With the popularity of shared accommodation platforms like Airbnb and the like taking off, it is becoming easier for anyone to turn their home into rentable accommodation. However, with the threat of regulation of these digital platforms ever-looming, many accommodation providers want to take the leap of converting their homes or current guesthouses into boutique hotels.
Not only will this ultimately yield higher rental income when you can advertise your guesthouse as a boutique hotel, it also places your accommodation in a different category. But will it be easy to turn your guesthouse into a boutique hotel? What does it entail?
While it won’t necessarily be smooth sailing, it’s entirely doable when you approach it with the right attitude and have all your ducks in a row. Let’s take a look at 10 ways that you can turn your guesthouse into a boutique hotel and start earning more from your business.
1. Make Your Guesthouse’s Size Work For You
Boutique hotels are typically small, with anywhere from six to ten to perhaps one or two dozen rooms. This makes boutique hotels more intimate in scale, creating a great ambiance of being a guest in a personalized setting, rather than as a general hotel occupant. You are already one step ahead in turning your guesthouse into a boutique hotel if you make its smaller size work for you.
2. Exemplify Your New Boutique Hotel’s Individuality
One aspect that defines each boutique hotel is its uniqueness. Successful boutique hotels have a distinctive vibe and won’t ever try and duplicate another hotel. Highlight your property’s own unique points, whether it’s great views or architectural appeal. Find the few things that set your guesthouse apart and build your boutique hotel around that.
3. Invest In The Boutique Hotel’s Design
Investing in upscaling your guesthouse’s interior and architectural design will help you set it apart for all the right reasons. A boutique hotel’s architecture and interior design are as unique as its operations. When you combine it with the details of your environment, the opportunities are endless. Create a homey and quaint feel, aim for royalty, or go for a contemporary and modern look, you will have more than enough options available.
4. Enhance the Character Of Your New Boutique Hotel
Most successful boutique hotels offer guests an eccentric personality. They are funky and fun, and oftentimes offbeat. This quirky design might come across in various creative ways, like having a farm kitchen theme for a restaurant where chickens and ducks run freely.
5. Get Your Permits In Order
If you want to formalize the change from a guesthouse to a boutique hotel, chances are you may need to change your company’s registration or operating permit. This is especially true if you have been operating in the informal sector and attracting the majority of your guests through accommodation sites like Airbnb. Make sure you are registered as an accommodation provider and that all your ducks are in a row with regards to local municipal laws as well.
6. Decide How Many Guests You’re Aiming For
Aside from keeping your boutique hotel small and intimate so as to protect and advance its character, you have to take into account the practical implications of having more guests on your property. This includes making sure that your property’s plumbing can handle the extra loads, and that practicalities such as extra-safe parking is available. You don’t want to end up alienating your neighbors with the extra activity going on in and around the property.
7. Offer Highly Personalized Service
Another part of the evolution from a guesthouse to a boutique hotel is having the staff and infrastructure in place to offer your guests the highly personalized service they expect from a boutique hotel. Offering unique and luxurious amenities such as custom toiletries and extensive pillow menus might just be what sets you apart from the competition. You also want to know that your staff are specifically equipped to deal with customers in a way that is proudly representative of your boutique hotel.
8. Liquor License
Skipping out on an on-site bar and restaurant could be a devastating loss to your income. If at all possible, apply for a liquor license so that you may be able to provide your guests with any number of world-famous wines and a selection of other alcoholic beverages throughout their stay. Not everyone drinks alcohol, but for those who love a glass of wine with dinner or a nightcap before bed, they will be incredibly appreciative that you have catered to them.
9. Cuisine And Dining
Restaurants and bars of boutique hotels tend to be trendy and offer locally-sourced food. Your immediate area probably already offers such an incredibly diverse range of cuisines that you can delight your guests with the best menu options they’ll find. Offering authentic and quality cuisine in cocktail atmospheres will make your boutique hotel that much more popular among guests and even locals.
10. Clientele
The last thing to complete the conversion of your guesthouse into a boutique hotel is the realization that you will need to start attracting and targeting different guests. You will probably have to start amending your branding and marketing campaigns and accept that you are operating in the big leagues now.
Doing opposition research and getting to know the boutique hotel sector is a great departure point for understanding the needs and expectations of your new clientele. Incorporating other strategies such as heightened social media and influencer marketing in your guesthouse’s evolution into a boutique hotel is also essential in today’s everchanging tech-savvy world.
These are only a few of the many ways that you can approach evolving your guesthouse into a celebrated and popular boutique hotel. You already have everything you need to form the basis of a successful hotel. Let it all come together by crossing your t’s and dotting your I’s and you are well on your way to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of them.
