Guests who outstay their welcome

[Sue: White Horse Walking Holidays]

We're wondering how others cope when guests are having such a good time they don't want to leave. This has happened on a couple of Sunday mornings recently, both times when guests have late evening flights back out of the country. They stay up late and are very late for breakfast even though you've agreed it for 9am. I find it really difficult to ask them to hurry up when they have been perfectly nice all week. I suspect we are too lenient with guests, treating them as friends rather than customers. Should we toughen up a bit, be more aloof? And yet the friendliness of the environment is what really impresses people. It's a bit tricky as the house layout means they do have to encroach on our personal space at times. Times are clearly marked in our guest information (4pm to 10am) but that's in a folder, perhaps I should put a notice in the rooms too?

It means a tremnendous rush to get things ready for our next guests when it would in fact be quite nice to get done and have a couple of hours off.

[joyce_taylor]

We test our fire alarms every Sunday morning we explain to guests that this is a legal requirement and it would be best if they were out of the building by the time we do it. It also means we never forget to test the alarms.

[Martin]

We charge £10 per hour for check-outs after 10am, which we put in place after a few occurrences of the type you describe. Guests are welcome to use our conservatory area after 10am, but we do need them out of the rooms. We've yet to actually charge anyone, and we're entirely reasonable about it, in that if we've got a lot of rooms running then it's no big deal if a couple of them stay in the room until 11am. First come first served on that front.

Cheers,

Martin.

[Sue: White Horse Walking Holidays]

Present guests were very reluctant to leave yesterday (they're staying until tomorrow morning). At 11am I asked if they would be going out shortly but was told 'she' was washing her hair and was tired (because they were out late - forgot their key so I had to stay up to lock up!) 'He' said he'd go out and leave her here. Great - I insisted they go out, which they finally did at 12 noon. I suggested I could add a charge but he didn't seem keen on that. I explained that I might want to go out and couldn't leave a guest here whilst doing so. (I do sometimes but I want it to be my choice if I do so). I did the testing of smoke alarms thing buty of course, it didn't actually help!

Do you have notices up in the rooms (my info is in folders which I suppose not everyone reads) explaining when guests can be in the property? I stress check-in is after 4pm when taking bookings. Is this a good time to explain to guests they need to be out of the house between 10am and 4pm? A regular guest suggests I should be doing this.

Incidentally, our earliest check-in was 10am which wa a bit of a shock (an American). Today someone (Canadian) arrived at 2pm but I was in the shower (running late due to green assessment all morning). I've no idea where they've gone but the car's here!

[joyce_taylor]

We have notices on the back of the doors with the current room rate (as advised by Visit Britain lady) and on the bottom of that we have printed Forest View closes every day between 10am. and 4pm (in reality we tell long stays to just give us a few hours for housekeeping and we do their `bit` first and do the changeover rooms last)

[Sue: White Horse Walking Holidays]

We have notices on the back of the doors with the current room rate (as advised by Visit Britain lady) and on the bottom of that we have printed Forest View closes every day between 10am. and 4pm (in reality we tell long stays to just give us a few hours for housekeeping and we do their `bit` first and do the changeover rooms last)

That's a great idea. I'm very flexible but don't like people taking advantage, especially at weekends as my husband has a full-time job and wants at least a couple of free hours at weekends to relax (once he's finished the washing up!)