LGBT
Related: About this forumThinking about opening a gay friendly B&B
Not necessarily because I want to be a business owner, but more because I want to do something to "give back". My daughter and her SO are getting married next year and we are thinking about doing this together. Her fiance and I both like cooking, deocrating, cleaning, and decorating. My daughter has said she would like to become a minister so she could marry gay couples in NY so we could perform wedding ceremonies in our B&B. I just wonder if this would be feasbile?
Your input is very much appreciated.
Wait Wut
(8,492 posts)I would start doing the research asap!! Good Luck!
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)Good luck. I wish I had the money to do the same thing.
William769
(55,145 posts)a B&B?
MarkCharles
(2,261 posts)No one becomes an owner of a B+B without a business plan, and a desire to succeed.
If you don't want to be a business owner, if you don't have the strength and the fortitude to change dirty bed-sheets daily, if you don't want to be equally nice to homophobes who happen upon your B+B by chance as you do to the gay couples, if you don't want to deal with the public 24/7/365, then this is NOT a business for you!
Calling a doctor or dentist at 2 AM when one of your guests comes down with a medical/dental problem. Making a breakfast and having the guest say that they never eat what you have laboriously prepared. Taking calls from potential guests at all hours, finding soiled underwear in strange places, cashing bouncing checks from guests who just had to pay by check. Getting cancellations at midnight the night before a guest is to arrive, having the health department inspect your kitchen after someone complains.
Few B+B's make it, unless you have a 24/7/365 location, and a fabulous house and great cooking skills, are located next to a worldwide destination, and can put up with arrogant thoughtless guests that treat you like hired help.
If you're not up for lots of abuse, if you're not obsessed with running your own company, and giving it 365 day management, you're out of luck.
Wedding ceremonies add hours and hours of preparation to the B+B concept. The wedding could be at 10 AM or 5 PM... with a reception during daytime hours when usually the B+B is empty, (when you're doing the sheets and towels laundry) and when you have a few hours of peace without guests around to ask for another cup of coffee. Nope, being a B+B manager is a half time job every day of the week. Adding the wedding host to it adds hundreds of other hours to your private life, and dozens of other complications to deal with.
If you don't want to be a business person in that environment, don't ever try to get into it.
My aunt did this in her palacial coastal home in the Northeast USA for 5 years. She burned out. She could only have us visit her in her "slow" season, (winter), when we could only stay a day or two before someone would take our bed the next night. She had few guests each week, but seemed to work 30 hours a week just for a couple hundred dollars over cost each week. She gave it up and sold the B+B to someone who ran it into the ground the next year, her B+B reputation was ruined. She just retired and gave up all her dreams about $10,000 ahead of where she entered it..this after 5 yrs of work.
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)Many years ago, I did cleaning for the elderly. A friend asked me to take over some of her cleaning because she had health problems. I worked cleaning for the elderly, but many times they just wanted somebody to talk to. By word of mouth, it got too much. In order to keep it up, I would have had to hire other people. My clients didn't want this. They all said they wanted ME, not a cleaning service. Now, if I was a GREEDY "business person" I could have hired other people and become another "Merry Maids" but that is NOT want these people wanted. They could have done that right from the start.
I have worked in everything from school cafeterias, to workingf withdisabled children and adults, in schools and group homes. I have seen more than most people would ever want to see. I make very little money, but I do this because I love doing what I do; taking care of other people from cooking to cleaning to changing diapers, and cleaning up their "messes". Nothing phases me anymore after all these years. I would never have survived one day in my occupation if these things bothered me. I maybe be a Senior, but if I have to SIT for any lenght of time, I will go stark raving out of my mind. That is why I quit working in an office over 50 years ago.
We have gone to a pizza restaurant for amost 40 years. The parents have long since retired and their children, and now grandkids, have taken over. They have stayed in same location all these years, despite the Domonos and Pizza Huts, but have not expanded their business beyond their one location. This is not a business too? Maybe they are not "successful" in the current business formuat, but they make a living. That is all that I am looking for. To do something I, and my children, love to do. Something that THEY will have a future in.
MarkCharles
(2,261 posts)is much better than 24/7/365 days a year job where you, AT MOST, make a couple hundred dollars a week for all your efforts.
And one single complaint and legal challenge can RUIN your business model
About 10% of customers of any business have complaints. Most of them are silly, or you cooked the eggs too much.
But 10% of 10% will take it further........lodging complaints with the health authorities, whatever.
Then you face 100 hours for each of those complaints, the coffee was too cold, etc.
If you're ready to spend the next 10 years of your life working your AS* off, and fighting irrational people who complain, go for it!
Sorry, but I met 3 or 4 other B+B owners who were so happy to sell out and get out.
s
No one regretted leaving, but some lost their fabulous family's house which had been in their family for years and years. They came out ahead financially, but had lost so much.
Remember: Opening a B+B is opening your house up to total strangers from around the world. Anyone who does that, risks a lot.
BR_Parkway
(8,666 posts)This job looks fairly easy from the outside but once you are in, you're immersed and it's 24/7 which is a huge transition for many.
While your desire to give back is laudable, there may already be plenty of competition in that niche - you should check out http://www.purpleroofs.com and see which LGBT owned/friendly Inns are already in the area that you are looking at.
If you are still interested, you should join PAII (Professional Association of Innkeepers International) as an Aspiring Innkeeper - that will give you access to a lot of information to help in your planning http://www.innkeeping.org
But if you don't want to be a business owner, this isn't a good choice - you'll be more involved in this business than most
Wistful Vista
(136 posts)It's a lot of work and you'll basically be a hotel manager without any buffers (flappers) to insulate you from rude idiotic guests (which will eventually show up). If you really do like "cleaning", though, it might be something you'd enjoy.
Hassin Bin Sober
(26,325 posts)They called it egg-drop soup.
Wistful Vista
(136 posts)MadrasT
(7,237 posts)...is why I never, ever go in hot tubs.
maddezmom
(135,060 posts)My Aunt and her partner got married with another couple here a few years ago.
http://www.bnbfinder.com/Connecticut/Old-Mystic/Bed-and-Breakfast/Listing/2301/The_Old_Mystic_Inn
Good luck.
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)to perhaps a breakfast only restaurant, because this is what we like doing: cooking and being "people persons". Having lived over half a century, I have learned you will never be sucessful, even working for OTHERS, if you do not LOVE what you are doing.
Thank you.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)others may know better ones.
http://www.purpleroofs.com/