Welcome back guest house heroes to the next episode in elevating your guest house, hotel or B&B to legendary status.
Today’s question: how to max your guest room appointments to the level guests appreciate and recognize as beyond even five-star Hotel experiences.
So many of our reviews for Highlander House have mentioned their stay as being better than many 5-star hotels they’ve stayed at. There’s a reason for that. Yes, we’ve alluded in a prior episode to the fact that it has to be all about hospitality and giving your guest that personal experience of being treasured and valued.
But, little touches in your guest rooms make a world of difference too.
It’s hard to know where to start because they all add up.
Here are a few of the little treasures that help contribute to a premium stay:
- Try give guests a space somewhere in the guest room to simply sit and read, eat, enjoy a cup of tea or coffee other than the bed. Trust me, you don’t want guests eating or drinking anywhere your pristine white linen! And guests appreciate this. Later on in this series we’ll get into how you can create space-saving dining areas guests will enjoy.
- Wall-mounted flat screen tv. It goes without saying that no guest room should ever offer an old tube tv and nor should it offer a tiny 24 inch flat screen tv mounted high on a wall with dishevelled wiring all exposed. Nowadays a 43-50 inch flat screen should be the minimum with wiring neatly tucked inside trunking or, better still, obscured and exiting the wall cavity behind the tv (we’ll delve into guest room planning much later in the series). We mainly use Samsung (link) and LG (link) tvs as they’re superior and value for money.
- Collapsible luggage racks – all our rooms have these. They’re so easy to tuck up against a wall and so useful for guests to place their suitcases on and get easy access to what they need for their stay. Available online at Amazon.
- A premium kettle. Simple isn’t it? But how many kettles become irritating and cumbersome to fill with water. All our guests rooms are provided with bottled spring water and replenished on a daily basis even though our Scottish tap water is exceptional in its purity and devoid of chlorine etc. But, if filling up with tap water, who wants to lug a kettle and attached power cord across to a basin to return to its station. Cordless is an absolute must and these are the ones we’ve purchased online.
- Coffee machine. We still offer the Nescafe sachets for died-in-the wool adherents to instant coffee lovers but those days are gone for most. Nowadays, most discerning guests want a premium coffee experience, so we provide each guest room with a premium coffee machine. The market leaders are Dolce Gusto (our choice), Nespresso and Tassimo. Dolce Gusto is a winner for us in terms of availability and variety. This is the compact space-saving Dolce-Gusto machine of choice for us. It’s easy to use and benefits from being automatic with a manual over-ride.
- Teas: This is curious one for us as we’re not tea drinkers…and if we do drink tea it would be Tulsi. But we’ve learnt from our tea-loving guests and supply our guest rooms with English Breakfast, PG, Earl Grey and a variety of red berry, green, peppermint and chamomile options.
- Coffee and tea caddies add a level of class to a guest room and tuck the teas and coffees out of sight as opposed to an unsightly clump of offerings in an open container. All our guest rooms were designed by ourselves to have shelves where the coffee and tea stations would be located. Some guest rooms have neat little 2-drawer shelf above the coffee machine and kettle and these drawers house the selection of teas, coffee pods, instant coffee sachets, sugar, sweetners, wooden stirrer spoons and UHT milks (as backup to the fresh milk supplied in the fridge). Other guest rooms have a really neat mahogany drawer housing the same.
- Every guest room is equipped with wine glasses, coffee mugs and tumblers for our guests to enjoy.
- Bathroom soaps and shampoos: we decided at the outset against supplying teeny bathroom disposable shampoos and conditioners. Personally, we’ve never found these miniatures to be so enticing as to want to take them away for any hotel or guest house we’ve stayed at and our guests clearly think the same. They’re environmentally unfriendly. Instead, we provide top quality shower gel, shampoo and conditioner in refillable easy to use wall mounted dispensers that we replenish after each departing guest. Less waste, less detrimental affect of the environment and a win-win all around. These are the wall-mounted soap dispensers we use with Scottish Fine Soaps being the liquids of choice.
- Fridges. It’s not necessary to supply large 100-litre capacity fridges that can disturb a guest’s sleep with noise. We supply teeny 4-litre ones that accommodate the cute 200ml bottle of fresh milk and space for some small bottles of wine, cans, water bottles, personal medical item that must be refrigerated etc
- Bedside tables either side of the bed are a must and need to be large enough to provide surface space to accommodate overnight drinking water bottles, tumblers, a guests’ personal sleeping aids like apnea apparatus etc. We suggest a surface area no less than 16”x16” (40cmx40cm) and favour those with 2 drawers beneath to store guest items and an open shelf area to accommodate your guestroom folder, magazines, promo materials for local attractions and restaurants. (We’ll address the pros and cons of a promo pamphlet stand or shelf in your foyer and why we don’t have one in a later episode)
- Bottled water. Every guest room is supplied with bottled spring water for each guest replenished on a daily basis regardless of the fact that our tap drinking water is perfect. The cost of this can add up so it pays to buy in bulk (like we do with the Kirkland brand from Costco).
- Packets of crisps. As one of the little indulgences for guest rooms we supply a small packet of crisps for each guest. Avoid supplying cheap brands and opt for premium like kettle-fried or Tyrrells. Many guests won’t indulge but will appreciate the offering.
- Shortbread and breakfast bars are also a nice offering for guests
- Boring coasters – yes they’re boring but are a life-saver in preventing impossible to erase water marks on lacquered surfaces and guests appreciate them. Pub branded ones won’t do!
- Tissue boxes. Each guest room is supplied with a full box of Kleenex tissues in one of the bedside tables. It’s surprising how much they’re used.
- Pampering face-mask packs. This is another little offering housed in one of the bedside table drawers that just speaks volumes by enticing a bit of pampering that is never offered anywhere else. For a couple of pounds/dollars a little luxury makes such an impression. We offer the Garnier range and each pack is enclosed in a classy restaurant check-presenter embossed with the words “Thank You” and also containing a couple of our business cards with “Rate us on Tripadvisor/Google” QR codes for guests to immediately leave a review. (The non-stop and never-ending pursuit of business-building reviews will be addressed in another episode)
- The vanity (see next episode)
