Planning the finances for your guest house

  • 11th September 2015
  • News
  • Stewart Hindley

Before you open or take over a guest house, it is important to have a clear understanding of the workload involved. The number of rooms in the property will have a bearing on how much work you need to do. Naturally, there will be more cleaning if you have a large number of rooms, but there will also be additional associated tasks such as organising bookings, preparing breakfast and all of the administrative tasks.

The most important thing for a business owner is to ensure they have enough time to complete all these essential jobs. If it is going to be difficult keeping up with the work, you’ll need to weigh up the costs and benefits of hiring additional help. It is usually better to bear this expense, particularly if it allows you to provide a higher standard of service for visitors.

Hiring external cleaners is one of the easiest options and can free up a great deal of your time. You’ll need to ensure your cleaner will be on hand when you need them, particularly if there is only a short space of time between the end of a stay and the beginning of the next one. One thing that is sure to annoy guests is for them to arrive only to find they can’t check in because their room has not been cleaned yet.

When you do hire in additional help, you need to factor these costs into your budget. You’ll have to pay the staff even if you go through a period where you have few bookings, so you should ensure you will have the funds available to do so.

Taking out a mortgage or re-mortgaging a property could be an option if you need to free up some finance for your business. This money can be used for all kinds of purposes, including meeting staffing costs in the short term and providing funds to purchase new furnishings or for decorating. You should always have the long term viability of your business in mind and a mortgage or re-mortgage is the best way to secure funds; you’ll have the property as security and the interest will be smaller than with other types of loans.

At Stewart Hindley and Partners LLP we offer help and advice for people who are considering entering the hospitality sector and need help with guest house, hotel, B&B and equestrian finance, among various other areas. We can help you when you are in search of a suitable mortgage or remortgage, providing a brokering service that covers a variety of different lenders.

Stewart Hindley

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