22. Always ensure that wherever possible you record your guests’ mobile phone number when the book is booked. This is invaluable as it enables you to contact the guest on the day to pinpoint his arrival time depending on the actual travel / traffic situation, and can allow you to leave the house rather than wait unnecessarily all day for the arrival of a guest who may have booked months earlier without any particular knowledge of an arrival time. This makes for a far more sensible use of your time.
23. Ensure your booking diary is maintained accurately with all deposits logged and all information on the booking clearly marked. If any problem arises that needs to be clarified contact your guest immediately – honesty is the best policy in all matters and you could be surprised by their understanding attitude.
24. Faced with a complaint it is best to deal fairly and honestly with the guest; discuss the problem openly and try to remedy it helpfully. In our experience, the few guests who are disgruntled may well sign the visitors’ book with a positive comment, and then contact you several days after they’ ve left with a list of grievances – usually minor; the best way to deal with this is to address each of their points objectively without getting emotional or taking the points personally. We once had such a situation; one of the complaints included the omission of a fork at the breakfast table: the guest had to ask for one, which he found upsetting!
25. What to do when a guest oversleeps – you have discussed breakfast times with your guest, you should even have these printed on the information sheet in their room; however the guest has a late night and oversleeps. As it gets to the end of breakfast time you should contact them in their room with a gentle reminder about breakfast; if as expected they say they will be down shortly it is only polite to wait for them to appear( no doubt apologising profusely) and serve them breakfast. There is also the possibility that they may decline breakfast all together. Whatever happens it is essential that you do awake your guests and they are not left to sleep undisturbed till lunchtime.
26. Ensure that guests are aware of the check out time for leaving their room so that you are not faced with the situation of having no changeover time between guests. This can be helped by offering those who are leaving the chance to store their luggage in a public area downstairs so that you have access to clean their room ready for the next guest. If the unexpected happens and your new guests turn up early they can also store their luggage or wait in a public room until their rooms are ready, offering them a tray of tea or coffee while they are waiting.
27. Ensure all your own private rooms are marked as such with PRIVATE signs above or on the door. This sounds obvious but it does help to mark out where the guests can or can’ t go and stops you coming across guests in unexpected places( and deprives them of the excuse that they did not realise the room was off limits).
28. Hot Water – try to have separate hot water tanks for your guests so that there is sufficient hot water to go round the whole household. They can then be switched off when not in use to save energy.