of having people living in your house (and of course some other drawbacks)? And, as others have said, the hard work of doing everything yourself with no staff.Joey Bloggs said:Have guests in YOUR HOME every day of the week for weeks, months and then years.
I can see where this would make it very hard to follow the B&B model long-term, with the innkeeper living in the house with the guests and doing all the work themselves. This helps! Thanks! Knowing what the drawbacks are in advance might help some people in avoiding them.
This is such an interesting thread. I'm trying really, really hard to remember what exactly our mindset was when this opportunity presented itself to us. I'm fairly certain we thought we could do it forever. That thought makes me laugh out loud right now! We have 9 rooms and very high occupancy, and do just about everything. Burnout is definitely the right word in our case. We don't take much pleasure from any of the daily tasks anymore. We used to really enjoy marketing, but even that feels like a huge effort right now. I think the economy and the attitude of travelers in the last few years has really worn on us, we feel we give so much and we rarely if ever get a simple "thank you", instead we get "You know what you should do..." Blech.
If we had unlimited capital we could hire more things out, but I don't care what anyone says, that dramatically changes the character of a place and in my opinion when that happens that place is no longer officially a "bed and breakfast", more an Inn or whatever the category is. I'm thinking that unless you are really tiny or have really low occupancy, innkeeping is not a "forever" kind of job for anyone, it's just too demanding..
When we set out to do this, we had already spent ten years and a half-dozen aspiring innkeeper seminars deciding that it was the right thing to do, for us. Many people look for a long time for 'their' B&B; we found ours and bought it within a year. We were ready financially, with the down payment and a cushion for the first year. Even with all that, there was about six months where the old job was just so weird and different that we struggled to find our footing.Don Draper said:I'm trying really, really hard to remember what exactly our mindset was when this opportunity presented itself to us. I'm fairly certain we thought we could do it forever.
We thought this was true right from the start. We planned to do this work for 7 to 10 years. We've just had our 8-year anniversary and our B&B is for sale. At the 10-year mark, my DH will be 60 and we'd like to have less busy careers. Our inn has been around for 26 years, with four innkeepers, and only one other innkeeper made it past 4 years. I think the really burnout folks are in and out in under 5 years now.Don Draper said:innkeeping is not a "forever" kind of job for anyone, it's just too demanding.
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