Turn your home into Britain’s best B&B
It’s every retiree’s dream — making your house pay you a pension. Here, frazzled landlady LIZ HODGKINSON meets the woman who knows how to...
When I decided to do the new middle-class thing and rent out my spare room on the Airbnb website, I thought there was nothing to it. I would welcome guests, show them to the spare room then sit back to watch the money roll in.
Three years down the line, I now know it is extremely hard work. Your house gets ruined by guests banging their luggage against your white walls, the carpets wear out and your time is no longer your own. I have found myself often ironing sheets at midnight and the amount of housework tripled or quadrupled.
And as for the guests! I have been asked to do things well beyond the call of duty, such as sew buttons on shirts and take people to the station. Some guests arrived at 3am, while others have left at 5am sharp, asking if they could have breakfast first.
My worst experience, I think, was when five women trooped up after only two had booked. ‘But I only have one room and two beds!’ I screamed in panic. ‘That’s fine, we have sleeping bags,’ they said. What was I to do, turn them out into the night?
Several middle-aged men sneaked in secret girlfriends, while one woman, who only paid for herself, smuggled in her two teenage daughters.
So, for the moment, I am giving my home and my nerves a much-needed breather. But countless others are still at it. There are about 168,000 Airbnb listings in the UK, while more than 22,000 B&Bs are signed up to the UK’s Bed and Breakfast Directory.
The person behind each one presumably thinking the same at the start as I did — it would be easy money for hardly any effort.
So I am intrigued to meet Wendy Veale, whose Cotswolds B&B has just been voted the best in europe, and fourth-best in the world, on the TripAdvisor reviews website.
Whatever must the other three be like, I wonder as I walk into her establishment, for which the word ‘immaculate’ is an understatement. It is not just clean, it gleams, and everything, down to the fresh flowers and carefully folded bathrobes, is colour co-ordinated.
PERHAPS unsurprisingly, 59-year-old Wendy herself is colour co-ordinated, to match her décor. ‘I only use four colours, Dulux bathstone beige, natural hessian, sage green and stone,’ she says, as we sit in her vast living room.
Before opening her B&B ten years ago, Wendy was a food and interiors stylist for magazines and companies including Marks & Spencer. When she saw that The Old School was for sale, she felt she could make it work as an upmarket B&B.
‘The property was too big and too expensive for just the two of us,’ she explains. ‘And although I haven’t had any training, my mother ran a hotel.’
Wendy and her partner John, a landscape architect, have their own living quarters in the house, separate from the four guest bedrooms.
On my Airbnb review page, a few visitors have drawn attention, rather embarrassingly, to spiders on the ceiling, a lack of variety for breakfast — I offer only toast, cereal, tea or coffee — and mould in the shower.
I scour The Old School’s entry, halfhoping to find at least one disgruntled customer. Instead, there are 800 glowing reviews. her grateful guests cannot find enough superlatives to praise the service that is frequently lauded as ‘beyond five stars’.
‘The most important thing is to have a natural empathy,’ she tells me. ‘You have to genuinely like people and want to please them. Also, a love of entertaining must be in the blood.
‘I love giving dinner parties and treat my guests like friends. I am also always here to meet them and show them to their rooms. They can have a supper tray if they like, or afternoon tea with my homemade shortbread.
’I gulp. My choice of toast or breakfast cereal seems rather spartan.
Wendy’s guests have cotton napkins at breakfast, clean every day. She also keeps a folder on each guest and notes their likes and dislikes.
For many years, she styled food and interiors for magazines and TV programmes, a job that requires a strong aesthetic eye. You can see this in the way the cushions and ornaments are arranged — nothing is just plonked down — and although the rooms are impeccably clean and tidy, with a countryhouse feel, they are also cosy and welcoming. ‘I’m not a hospital!’ she laughs.
Another vital aspect of her success is time management. ‘I am up at 6am and I set aside a couple of hours each day for office work. Then I am strict about check-in and check-out times and when I serve breakfast.
‘Otherwise you risk running ragged all day with beds not ready, people still eating breakfast at 11am and guests arriving at midnight.
’Quite. I tried to be strict with my guests, but they were always asking to check in early, and I would often find some still in bed at noon.
Wendy’s guest rooms are all different and each has a matching en suite. The beds are super king-size and the bathrooms show-home splendid. Giant fluffy white towels hang on heated rails and there are Jo Malone toiletries waiting to be used.
With bedlinen — a landlady’s biggest headache — Wendy is equally particular: ‘I have high-quality, white
Egyptian cotton sheets and send them to the laundry twice a week. Professionally laundered linen is a must if you want to get the highest rating.’
Longer- stay guests gets fresh sheets every three or four days.
She adds: ‘When it comes to towels, though, I do them at home as they must be tumble dried, otherwise they soon get hard. The huge fluffy towels are much appreciated by my guests. It’s a touch of luxury they love.’
Some of my guests complained that the towels ‘weren’t great’, and, I have to admit, some date back to the Nineties. It is always a temptation to try to cut corners when hosting guests, but Wendy never does. ‘Even my sausages are the highest quality,’ she tells me proudly.
At £135 a night, Wendy’s B&B is right at the upper end of the price range (I charged £80), but as she points out, it costs a lot to run a high- end establishment. ‘A big cost is electricity and it’s £25 a time to service each room. Then I am registered for VAT, so that is £27 off each booking.’
She points out it costs a lot to keep everything sparkling — professional oven cleaners visit twice a year and her carpets are done every three months!
‘The Visit Britain inspectors come round every year to make sure standards are maintained. They are always looking for something to criticise, so there is never any room for complacency.
‘As for The Good Food Guide inspectors, they just turn up, and other inspectors make appointments at short notice, so there is no chance to do a deep clean or redecorate a room.
‘They will nitpick about a worn thread on the stair carpet, and lighting is one of their favourites. They will inspect how often you turn the mattresses and look carefully at the bathrooms for signs of mould.’
So FAR, Wendy has nothing to worry about, as The old School has been assessed at fivestar gold level, which few B&Bs in Britain attain.
It’s not remotely surprising when you see the breakfast menu. Fresh fruits of all kinds, compote, bacon, sausages, smoked salmon, mushrooms, homemade porridge, and, of course, eggs. These are not your standard supermarket variety but produced by Wendy’s own hens and ducks.
Wendy does not take online bookings. ‘I like to know something about my guests before they arrive as this place is also my home and I don’t want complete strangers tramping through the house,’ she explains.
‘So we chat on the phone first to make sure we are a good fit and I always write a welcome letter.’
With the wisdom of 11 years’ experience, her strongest advice is: ‘ Set out your stall. Be very clear about what you will offer and stick to it. Yes, it’s a wonderful accolade to be the best B&B in the whole of Europe but, by God, I’ve had to work for it.’
Somehow I don’t think I could ever reach Wendy’s standard, but her dedication is so inspiring it has me dreaming of becoming a gracious hostess once more.
At the very least, I could bin those decades-old bath towels.
The Old School Bed And Breakfast, Little Compton, Gloucester - shire GL56 0SL (01608 674 588).