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(More customer reviews)If you're planning to open a bed and breakfast as a hobby or with the notion that "you're not really running a business, you're just making profits in your free time," this is not the book for you. This book covers almost all potential areas that you'll need to know to run a professional B&B, and the level of detail will quickly dissuade anyone who isn't serious. That having been said, anyone who does want to run a professional bed and breakfast will find the information invaluable. The forms included on the enclosed CD pay for the book themselves--everything from employment applications to inventory forms, invoices, standard recipe cards, and kitchen safety inspection forms. The book covers all stages of the planning and setup process, including business plans, marketing and promotion, safety, and employees. Particularly useful is the section on marketing, something that most B&Bs that I've known tend to ignore. With a little creativity (and there are lots of suggestions contained in this chapter), your B&B can become part of the very identity of the neighborhood or city you live in, as in, "If you want to capture the flavor of X, go to this B&B!" The only change I would make to the book would be to make the section on writing business plans a more user friendly for those B&B owners who have never opened a business before. Nevertheless, the book contains lots of hardheaded business sense, presented plainly and clearly, with many good examples of existing B&Bs to illustrate the point. While you may not need all the information included when you first open your business, this book will provide you with lots of options for a time when you're able to expand. I recommend this book to anyone seriously considering going into the B&B business as a business, rather than just a way of pouring money down the drain!
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How to Open a Financially Successful Bed & Breakfast or Small Hotel: With Companion CD-ROMThis comprehensive handbook with companion CD-ROM will clearly demonstrate how to set up, operate and manage a financially successful bed & breakfast or small hotel. Whatever your reason for wanting to open a bed and breakfast, keep in mind that at it takes more than dreams and rooms to achieve success, it is a business that must show a profit. This book will separate the romantic notions of owning a B&B from the business end. While providing detailed instruction and examples, the author leads you through finding a location that will bring success, learn how to draw up a winning business plan (The Companion CD-ROM has the actual business plan you can use in MS Word TM), how to buy and sell a bed & breakfast, basic cost control systems, profitable menu planning, Reservation Systems, successful kitchen management, equipment layout and planning, food safety & HACCP, housekeeping, successful beverage management, reservation networks, legal concerns, sales and marketing techniques, room rate formulas, arrival, billing, departure, learn how to set up computer systems to save time and money, learn how to hire & keep a qualified professional staff, brand new IRS tip reporting requirements, managing and training employees, generate high profile public relations and publicity, learn low cost internal marketing ideas, low and no cost ways to satisfy customers and build sales, learn how to keep bringing customers back, accounting & bookkeeping procedures, auditing, successful budgeting and profit planning development, as well as thousands of great tips and useful guidelines. There are literally hundreds of innovative ways demonstrated to streamline your business. Learn new ways to make the kitchen, bars, dining room, and front office run smoother and increase performance. Shut down waste, reduce costs, and increase profits. In addition operators will appreciate this valuable resource and reference in their daily activities and as a source of ready-to-use forms, web sites, operating and cost cutting ideas, and mathematical formulas that can be easily applied to their operations. The Companion CD-ROM contains all the forms in the book as well as a sample business plan you can adapt for your own use.
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