When you go on holiday
wish you'd tell me what things are important to you about the place where you stayDo you insist everything be five star, including your own private pool / sauna / 24 hour service
or do you stay in hostels and hope the other 9 in the room won't snore too loudly, keeping your cash to spend on your activities
While I was travelling in the campervan I stayed at campsites with communal showers and loos, but private hedges around each campsite, rather liked that although it had never occurred to me to ask for my own garden in a hotel
I went to Germany last year for a few days and booked the cheapest hotel I could find, turned out not to be the best area but transport into town was frequent and reliable, the room was clean, and the shared bathrooms on each floor were spotless. I got what I paid for, basically.
Apparently most people have MUCH higher standards, Would love it you'd tell me what things are important to you when you're planning a brief getaway - lavish surroundings, or convenient location, or proximity to tourist stuff, whether you like to be out and about and just want a place to sleep, or whether you want to be cossetted and pampered ...
Comments (65)
An offer In cant refuse
Will you have the cane and blackboard ready
I must see what its like
I bet it tidier than mine. Maybe I can move some junk into it,
so there is more room for other Junk
Thanks for telling me Molly
I read in mine too
Is there no end to the showing off.
Breakfast in bed would be Scottish - haggis, square sausage, baked beans and potato scones - and doubles the room price. Bagpipes will be played from speakers all over the house. (If I have to get up early, everyone has to suffer)
On the bright side the bakery just up the street does fresh croissants and delectable pastries from 6 in the morning and you would have a key to let yourself out quietly to go buy? (You could pop a few through my door, as you're going anyway) ...
The original plan would have had a lavish large bathroom, log fire in winter, claw-footed tub, walk in shower, a view of the mountains, a wine-rack with glasses, a small library of waterproof books and magazines, an array of candles and bubble-bath smellies, and a comfortable sofa so the other guest would have somewhere comfortable to sit and chat with you while waiting their turn. Since the place will not be chockablock booked, most of the time you would have had it to yourself anyway.
By popular demand this has now become an individual sliver of room with a shower the guest can sidle into sideways, step outside to brush their teeth, but, and this is a fantastically important but, have a toilet all to themself which was used by a stranger yesterday, will be used by a stranger tomorrow, but today is theirs, all theirs! BWAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAHAHAHAHAHA .
I do exaggerate slightly
Times do change, when this house was built around a century ago there seems to have been no bathroom at all - in a house with 10 rooms. There is a more modern shower and loo (for 10 rooms) on the terrace.
When I bought my Victorian flat in Scotland it had been upgraded about 30 years earlier with a bathroom added - many of the people I worked with remembered the days when the loo was at the bottom of the garden. If you had a particularly big family there might be a longer bench seat with two holes in it to shorten the queue
I'm now researching what progress has been made into inventions of portable loos which can be packed into luggage, so that tourists can take their own loos with them. I shall invest heavily and expect to make a FORTUNE since this is obviously the next step forward - why in this day and age should anyone be expected to use a public loo in a restaurant? As for sharing public toilets in an office - well, it is SHOCKING.
Your target market will not be their market.
You will get people like you, and even like me
So - 18 million tourists through Malaga airport last year. Working on 20%, that's 3.6 million possibles for those of us offering spare-room-type accommodation.
If it was only me, kerching kerching KERCHING. But of course many many many like me. Many more have spent the extra and added the private facilities and are charging not a lot more.
This is far from my sole source of income. In fact I'll be happy if across a year I earn enough to cover the house's overheads per annum. But - with 8 out of 10 tourists feeling faint at the prospect of sharing, I guess my market research is done.
The thing is that as long as the results won't be too cramped I can see it improving the house. I'll eventually have a 4 bedroomed house with one full bathroom and 3 shower rooms (and one day, after my premium bonds kick out, a fully-fitted studio flat with kitchen, shower, and own patio) and that sort of makes sense
Anyway you said you insisted on your own facilities
Art and I will be the best guest you have ever had
Art and I were thinking about Amalfi Coast, Pompeii and Naples but that would have to wait coz I wanna see Biff, Molly, Zman ( and hopefully Map ) again!
You need money to run and maintain that place therefore no free-staying/non-paying friends or relatives
Just make sure I get a sound-proof room
But I know, I know, whole world to see and explore. By the time you head round this way again I'll have the studio flat ready and it is completely separate (own staircase even) and completely private and, with special guests in mind, will be soundproofed in cork throughout