So You Want to Own a Bed & Breakfast…

Forget the romantic notion of the two of you waking to fresh croissants and a rich cup of coffee in a sunlit garden room attached to your mansion. Owning and operating a Bed & Breakfast isn’t lazy evenings, gathered with your guests in front of a wildly roaring fire, sipping cognac and listening to classical music! (The classical music part wouldn’t be so bad, though!)

I have thought about opening a bed and breakfast, especially now that the 2010 Winter Olympics will be just a stone’s throw away, north of us in Vancouver, British Columbia. And then, I started researching and interviewing people who A. are currently happy bed and breakfast owners, B. are currently happy EX bed and breakfast owners, and C. laughing at the very thought of some poor fool opening a bed and breakfast!

One continual thing that kept popping up throughout my research was from all the different types of people I interviewed: Do your homework! Before deciding to hang the Open sign from your white picket fence, consider all the angles, all the facets of what being the owner of a B&B means, to you, to your neighbors, and to your family! Even the family pooch may have a ‘say’ in the decision, considering that Fido may not be allowed to run free in the back yard anymore – oh, the back yard might be called ‘the gardens’ if you open up your own bed and breakfast.

The basic factors in deciding whether or not to open your own B&B are: