Bed and breakfast business plan for San Marcos Hill Country

Bed and Breakfast Business Plan

Targeted Area

The area where I would suggest a bed and breakfast is somewhere in the region known as the Hill Country in central Texas. The Hill Country is noted for its scenery. It begins just north of Austin, continues to San Antonio and extends to the west. The suggested road trip in National Geographic begins in San Antonio, goes though Bandera, Kerrville, Fredericksburg, Enchanted Rock, Johnson City, and New Braunfels, then returns to San Antonio (Kelly, 2012). It has a number of noted restaurants, dance halls, antique shops, picturesque vistas, state parks, and bars, with a German flair reflecting some of the earlier settlers in the area.

Specifically, I would target an area just outside of San Marcos, which is off of the suggested route for the road trip, but firmly in the area known as the Hill Country. San Marcos is close to both New Braunfels and Gruene, two cities that have significant attractions. New Braunfels features Schlitterbahn Waterpark, which is an outdoor waterpark featuring slides, tube chutes, and other rides. Unlike most other waterparks, Schlitterbahn encompasses some of the natural nearby river features. Nearby Gruene, which is considered the historic district of New Braunfels, features Gruene Hall, which is the oldest continuously operated dance hall in Texas. Both of these are significant tourist features that attract people to the area.

One of the biggest draws of the Hill Country is the natural landscape. The area features a wide variety of local rivers, and people travel to the area to enjoy the environment. Multiple rivers pass through San Marcos, which is widely known for its tubing opportunities, with people traveling to the area to gently float down the river. Locating north of San Marcos, a bed and breakfast could literally be located on the river. It could serve as a beginning point for people seeking to float down the river, and the landscape could also provide the backdrop for bed and breakfast.

Three Strategies to Implement

There are different strategies one can use to try to ensure the success of a new business venture. The first thing that a business needs to do is set itself apart from the competition in some way. The second thing that a business needs to do is engage in successful marketing that increases recognition of the business. Finally, and perhaps most important, the business needs to ensure that it lives up to the expectations of the clientele.

This bed and breakfast will target a younger clientele; families with children. It will consist of six themed suites, with a romantic bedroom for mom and dad and an attached bunk-style room specifically for children. The two rooms will share a common theme, but the adult room will be very romantic, while the child room will be child friendly. One of the rooms will have a fairy-tale theme, with the adult room decorated like a castle room, complete with faux brickwork on the walls, and the child room decorated with fairies, unicorns, elves, and other fairy tale characters. Another of the rooms will have a pirate theme, with the adult room decorated like the captain's quarters of a fictional pirate ship, and the child room decorated in a pirate ship theme. A third room will have a Texas theme, with the master bedroom decorated like a field of bluebonnets, with a large skylight opening up to the night sky, and the kids' room decorated like an old-fashioned cattle drive camp sight. Similar themes will be used in the other rooms. With these themes, people will be able to choose a specific bed and breakfast themes.

The second strategy to implement is the marketing strategy. People actively look for bed and breakfasts in the area, so maintaining a web presence is important, as is contact with the local chambers of commerce. However, it is also important to drive business to the area. One way to do so is to use social media and group coupon websites such as Groupon, Living Social, and Urban Dealight to offer dramatically reduced rates as a means of enticing people to visit the bed and breakfast. The use of social media will help quantify the marketing efforts, because one can look at the number of visitors prior to implementing the plan compared to the number of visitors after implementing the plan, and will also directly track visitors who are there because of the coupon-site (Arizona Office of Tourism, Unk.).

The third component of the strategy implementation has to be excellent customer service. When people go to a bed and breakfast, they expect a much higher degree of personalized service than people who go to a chain hotel or motel. Bed and breakfasts that fail to offer excellent customer service will fail to thrive. Bed and breakfasts have to strike a balance between feeling homey and offering an appropriate level of service to make people feel pampered and spoiled.

Use of Technology

The importance of technology in driving a new business cannot possibly be overstated. Running the actual bed and breakfast is not technology-intensive. The business is small enough that it could be successfully managed without technology. However, technology is an invaluable marketing tool. For this particular business, it is believed that deep discount sites will help drive business. This is not an uncontroversial position, as some people feel that deep discount sites do not drive profits for a business. However, a 2011 study by Edelman et al. investigated whether these deep discount programs could increase profitability. What they found was that, "For vouchers to provide successful price discrimination, the valuations of consumers who have access to vouchers must systematically differ from|and typically be lower than those of consumers who do not have access to voucher" (Edelman et al., 2011). In other words, these discounts have to be significant and should not be available from similar sites. In addition, they should be used for emerging businesses; once the business is established and word of mouth is driving visitors, it would be a bad business practice to continue to offer deep discounts, because those discounts might actually decrease the profitability of each business transaction. Using technology to track the profitability of promotional programs and for other record-keeping might be the most appropriate means of ensuring that the company's technology is actually increasing business.

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