My wife Valerie and I are packing it in after one year of operating the Fotheringham House Bed-and-Breakfast in Spokane, Washington.
It was something we wanted to try, or more specifically, that Valerie wanted to try. For years she had been wondering what it would be like to run a nice bed-and-breakfast somewhere. Now she knows, and with that knowledge, thank you, she’ll go back to selling real estate, which was what she did before.
I have spoken with some of my fellow B&B proprietors here in the Northwest, and the question that haunts many of us these days is whether the B&B phenomenon itself may be reaching the end of its arc. Bed-and-Breakfasts really “took off” in the 1980s as a cozier alternative to the Red Roof Inn or the EZ-8 Motel. Many people found that they liked the feel of staying in someone’s private home, particularly if it were historic and quaint, and being provided during their stay with such niceties as monogrammed bathrobes and soap, a living room with fireplace where you could sip a glass of wine before going upstairs to your room, and of course, a sumptuous breakfast, as often as not served on fine china, when you got up in the morning.
But B&Bs seem to be on the wane these days. Last summer I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about their current decline. It seems a lot of B&B owners are taking advantage of the real estate market and selling out – not to people who want to run B&Bs, but to people who want to turn the B&B back into a house. In fact that’s what Valerie and I have just done: the new owner of Fotheringham House is not going to run a bed-and-breakfast here. I understand he already owns some historic properties here in Spokane, and is now adding this one to his holdings. The house was built in 1891 and has historic designation; it can’t be torn down or turned into a bowling alley. It will stay as is, but the function it has served since 1983, entertaining overnight guests, will be no more.
Valerie has already returned to her real estate business in Washington, D.C. I will be joining her there in a few weeks, after the final details of closing the sale of the house and auctioning off the antique furniture and other B&B trappings are taken care of.
Life’s experiences, even its failed ones, are always opportunities to learn. I have compiled a list of 11 things I learned while operating a bed-and-breakfast. Current B&B owners might see something familiar here; prospective ones might see things they should take note of, for cautionary purposes. Here, anyway, is a list of things I learned in my one year of operating a bed-and-breakfast in the state of Washington:
1. There are more women vegetarians out there than men vegetarians. Years ago I read a newspaper article which suggested there was some evidence of gender-based food preferences. Women, whose bodies tend to be smaller and lighter than those of men, don't usually need to burn as many calories and are therefore more likely to be satisfied with a pasta dish or a salad. Men tend to want their meat and potatoes. (The flip side of that was that men, according to the study, were more likely to be able to resist the dessert tray than women.) Whether there's a tie-in or not, I have noticed that more women, when asked about their food preferences, will say "no meat" or "no pork" than men will.
It was something we wanted to try, or more specifically, that Valerie wanted to try. For years she had been wondering what it would be like to run a nice bed-and-breakfast somewhere. Now she knows, and with that knowledge, thank you, she’ll go back to selling real estate, which was what she did before.
I have spoken with some of my fellow B&B proprietors here in the Northwest, and the question that haunts many of us these days is whether the B&B phenomenon itself may be reaching the end of its arc. Bed-and-Breakfasts really “took off” in the 1980s as a cozier alternative to the Red Roof Inn or the EZ-8 Motel. Many people found that they liked the feel of staying in someone’s private home, particularly if it were historic and quaint, and being provided during their stay with such niceties as monogrammed bathrobes and soap, a living room with fireplace where you could sip a glass of wine before going upstairs to your room, and of course, a sumptuous breakfast, as often as not served on fine china, when you got up in the morning.
But B&Bs seem to be on the wane these days. Last summer I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about their current decline. It seems a lot of B&B owners are taking advantage of the real estate market and selling out – not to people who want to run B&Bs, but to people who want to turn the B&B back into a house. In fact that’s what Valerie and I have just done: the new owner of Fotheringham House is not going to run a bed-and-breakfast here. I understand he already owns some historic properties here in Spokane, and is now adding this one to his holdings. The house was built in 1891 and has historic designation; it can’t be torn down or turned into a bowling alley. It will stay as is, but the function it has served since 1983, entertaining overnight guests, will be no more.
Valerie has already returned to her real estate business in Washington, D.C. I will be joining her there in a few weeks, after the final details of closing the sale of the house and auctioning off the antique furniture and other B&B trappings are taken care of.
Life’s experiences, even its failed ones, are always opportunities to learn. I have compiled a list of 11 things I learned while operating a bed-and-breakfast. Current B&B owners might see something familiar here; prospective ones might see things they should take note of, for cautionary purposes. Here, anyway, is a list of things I learned in my one year of operating a bed-and-breakfast in the state of Washington:
1. There are more women vegetarians out there than men vegetarians. Years ago I read a newspaper article which suggested there was some evidence of gender-based food preferences. Women, whose bodies tend to be smaller and lighter than those of men, don't usually need to burn as many calories and are therefore more likely to be satisfied with a pasta dish or a salad. Men tend to want their meat and potatoes. (The flip side of that was that men, according to the study, were more likely to be able to resist the dessert tray than women.) Whether there's a tie-in or not, I have noticed that more women, when asked about their food preferences, will say "no meat" or "no pork" than men will.
2. Speaking of vegetarians, when you’re booking an overnight guest, “Are you a vegetarian?” is nowhere near specific enough a question. You need to cross-examine people about their dietary foibles as if you were the District Attorney in a poisoning case. This one is allergic to walnuts, this one can’t eat grapefruit, this one will eat chicken sausage, but won’t eat pork; I had a woman plunk herself down at my breakfast table one morning and announce that she was only allowed 296 calories for breakfast owing to the diet she was on. She demanded to examine the container from the yogurt I served her. “Nope, too many calories,” she said. I think we finally got her to eat some granola, but she wouldn’t put whole milk on it.
3. And then there are vegans. Vegans are a pain in the ass. Operating a B&B, I had to learn the distinction between a “vegetarian” and a “vegan.” I think if you look in the dictionary, it will say something like, “Vegan. N. 1. Vegetarian who ought to be in a straitjacket.” Vegans won’t eat ANYTHING that has anything remotely to do with animals. That means not just meat, but also any and all dairy products and, in some extreme cases, even honey, as honey is made by bees and bees are little animals, right? I had a vegan guest last summer. I didn’t know WHAT to feed this guy. Finally I just gave him a bowl of oatmeal with no milk, and hoped he’d leave early.
4. If you want a certain area of your house to be off-limits, make sure it’s clearly posted as such. People will generally wander anywhere they like, provided no one tells them not to. I have forgotten to lock my front door and had people just walk right into the house, ignoring the “Please Ring The Doorbell” sign. They see those credit-card decals on the front door and they think, “Hotel. I’ll just walk in.” The previous owners of this B&B, when hosting a wedding or a reception downstairs, would rope off the staircase so people wouldn’t wander upstairs and poke around. And even that didn’t always work. The husband half of the former team told me of a time he was relaxing up in the innkeeper’s attic apartment on the third floor, watching TV, and two women came walking right in, having climbed the stairs to the attic despite the sign on the door that read “Innkeeper’s Quarters,” because they wanted to “look around.”
5. Don’t assume that people are going to be punctual, especially when it involves something as fundamental as getting out of bed in the morning. I had to learn that if someone asks that their breakfast be served at 8 a.m., don’t assume that that means they’ll be at the breakfast table at 8 a.m. Not everyone is a morning person like me; some people have real trouble getting out of bed on time. I learned this the hard way: a shirred-egg dish that had been timed to be ready at 8 a.m. would be ready for the garbage can at 8:25 when the guests finally came straggling in to the breakfast room. I learned not to put the eggs in the oven until I actually heard footsteps coming down the stairs.
6. Americans are not very “European.” For a nation as wildly obsessed with sex as we Americans are, we are remarkably up-tight about certain things that Europeans don’t even think about much. Actually, I already knew this from having lived in Germany, where the locals routinely bathe together in public spas, to the shock-disguised-as-boredom of visiting Americans, who despite the supposedly-prurient society they come from are somewhat hysterical about nudity. Well, nudity isn’t really an issue in the B&B game, but bathrooms are, and my wife and I lost a lot of business owing to the fact that our B&B had four rooms, of which only one had a private bath. The other three shared a bathroom. Now, stop and think about this for a moment. If you went to stay in someone’s house, which is essentially what you’re doing when you stay at a B&B, you would not expect to have your own bathroom. You shared a bathroom with your family when you were growing up, didn’t you? But we lost a lot of business when people would call and, upon learning that the room-with-private-bath was booked and they’d have to take one of the rooms that share a bath, would take their business somewhere else. All I can say is, for such people was Motel 6 invented.
7. If you’re anywhere near the border between the U.S. and Canada, learn Celsius. Spokane is only two hours from British Columbia, and we had plenty of Canadian guests during our one-year tenure as innkeepers. When my Canadian guests would ask for a weather forecast, and I would say, “Overcast and 68,” well, I might as well have been describing conditions on Venus to them. For one thing, Canadians say “Mainly cloudy,” not “overcast,” and to them, 68 is 20. Same with Europeans, Russians and most of the rest of the world that was never part of the British Empire. Meteorological multiculturalism. (Also, it doesn’t hurt to be able to convert miles to kilometers if asked.)
8. Do not have your laundry facility where you feed your pets. I lost track of the amount of cat food I swept up after sticking my foot in the cat-food dish while taking sheets out of the washing machine. Also, if you fancy fresh, clean-smelling laundry, it’s not a good area to keep the litter box, either.
9. A surprisingly large number of people don’t like mushrooms. I used to prepare an egg dish for breakfast that included among its ingredients green onions, bell peppers, cheese and mushrooms. Now, I love mushrooms myself, and I thought most people did. After all, mushrooms are included among the choices of topping in any pizzeria you can name. But after taking breakfast dishes back to the kitchen and having to scrape little piles of mushrooms into the garbage disposal because people were picking them out of their eggs, I came to the astonishing conclusion that most of the world doesn’t seem to share my fondness for mushrooms. I started leaving them out of the recipe.
10. Clearly establish a policy about cancellations, and stick to it. I hate to say this, but on the whole, women are far cheaper than men. Don’t take my word for it. Ask any waitress, or anyone else in food service. Women are lousy tippers. They’re also much more likely to try and beat out the check than men are. Be that as it may, we had a couple of incidents in which people (both times it was women) called up to cancel a reservation of one sort or another, and went into a screaming fit when told that they would have to pay anyway because they were canceling on too short notice. Our policy was seven days. But we had one woman call and want to cancel on 24 hours notice, and when told that she would have to pay anyway, raised hell with my wife, then put her husband on the phone to raise hell with me. Incredibly, when my wife told her that our seven-day policy was clearly spelled out on our website, she shouted, “It’s not my responsibility to read what your website says!” I swear to God, she really said that. I’d like to see this same woman walk on to the lot of a car dealership and try to claim that it wasn’t her responsibility to read what the price sticker on the car said.
11. Don’t live in the attic. This might seem minor, but unless your marriage is as rock-solid as the Prudential stone, you don’t want to be spending all day long cheek-by-jowl with your spouse, trying to run a business, and then at the end of the day retire together to a cramped, stuffy attic with low-slanted ceilings that the taller of you (me, in this case) keeps bumping his head against. Too much togetherness combined with too little space is not good for a marriage. And that, as Trevor Howard said to Robert Mitchum at the end of “Ryan’s Daughter,” is my parting gift to you.
