How do you "present" your property on guests' arri
My 'welcome' provisions depend on the nationality. I always make a cake and leave that and a bottle(s) of wine for guests UK guests, cider for French guests. I leave fresh milk for UK guests, but not French (they would think it very odd).
If I'm here I meet them, if I'm not, I pop round later to check all is OK, but from then on I take the lead from the guests as to how much contact I have from them for their stay.
If I'm here I meet them, if I'm not, I pop round later to check all is OK, but from then on I take the lead from the guests as to how much contact I have from them for their stay.
hm yes, I think I subtly adapt my welcome to my guests and their nationality or what I know about them.
My aim is to make them feel pleased and welcome on arrival...after that I leave them totally alone. Might text them once during their stay. I certainly don't go flitting in and out lighting candles every time their backs are turned!
My aim is to make them feel pleased and welcome on arrival...after that I leave them totally alone. Might text them once during their stay. I certainly don't go flitting in and out lighting candles every time their backs are turned!
tavi wrote: I certainly don't go flitting in and out lighting candles every time their backs are turned!
If you always do what you've always done then you'll always get what you've always got.
Apartment Mil Palmeras
Apartment Mil Palmeras
We always welcome our guests personaly and escort them to our flat. We then show them the bits and bobs like the electic controls etc and remote door opening system and the information pack which we leave for each set of guests. In addition we alway leave a bottle of water and of wine in the fridge BUT if we suspect the guests are Muslim we substitute the wine with fruit juice - we also leave tea, coffee, sugar, olive oil and soap and washing powder. Often people have a few questions which of course we try and aanswer then we leave them to enjoy their stay.
I don't profess to own anything here apart from my own opinion.
have been reading this thread with interest.... we have always had positive comments from guests about our welcome & have a high percentage of repeat bookings so must be doing something right.
For B&B guests we have the communal areas lights on especially for late arrivals, a cake in the guest tearoom & show them where everything is, ask about breakfast etc.....
For Gite guests we have a welcome pack in the kitchen for them & show them around, tell them where everything is & where we are if they have any problems etc.
A few thoughts on previous postings:
We try to be as ecofriendly as possible & encourage our guests to be the same, so leaving lights on is something we would not do, as guests will just leave the place fully lit all the time, including when they are out.... likewise we ask guests to leave the gite as they found it, so if the table is laid on arrival they may feel free to leave their last breakfast dishes scattered about & we all know how annoying it is when we enter a gite on departure day to a sink full of dirty dishes, full waste bins etc...
Candles - surely I am not the only one who has experienced problems with hyper young children who have been cooped up in a car all day & view a candle & matches as something to be played with on arrival when parents are distracted unloading the car etc....... We have candles available for use in powercuts & if the gite is for couples we have some outdoor candles......but indoors in family gite is possibly asking for trouble, even one of our regular couples did untold damage leaving a candle burning near curtains with the windows open on a breezy night......
Music definitely a no, no I would find it very annoying to arrive tired at a gite to be greated by someone else's choice of music which may not be to my taste....
For B&B guests we have the communal areas lights on especially for late arrivals, a cake in the guest tearoom & show them where everything is, ask about breakfast etc.....
For Gite guests we have a welcome pack in the kitchen for them & show them around, tell them where everything is & where we are if they have any problems etc.
A few thoughts on previous postings:
We try to be as ecofriendly as possible & encourage our guests to be the same, so leaving lights on is something we would not do, as guests will just leave the place fully lit all the time, including when they are out.... likewise we ask guests to leave the gite as they found it, so if the table is laid on arrival they may feel free to leave their last breakfast dishes scattered about & we all know how annoying it is when we enter a gite on departure day to a sink full of dirty dishes, full waste bins etc...
Candles - surely I am not the only one who has experienced problems with hyper young children who have been cooped up in a car all day & view a candle & matches as something to be played with on arrival when parents are distracted unloading the car etc....... We have candles available for use in powercuts & if the gite is for couples we have some outdoor candles......but indoors in family gite is possibly asking for trouble, even one of our regular couples did untold damage leaving a candle burning near curtains with the windows open on a breezy night......
Music definitely a no, no I would find it very annoying to arrive tired at a gite to be greated by someone else's choice of music which may not be to my taste....
Apart from a cheerful welcome and a tour around the basics in our house and the apartment (can be speeded up or slowed down according to guest reaction), I think the most important thing to get right is the warmth of the apartment (not usually a problem in summer) - too cold and the apartment feels unwelcoming and the guests are liable to put radiators immediately on 5 which is expensive and bad for the environment. Too hot and they tend to think that is 'normal' and open the windows rather than turn the heat down! Also bad for the environment. And for the same reason we would never leave the lights on - guest can turn up hours later than they have said.
[quote="petitbois"
We try to be as ecofriendly as possible & encourage our guests to be the same, so leaving lights on is something we would not do, as guests will just leave the place fully lit all the time, including when they are out.... [/quote]
Not even when it is dark? This is another area where being ecofriendly can impact on a guest's experience. Is it better to be ecofriendly of have guests stumble around trying to find the lights when they arrive, like in the film Withnail and I when they went to stay in Uncle Monty's remote cottage in the North of England?
We try to be as ecofriendly as possible & encourage our guests to be the same, so leaving lights on is something we would not do, as guests will just leave the place fully lit all the time, including when they are out.... [/quote]
Not even when it is dark? This is another area where being ecofriendly can impact on a guest's experience. Is it better to be ecofriendly of have guests stumble around trying to find the lights when they arrive, like in the film Withnail and I when they went to stay in Uncle Monty's remote cottage in the North of England?
I would imagine we are similar to many in that being in a rural setting, the whole area is very dark. No street lighting apart from very low key lighting on the park itself.
As I am not on site then I cannot get the lights switched on (unfortunately no sensor on the outside light, which with hindsight should have been a must) unless I bother a neighbour.
So I advise all guests to bring a torch, which they can use for an after dark entry but also then have the use of during their stay. Most of my guests come from built up areas where it's rare to not have 24 hour street lighting. Coming to Norfolk is like stepping back in the dark ages - literally!
As I am not on site then I cannot get the lights switched on (unfortunately no sensor on the outside light, which with hindsight should have been a must) unless I bother a neighbour.
So I advise all guests to bring a torch, which they can use for an after dark entry but also then have the use of during their stay. Most of my guests come from built up areas where it's rare to not have 24 hour street lighting. Coming to Norfolk is like stepping back in the dark ages - literally!
not being tight at all...we live on site, majority of our guests arrive in daylight to gites which have plenty of natural light, so in the summer do not need illuminating until 10pm. Our larger gite has 50 lightbulbs in total as there are chandeliers, so not a question of leaving 2 bulbs on - many guests get up early in mornings & switch all lights on, as it gets light they forget to turn them off, go out for the day & leave them blazing..we do not charge supplements for electricity, in total with 4 B&B rooms & 2 gites if everyone leaves all their lights on we can be burning several Kw/hour.... Out of interest all our French guests who are used to high EDF charges always turn lights off on leaving as do the Dutch, the UK guests rarely do, so as we turn lights on when doing the welcome, we mention to them that we would appreciate it if they remembered to turn lights off on leaving the gite. I appreciate it that it is different if you are not on site & there is no welcome.