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I think it also depends on whereabouts you are … I would have thought that Southwold and Aldeburgh for instance are definitely “white 300 thread count” places, Felixstowe not so much. Families spending all day on the beach may actually prefer to take their own bedding so they don’t have to worry about messing up the host’s sheets.
And there’s nothing wrong with “cheap and cheerful” as long as it’s good value for your target market, clean and homely - and there’s the wonderful Suffolk coastline to explore!
Here in the states the traditional British quilts are very popular. Many bed and breakfast places use them, especially in the New England area. The Amish also have gorgeous quilts.
This is an interesting problem and we have it all the time at our place because we don’t have enough data to make the decision.
You are incurring cost plus increasing the complexity of your operation and you don’t know for sure whether it’ll pay off.
The corporate people have case studies to fall back on and they know exactly how much to expect sales to increase with an upgrade in their facilities. You also have to factor in possible return visitors who liked your place enough to rebook.
What we come down to is this: how many more nights will you be able to rent the place if you do the upgrade. In the case of your linen system the answer may be that the increases rentals will be negligible and it isnt worth the trouble.
At our place we have found that since we are far below 100 percent occupancy anything cheap we can do to make the customer experience better we are willing to do on principle. We may rethink this later on.
So I guess the question for you is: how big will your investment be and how many addition sales nights will it take to get your money back?
My husband and I travel to the UK almost every year. We fly in from the US. We would never consider renting a place that didn’t provide bed and bath linens for obvious reasons. Being able to provide linens would broaden the number of potential customers for your rental.
Linens can be costly to buy and maintain. Perhaps there is a linen service that could provide them and you could offer guests the option of you providing the linens (for a fee) and then just get them from the linen service as needed?
I think it all hinges on whether you feel that you need to increase your bookings or not. If you are happy with the amount of business you’re getting then I don’t think it’s necessary to change anything. But if you’d like to increase your field of potential guests, then offering the option of providing linens for an additional fee might work.
I don’t think you’re our target market Keugenia! We know our market and I’m coming to the conclusion from comments here that we should maybe tweak our offer but provision of linen may not be worth it!
