Where?
I want to use this first blog post to tell you about how Blackburn Villa became a bed and breakfast. When my parents retired, they moved to Ayr in south west Scotland. When I divorced, I moved to Ayr too! I had 3 daughters at the time, ages 12, 10 and 2. I had always lived in central and east Scotland so moving to the southwest coast was something new for me. I quickly understood why so many tourists visit the west coast of Scotland – it really has some of the most stunning scenery in the world!
Why?
When my parents aged and couldn’t look after themselves any more we bought the house at 2 Blackburn Road as it lent itself very well to homing 2 families. Separate, but together.
This worked well for a few years but then of course children grew up and moved out and my parents passed away. What to do with a 10 apartment house for me and my youngest daughter? I was working at the local college at the time so knew they were sometimes looking for accommodation for students. So I rented out the downstairs bedrooms. Firstly to students and then to professionals, but finally I wanted my kitchen back and decided to give B&B a go.
When?
So in the spring of 2015 I made plans and did a bit of research before opening at the beginning of June. I still remember my first guests, a family who had booked one night for themselves and their baby. Then they called me and said they were going to arrive later than they thought, originally 5pm. When I asked where they were I realised they weren’t going to arrive until around 10 at night! So I began my vigil and waited. Then about half nine they called again to ask if they could have an extra bed in the room. What? And it turns out it’s a family of 4. But they were my first ever guests, what do you do? You accommodate them of course; you don’t even contemplate anything else.
The Early Days
And so it began, simple at first, and with 3 rooms only. To be honest I wasn’t even sure it would work, that I could make a living from running a bed and breakfast. At the time I had only one room with en-suite facilities and I didn’t think guests would want to share a bathroom. How wrong can you be? Within a couple of weeks of going live I was almost full for the coming summer months. I had started with Airbnb alone and they arranged to send out a local photographer to take professional photos of the B&B. We chatted of course and he asked why I hadn’t gone with one of the online travel agents, like Booking or Expedia. I laughed, I mean I have booked lots of holidays that way but I thought what? A B&B? On Booking dot com? Surely my 3 bedroom guest house didn’t have a place on a large online booking site? But he said he had a friend who made a good living and got plenty of bookings through them. So on the 25th June I went live with them and got the fright of my life when booking after booking came through. I was doing some clothes shopping in TkMax with my eldest daughter, a task neither of us enjoy, and the app on my phone kept pinging as each new booking came in. I realised then that this was the start of a new phase in my life.
One of my first guests enjoying the view.