Found a terrific B&B idea online today, at the website for the Hotel Charlotte in Sonora, which claims to be the "gateway to Yosemite."
The site includes local calendar of events, covering everything from art exhibits to plays, and lists cost if any, and relevant links, along with hotel special deals whenever there is a tie-in. It's something that needs to be kept constantly up to date, obviously, but I am sure the hotel's guests must appreciate it very much.
Our primary interest these days focuses on the Wild Rose Inn and the Arroyo Vista Inn, although neither owner has expressed any formal intention to have us help work miracles for her bottom line.
It's so strange to see businesses with such potential languishing at the bottom of the heap, but I guess Sue in Genoa and Pat in South Pasadena have quite a few things in common, particularly their unwillingness or inability to devote enough time to their inns.
Pat, I think, would rather fail alone than succeed with help (anyone's help other than her husband's, that is) and that's very sad. Sue still has her place signboarded "For Sale by Owner" and she's been trying to unload the WRI for at least four years now.
B&Bs are only likely to sell if they are well maintained and show a healthy bottom line, so I suspect Sue will have to wait at least another four years for a buyer to come along. Like the Artists Inn, the place is shabby and neglected. The other day, a friend of Jen's who designs and makes high-end wedding cakes and is constantly being asked for location advice by customers says she'd love to work with Sue, but won't because the inn is such a mess. Very sad.
Pat is quite clearly not a detail-oriented type, in spite of all the years she has spent in the lawyering biz. There are a number of cosmetic glitches at her place that need to be fixed, but she just doesn't seem to see them.
Christmastime was interesting, because the entire front porch area was messed up by wind and rain and Pat just left it that way for days on end, presumably because she always comes and goes via the kitchen side door and didn't notice the havoc.
Since all guests and other visitors must come up those steps and through the front door, it's elementary to make sure the place looks its best from that angle, but Pat apparently does not consider first impressions a priority!
Jen would love to be given a chance to make a success out of either Inn, but personally I'm not wild about the WRI, not only because it needs a huge amount of overdue TLC but also because it only has five rental rooms. Current rates are from $140 to $240 a night, with the former master bedroom (where Jen and I stayed for the month we were innsitting) now offered as the top-of-the-line "suite."
My guess is that Sue paid about $700,000 for the place ten years or so ago. She had it listed for a while at $1.7m, or about $1.4m if it sold as a house rather than a business (I assume that means without any of the furniture). I have no idea what the current fair market value would be, but it's probably less than $1m in this rock-bottom market, or not a whole lot more than Sue paid. She now has a little house of her own around the corner, and I can't guess how she manages to cover two mortgages, if that's the case.
It's none of my business, I know, but nothing I have learned about B&B'ing helps me understand how the owners of failed or failing operations can afford to ignore economic and market realities.
Sue's maximum monthly revenue is around $27,000 and her "nut" has to be at least $3,000. She's not spending much on maintenance or anything on improvements, from all we have heard, so maybe she has managed to trim her expenses enough to enable her to tread water and just about stay afloat. Meanwhile, the business continues on a downward spiral, neglected because of poor cash flow and unable to recover because a worn and ragged B&B is less likely to attract guests.
Pat is the really big mystery, because she has to have at least $2 million sunk into her place, and revenue since she opened a year ago last October was quite a bit less than $200,000 last time I checked. Assuming costs of $15,000 a month, that adds up to a major headache. Could she be an eccentric millionaire?
The IRS is pretty lenient with start-up businesses that take a while to become profitable, but even their patience runs out eventually! If the AVI was holding its own, Pat could probably find a buyer for it more easily than Janet at the Artists Inn ever could. But with property prices through the floor and a financial millstone dragging the value of the business down still further, there seems to me to be no way out without fixing the occupancy/revenue problems.
Last year, I tried to persuade Pat to make formal connections with some of the best local restaurants in South Pasadena (I had two eager to sign up, because they were friends from our AI days) and to mount an online and mailing marketing blitz aimed at all the local chambers of commerce. I even designed a postcard for her (unasked, I admit). As far as I know, nothing was done about any of that.
A B&B, like any other business, cannot hope to prosper simply by being there, and the best products and services in the world will cut no ice if no one knows about them.
The whole ballgame comes down to Getting The Word Out, not sitting back and waiting for customers to find you. Every possible avenue has to be explored, and when something doesn't work, try something else -- don't take a failure personally and assume that whatever you attempt is sure to be a waste of time.
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