Profile picture for the user m
2

How can you be listed as a Bed & Breakfast if you don't offer breakfast?

Hello all.

I have a Bed & Breakfast in the center of Amsterdam and am constantly surprised (and a little bit annoyed) by the huge majority of my direct competitors that a) call themselves a "bed and breakfast" and b) are listed by BDC as "bed and breakfasts"  but don't actually offer breakfast at all!

Surely if you are a 'self catering' establishment, then you should be listed under 'apartments' or as a 'home stay' should you not? To me, the category 'bed and breakfast' leaves very little to the imagination and, if the establishment is advertised as such, then surely both should be offered as a default. Imagine if it was the other way around and guests arrived expecting somewhere to stay for the night but were only offered breakfast, well, no prizes for guessing the result of that situation!

This situation obviously has a negative impact on genuine B&B's as it gives other 'self catering apartments' or 'rooms' if you like, the same level of exposure whilst only having to do a fraction of the work.

Breakfast is a huge part of my business and i pride myself on the quality i deliver, with everything being organic and 100% locally sourced, only drinks and cleaning products being bought from the supermarket. The time spent in sourcing all my produce, the daily shop and then getting up every morning to cook my guests a fabulous breakfast probably consumes 75% of my total working hours and so to have this quality almost negated by search listing categorisations that fail to highlight these huge selling points, leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

The other issue is that It puts all B&B's at an unfair price disadvantage, as of course, if you don't have to account for all the time and cost to provide what i mentioned above you can be listed that much cheaper and so, depending on the choice of result sorting, I can end up being right down the bottom of the list because of having to include breakfast costs in my pricing that the majority of other listings, don't have to consider.

 

It's for all the reasons i mention above that French "chambre d'hotes" law stipulates that in order to run a B&B you MUST offer breakfast, and whilst i'm generally never in favour of legislative solutions i would like to see BDC at least respect the efforts of those not just trying to make as much money as they can for the least amount of work but give genuine B&B's a category where they can shine along side each other rather than being lost in a list of mediocrity.

I'd love to hear your thoughts as I can't be the only one out there that feels like this or perhaps it's me and i am being stupid in creating all this extra work for myself unnecessarily .. ppffff

Got to go to bed now as i've got to be up early to cook breakfast for everyone!

Night night

Matt

(From a search result of 177 B&B's found in Amsterdam during mid week dates in February only 36 of those included breakfast. 94 were stated as self catering and of the remaining balance, some charged extra for breakfast but mostly they were neither self catering, nor offering breakfast).


Profile picture for the user c
3
cassid 5 years ago

Hey Matt, a BnB can offer a room rate only just like a hotel.

I just stopped doing breakfasts. I never charged for them and it was free but found too many people were abusing it and taking food away to eat all day long. One particular couple just pushed me over the edge during the summer, they ate more than the cost of their booking.

I have learnt people don't appreciate what's free. So I have stopped doing breakfast but if guests want to order breakfast then it will be provided it will cost.

I have a selections of about 10 teas/coffees and brioche/croissants that I provide for guests now and its in the guest sitting room, they can have that.

My life is 10 times easier now. I wrote to about 20 guests and asked would they prefer breakfast or lower room rate and all 20 said lower room rate so for now, that's what I am doing. My days involved shopping, baking as well as running the cleaning/admin side, just too much for one.