Practical basics of organizing a guest house. Guest house as a business

The equipment and inventory of the guest house must ensure a fairly comfortable and safe stay for clients.

It is advisable to start furnishing guest house rooms only with the required items and equipment. It is recommended to complete the complete set later, when the owner of the guest house gains experience and determines the target customer segment.

Particular attention should be paid to the quality and sanitary condition of mandatory equipment and inventory. The bed, floor, doors, windows should not creak. Equipment and inventory should not emit unpleasant odors. It is advisable that the guest room be furnished taking into account a harmonious combination of colors and shapes of furniture and objects. Excessive luxury is not needed, especially if it contrasts with poor functioning of the bathroom, lack of hot water, or low temperature in the home. Additional comfort is achieved by installing an air conditioner or fan. The presence of a comfortable bathroom and water supply in the guest house will be a significant component in determining the cost of services.

Guest house owners are recommended to have several sets of bed linen and a set of towels. Upon check-in, the client receives a set of clean, ironed linen without foreign odors. It is advisable that the bed be prepared before guests arrive: pillowcases are put on the pillows, the sheet is tucked under the mattress, a blanket is tucked into the duvet cover (except for hot months, when the duvet cover and blanket are made separately: the blanket is on top of the blanket covering the bed).

In a rural guest house it is necessary to provide:

• availability of communication;
• emergency lighting, except natural and artificial (lanterns, candles, batteries, diesel generator);
• cold water supply with a reserve of at least a day;
• hot water supply (electric heating, heating);
• the ability to use a bathhouse and shower at least once every 3 days;
• Internet is increasingly becoming a popular service and will be an additional advantage when choosing a guest house.

It is advisable to provide the following premises in the guest house, in addition to the living room:

• bathroom with appropriate equipment (lamp, basket, holder);
• room for catering or for self-cooking (with appropriate equipment);
• room (place) for washing and drying clothes (with equipment and supplies);
• washing room (shower, bath);
• room/part of the room for relaxation, watching TV shows;
• pantry, closet (place) for storing personal belongings.

• bed (single 80x90cm, double 160x190cm), mattress (at least 8 cm thick), mattress pad, bed linen;
• bedside tables (chest of drawers);
• chair (according to the number of people living in the room);
• wardrobe (equipped place with hangers for clothes);
• chandelier on the ceiling or sconce above the bed;
• entrance lighting switches;
• thick curtains for light insulation;
• mosquito or midge net (if necessary);
• trash can.

Requirements for the range of services in the guest house:

• 24-hour reception;
• food services or conditions for its preparation;
• cleaning the living room for each tourist visit, including making the beds;
• use of color TV, electric stove and refrigerator, bathhouse (shower) (once every 3 days) and first aid kit;
• rental of boats, gear, motor transport services, tourist and excursion services, use of telephone, smokehouse, barbecue, etc.
• change of bed linen - at least once a week, change of towels at least once every 3 days (or provision of a replacement set of bed linen and towels);
• CLEANING: daily routine cleaning is desirable (full cleaning of guest rooms), daily intermediate (garbage is removed from ashtrays, tables, trash cans, beds, bathrooms), post-check-out cleaning is required (guest room is cleaned, walls are washed, dust is removed, carpets are washed, lamps, windows and window frames are washed).

One of the factors ensuring the economic efficiency of a guest house is trained and experienced staff. The guest house can be managed by staff from 1 to 3 people, depending on the number of beds and the intensity of client arrivals.

For a guest house to operate effectively, its staff must meet certain requirements. Unlike an ordinary hotel, where the work of each employee is strictly regulated, in a guest house the staff is obliged to perform several types of work with equal quality.

High demands are placed on the health of guest house staff. Guest house staff must have basic knowledge and skills in providing first aid to a sick or injured client, firefighting techniques and evacuation of people in emergency situations.

If the premises provided to clients have any features that impair its consumer properties, they must be warned about them in advance. This could be, for example, unavoidable night noise beyond the control of the owners of the guest house, the smell of dampness when living on the ground floor, etc.

Towels. The number of towels for each client must be at least three. They are placed in a stack in the bathroom, and in its absence - at the head of the bed. The large towel is for the body, the medium one is for the legs, and the small one is for the arms.

Sleeping area. The bed should be of moderate hardness. A sofa is generally considered a lower quality bed.

Toilet. An area of ​​special attention for owners and guests. Essentially, this is the “calling card” of the house. There should be no odor in the toilet.

Food is an integral part of running a guest house. Guest house establishments have an advantage over regular hotels in catering, since the guest house serves a limited number of guests. At the same time, you can take into account the tastes and desires of each guest individually.

Therefore, it is necessary to remember the following rules of catering:

• find out the guest’s wishes, whether food preferences depend on religion, resistance to allergens, etc.;
• inform the guest about your signature homemade dishes;
• Agree on the menu with the guest in advance.

After the impressions received from visiting attractive places, for any tourist the second condition for a quality trip is his own and property safety.

The safety of guest house clients is ensured by external and internal factors. External factors do not depend on the owners of the guest house. These include the general political and socio-economic environment for doing business, the quantitative and qualitative level of crime in the country in general and the region in particular. There is no country in which there is absolutely no crime. The predisposition to theft and hooliganism does not depend on nationality, but is determined by the social environment in which the population lives.

Internal safety factors are entirely up to the guest house owners. These usually include issues of safe accommodation for clients, compliance with sanitary and hygienic requirements when preparing food and purchasing food, ensuring local fire and epidemic safety in the house, and compliance with safety precautions when using household electrical appliances.

In addition to standard accommodation and food services, the remaining services provided to clients in the guest house are classified as additional, which are necessary to increase competitiveness, etc. The qualitative and quantitative composition of additional services is determined by the owners of guest houses independently, depending on the current demand from clients.

Conflict situations may arise in the tourism or hotel business. Tourists are, first of all, consumers who pay to have a pleasant, most comfortable, interesting and tireless pastime. There are near-conflict and conflict situations.

Near-conflict situations are mainly generated by a significant difference between the expectations of the tourist and his specific impressions received from the trip and accommodation. For example, the cost of guest house services seemed too high to the tourist in the absence of the necessary living and sanitary conditions (no hot water, cold toilet in the yard, etc.). In this case, the owner of the guest house must take a reasonable approach to the issue of pricing and maintaining parity of the guest house “price-quality”. In most cases, experienced owners do not allow near-conflict situations to arise, and if they arise, they try to resolve the problem situation through negotiations or concessions at their own expense , since a small concession to one picky client will not bring big losses to the guest house economy.

Sometimes conflicts arise. In most cases, they are associated with so-called “difficult” clients, which usually include overly demanding guests. However, in the practice of guest houses, conflict situations occur less frequently than in hotels, since the owners of guest houses treat guests very carefully.

The area adjacent to the guest house must be cleared, equipped, have lighting, and a place for parking vehicles. An equipped place for recreation outside the home with appropriate equipment (gazebo, barbecue, smokehouse, cauldron, tandoor, etc.) may be provided on the territory. It is advisable to designate, inspect and, if possible, improve places for active recreation and swimming.

Promoting guest house services on the market involves searching for a specific consumer niche. Ideally, this should not be a simple provision of food and overnight accommodation, but a range of services that attract tourists (including the recreational attractiveness of the area). Each guest house farm must be competitive, and this is achieved by its specific features and uniqueness. Finding and promoting such features to the tourist market is a complex task that includes elements of science and art. Guest house owners must search and find their own exclusive forms of attracting customers. This is the key to their success.

First of all, you need to decide on your potential clients. To do this, we need to answer the questions: who are they, what is their social status and, therefore, their solvency? Will they be transit travelers or tourists focused on doing eco-tours? The owner of the guest house must study the potential possibilities of his territory, find out the possibilities of visiting specially protected areas, fishing, and collecting wild plants.

Effective promotion of guest house services means that a potential client makes a choice in favor of this particular accommodation facility rather than another, spending a minimum of time and energy on it. Good accessibility (mainly by transport, less often on foot) is of great importance for clients. If the guest house is located at a distance from a public transport stop or from a highway, care should be taken to transport tourists directly to their place of residence.

Numerous image factors are of no small importance for attracting and retaining customers in a guest house. In general, they determine the atmosphere of the house, its comfort. What matters is the hospitality of the owners, the interior and non-aggressive painting of the interior, order in the yard, cleanliness of the home and especially utility rooms.

Another success factor is consistency of service. It means that customers are guaranteed to receive the ordered service “no matter what.”

The project involves the construction and operation of a guest house on its own land plot located on the Azov coast of the Krasnodar Territory. The facility is located in close proximity to the city of Yeisk.

Required investments - 13.8 million rubles. The project is characterized by a high level of costs and a significant payback period, but the risks are minimal, and the market is quite stable.

The main competitive advantage of the project is the high level of quality of services, including the availability of a wide range of additional services. The advantage of a guest house over a hotel lies in much simpler procedures for registering a business and registering with supervisory authorities. In addition, the project does not require highly qualified personnel, a complex organizational structure or business process structure.

Key indicators of the project's economic efficiency are given in Table. 4.

Description of the industry and company

The goal of the project is the construction of a guest house in the resort area (Azov coast of the Krasnodar Territory, Yeisk district). The advantage of a guest house over a hotel is a much simpler operating scheme: there is no need to convert the land plot to the commercial category, there is no need for a star rating, there is no need to organize a restaurant, etc. The guest house's room capacity can reach 20-30 rooms, which is fully consistent with the goals of the project. The main target group is vacationers during the holiday season, from the beginning of May to the end of September.

In recent years, interest in domestic tourism in Russia has been growing, which is associated with a number of economic and political factors: the annexation of Crimea, the popularization of domestic tourist destinations at the state level, a decrease in the solvency of the population, armed conflicts in the Middle East, etc.

According to the World Tourism Organization, in 2014, Russia was visited by about 28 million tourists from abroad, which places it in 9th place in the world in terms of tourist attractiveness.

According to Rosstat, from 1995 to 2011 the influx of foreign tourists to Russia increased by 27%. On the other hand, in the same period, Russians also mastered many foreign tourist destinations - primarily beach destinations: Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Greece, Bulgaria. In 2010, the number of domestic tourists was 32 million. Unfortunately, similar data for recent years are not presented in open sources of Rosstat or the Federal Agency for Tourism. However, it should be assumed that in 2015 domestic tourism destinations were in even greater demand than in previous years; and in 2016, we can expect unprecedented growth in the industry.

The main obstacle to the growing popularity of domestic destinations is the undeveloped infrastructure: relatively low quality of rooms, service, lack of a wide range of services; all this against the backdrop of a fairly high price level.

The coast of the Sea of ​​Azov today represents a slightly more economical holiday option compared to the Black Sea coast of the Krasnodar Territory or Crimea. In particular, Yeisk Spit is visited by vacationers even from remote regions, such as the Novosibirsk region, Yamal Autonomous Okrug, etc. However, the main share of visitors are guests directly from the Krasnodar Territory and the Rostov Region, who come to relax on the weekend. Territorial and price accessibility allow us to achieve a higher level of occupancy of the guest house compared to a hotel on the Black Sea coast.
Competition in the region under consideration is much lower than on the Black Sea coast, and the same applies to the level of service. Consequently, the company that offers the most complete range of services and their high quality will be popular. This is planned to be used as the main competitive advantage of the project.

The guest house itself is a 3-storey building with a basement and an adjacent area with parking and a recreation area for guests. On the ground floor there is a reception area, a kitchen, as well as living quarters for the owners and staff; in the basement there is a laundry room, a boiler room and other technical and auxiliary rooms. The room capacity consists of 10 rooms with a total capacity of 30 people (6 double and 6 triple rooms). The distance of the guest house in a straight line from the coastline is 800 m, from the public beach - 1200 m; The guest house is within easy reach of public transport for the convenience of guests without a car. It is assumed that you can cook your own food in the equipped kitchen, as well as on the grill located in the adjacent territory.

The management structure of the guest house is also simple. Management is carried out by the owner of the project, being constantly at the guest house. Auxiliary functions for cleaning the house and territory, doing laundry, etc. performed by seasonal hired workers from among local residents. Highly qualified personnel are not required.

The total area of ​​the guest house is 600 sq.m. Investment costs for construction and finishing of the building are calculated based on average market prices of construction companies - 18,000 rubles. / sq.m. and amount to 10.8 million rubles. Equipment of the building and territory - about 3.0 million rubles. Total - 13.8 million rubles, which are supposed to be taken on credit for a period of 18 months.

All rooms are equipped with split systems, TVs and bathrooms with showers. Creating additional seats in each room is possible through the use of chair beds.

As a form of ownership, it is advisable to choose an individual entrepreneur with a simplified taxation system (the object of taxation is income). The owner performs the main management and commercial functions.

Description of services

The guest house provides, first of all, guest accommodation services, usually short-term - on average up to 10 days. To ensure competitiveness, it is planned to provide a number of related services, most of them free of charge. The full list of services is presented in Table. 1.

The price segment of the project is average; At the same time, the quality of services and the condition of the room stock are above average. This will attract more guests and ensure their loyalty for repeat visits and recommendations.

Table 1. List of services

Licensing of services is not required, confirmation of hotel category is not required. It is necessary to obtain permits from the fire service and the Consumer Supervision Authority.

Sales and Marketing

According to Rosstat, the hotel services market in 2014 decreased compared to 2013, which is associated with a decrease in the solvency of the population and savings in money. There is a decrease in expenses for both tourist and business trips. However, the 2015 results, obtained by extrapolating data from the first three quarters, remain at the 2014 level. At the same time, profit and profitability indicators are growing, reaching record levels.

Figure 1. Dynamics of the main financial indicators of the hotel services market in Russia in 2011-2015, thousand rubles/%

It should be expected that the main decline in the market will occur due to business travel, and the tourist segment will grow in all respects. This is caused, as mentioned above, by the popularization of domestic resorts, infrastructure development and blocking of popular tourist destinations.

The popularity of the Yeisk Spit as a tourist area is due to the mild climate, tourist infrastructure in the immediate vicinity (Yaysk) - a water park, dolphinarium, oceanarium, cafes, restaurants, parks, etc. In addition, this microregion is popular in terms of outdoor activities, primarily windsurfing. In addition, 40 km from Yeisk there is Khanskoe Lake, famous for its healing mud and iodine-bromine and hydrogen sulfide mineral water springs. Thus, we can only talk about the prospects for the growing popularity of Yeisk and the Yeisk Spit as a resort.

In a broad sense, any hospitality enterprises located in a given microregion can be considered as competitors: boarding houses, hotels, mini-hotels and guest houses. Their total number is about 100 units. However, given the different level of services provided and positioning, only guest houses - about 30 units - should still be considered direct competitors. The main disadvantages of existing guest houses include small capacity - these are mainly private households converted into a guest house; monotonous number of rooms - several identical, rather large rooms; amenities not in the room - shared toilet and shower for several rooms; lack or low quality of additional services - lack of cook services, laundry, linen change every 7-10 days, etc. Accordingly, the implementation of all stated in Table. 1 services will give an undeniable competitive advantage to this project.

Sales of guest house services are carried out through travel agencies, the average remuneration of which is 10% of the cost, as well as through Internet sites booking.com, eisk-leto.ru, etc.; Part of the sales volume will come from intermediaries working directly at the city’s railway and bus stations. The share of sales through agencies and intermediaries in the first two years of the project can reach 80%, then it will decrease significantly, to 30-40% by the fifth year of the project. In addition, it is necessary to create your own website with a complete description of the house, rooms and services. The sales volume of a website with good indexing in search engines can reach 30-40%. The share of repeat visits with good quality of service, ensuring high guest loyalty, should account for at least 25-30%.

Interaction with agencies and intermediaries is carried out directly by the owner of the guest house, without the involvement of third-party specialists.

Production plan

Geographically, the facility is located in close proximity to the city of Yeysk, in direct access to public transport. The distance of the guest house in a straight line from the coastline is 800 m, from the public beach - 1200 m. Yeysk is a resort town on the Azov coast of the Krasnodar Territory, a seaport. The population of the city is 85.7 thousand people; is located at the base of the Yeisk Spit, washed by the waters of the Taganrog Bay and the Yeisk Estuary. The climate is temperate continental, characterized by relatively low precipitation and the absence of frequent temperature changes. The holiday season lasts from the beginning of May to the end of September. The transport infrastructure is represented by a railway and bus station. A regional highway connects Yeysk with the capital of the region, Krasnodar, and the capital of the federal district, Rostov-on-Don.

The required costs for the construction and equipment of the building are 13.8 million rubles. The area of ​​the building is calculated based on the average standards of the hotel industry - 12 sq.m. per guest. total area of ​​the building, which is the average for the mini-hotel segment, i.e. class, higher than guest houses. This will also provide additional competitiveness to the project.

For the construction of the guest house building, it is planned to attract a local construction company selected based on a competition. The selection criterion is not only the final cost of construction, but also the use of modern technologies, as well as the quality of projects previously completed by the company. The planned period of construction and finishing of the building is 10-11 months.

The costs of equipping the premises of the guest house are shown in Table 2. In addition to the costs indicated in the table, there are also costs for equipping the local area, a fire alarm system, etc.

Table 2. Costs for equipment of a guest house

The main part of the work to ensure the functioning of the guest house is carried out directly by the owner and his family. To perform auxiliary work in the high season (June-August), hired workers are hired (Table 3); It is advisable to outsource accounting, as well as security functions.

Table 3. Staffing and wage fund

The main item of current costs is utility bills, which can be divided into a fixed and variable part. The fixed part (fixed costs) includes the minimum payment out of season. The variable part changes depending on the number of guests per season. In addition to the seasonality factor, it is also necessary to take into account the occupancy of the hotel due to its popularity; in the first year, maximum occupancy is unlikely to rise above 50% during the high season. However, in the future, occupancy is expected to reach 90%.

The sales plan, taking into account seasonality, is presented in Appendix 1.

Organizational plan

The project owner carries out all management, commercial and marketing functions: planning, market research, interaction with intermediaries and booking systems. This avoids the cost of paying a manager. In addition, on the scale of a guest house, these functions do not require high qualifications and special knowledge. Accounting is outsourced. There is no organizational structure as such for the project - hired and outsourced workers are directly subordinate to the project owner.

Financial plan

The costs of the preparatory period include investment costs for the construction and finishing of the building, as well as for the development of the project site - 13.8 million rubles. The costs of the main period include: payment for housing and communal services, wages of hired and outsourcing workers, commissions from travel agencies, booking systems and intermediaries, as well as costs for the provision of additional services, the amount of which is extremely small and difficult to predict.

The financial indicators of the project - revenue, cash flow, net profit - are given in Appendix 1.

Project effectiveness assessment

The project is characterized by a high level of costs, both financial and time. The advantage is a low level of risks and high profitability upon reaching planned targets.

The payback period of the project is 28 months, the discounted payback period is 34 months. Taking into account the need to service the loan, the project begins to make a profit from the second year of implementation. Project performance indicators are given in Table. 4. The indicators are calculated for a three-year period, however, taking into account the long payback period and the unlimited period of project implementation, already in a five-year perspective they will be significantly higher, up to 1.5 million rubles. net profit per year.

Table 4. Project performance indicators

Risks and guarantees

The project is in the service sector in a well-developed industry. The industry has been mastered both in terms of technology for providing services and in geographical terms - the region is already quite developed as a resort area. The risks associated with the implementation of the project are minimal. Risk reduction is also influenced by the positioning of the project in the middle segment with high quality of services - if there is a need to increase the profitability of the project, you can increase the cost of services by 20% without noticeable negative consequences for the elasticity of demand. In general, we can say that as the cost increases, demand remains positively inelastic, and acquires significant elasticity as the cost decreases.

The main risks are reflected in Table. 5.

Table 5. Assessment of project risks and measures to prevent their occurrence or their consequences

Considering that investments are made not in technology, but in a liquid tangible asset, bankruptcy of the enterprise even in the worst scenario for the development of the project is not possible. The cost of an already constructed and equipped guest house building can significantly exceed the costs of its construction and equipment.

Applications

Production plan and main financial indicators of the project in a three-year perspective

Real estate, if managed correctly, can be not only a safe haven for finances during various economic crises, but also a very profitable business. One of the best options for investing your savings is a guest house.

The business plan of a small hotel is not complicated, but in order to become a successful manager, you need to make every effort. The newly minted businessman will have to solve both financial and organizational issues. It is very difficult for one person to cope with all the tasks, so, most likely, you will have to hire additional staff.

Comparative analysis of the hotel business

In economically developed countries, the situation is considered normal when 60% of residents give their preference to large hotels, and the remaining 40% choose the private sector. The situation currently observed in the Russian hotel business is in many ways similar to foreign experience. The only significant difference is that we have virtually no competition in this industry.

In Western European countries, small guest houses have firmly occupied their niche. In such mini-hotels it is difficult to find a fitness center, bar, swimming pool or casino, but guests, as a rule, do not need all this. People are primarily interested in comfort and quality of service.

A large hotel operates on the principle of a conveyor belt. Her staff views each new client as one of many. Even when ordering a luxury room, it is difficult to get rid of the intrusive service and feigned politeness, for which you have to tip every time. Some people choose a cozy guest house for this very reason.

How to open your own mini-hotel: searching for premises

The first problem that a person who wants to work in the hotel business will face is finding suitable premises. For a small hotel it is not at all necessary to buy a high-rise building, and a private mansion in urban areas will not be easy to find.

It would seem that there is a way out of the deadlock situation. Even today, the housing market is literally overflowing with communal apartments. This is the best option for opening a guest house. The business plan must provide for the availability of a certain initial capital, which will be spent on the acquisition of such residential premises.

If possible, it is better to buy living spaces located above the second floor. It is also necessary to take into account that guests prefer to stay in the central and historical areas of the city. You should pay attention to the presence of cafes and shops nearby.

Classification of private hotel business

In our country, the concepts of “guest house” and “small hotel” are not legally defined. In this regard, difficulties arise in their classification. If we use foreign experience, a hotel in which the number of rooms does not exceed fifty can be considered small.

Russia also has its own unofficial classification. According to its criteria, small hotels (10-30 rooms in specially built buildings) and apartment mini-hotels (5-15 rooms in multi-storey residential buildings) are distinguished. Separately, hostels located in private mansions are also distinguished.

Some people are used to counting stars in order to determine whether a hotel is good or bad. This approach cannot be applied to small hotels, since the requirements for a guest house - regardless of its size - will be the same. For example, to assign 5 stars, the building must have a hairdresser, a tennis court, several elevators and much more.

Daily rental of apartments

In conditions of increased demand for real estate and the lack of activity of construction companies, the price per square meter of living space is constantly growing. That is why people who have several apartments or houses prefer not to sell them, but to rent them out. A similar situation is observed in many countries, but in Russia, successful companies and organizations, and not just ordinary citizens, are engaged in daily rental of residential premises.

This paradox can be explained by the fact that the official registration of a hotel business is a very complex procedure from a legal point of view. If the mini-hotel is located in a former communal apartment, then the premises will first need to be converted into non-residential use, and then a complete redevelopment of the space will be carried out. This will take a lot of time and effort.

According to statistics, every second guest house registered in the name of an individual is located in the residential sector. Taxation, which in this case is much more humane, is another reason for this choice.

Advantages of mini-hotels

According to surveys, people staying in small hotels and private hostels cited lower prices, cozy interiors, and an individual approach to each client as the main reason for their choice. It is very important that guests can feel at home. Large hotels that accommodate hundreds of guests are very poorly suited for these purposes.

A guest house whose business plan is very flexible and easily modified is suitable for both a creative person and a businessman. The menu and daily routine can also be discussed with the client in advance. The provision of services such as washing clothes, delivery of fresh newspapers and mail is also of great importance.

The small format allows you to create a feeling of coziness and comfort for the guest, and this is worth a lot. The owner of a guest house can effectively control the quality of services provided.

Step-by-step program of action

A business plan for a guest house is best broken down into several small items. They need to be carried out sequentially, then you won’t have to find funds for everything at once. This approach will help you achieve success in the shortest possible time.

Since modern city dwellers, deprived of the opportunity to regularly relax in nature, dream of having such an opportunity at least once a year, a guest house is an excellent option for a profitable and sustainable business. The question of how to open a guest house interests many entrepreneurs.

Benefits and seasonal restrictions

The target audience of this industry of the hotel business is people of the middle and older generations, married couples, families with children. Young people, of course, can also choose a guest house as an accommodation option, but they should focus on more or less wealthy people who came not to save money, but to relax. They usually want to relax and live for a while away from the hustle and bustle of life.

The guest house compares favorably with other establishments:

• It is cozier and calmer than a hostel or budget hotel.
• In the guest house you can get service at the 4* level without overpayments.
• The atmosphere is nicer and friendlier than in the apartments.

But in order to organize everything correctly, you need to remember seasonal restrictions, and not calculate the same business plan for the whole year. If you are thinking about how to open a guest house by the sea, then refer to the attendance statistics. Usually people come to the resort from May to September; the rest of the time there will be no or very few visitors.

Even if you are opening a guest house not on the coast, but somewhere else, be sure to find out what tourists who come to this locality want. This will allow you to choose the location wisely and make a plan in advance for the high and low seasons. Otherwise, the project may turn out to be unprofitable, or even unprofitable.

Foreign and Russian experience

Although guest houses existed in Soviet times, today's establishments combine domestic experience with foreign ones. Modern guest houses are no longer elite establishments “only for their own people”, but relatively affordable, cozy and quiet places that should leave a good impression. Ideally, the tourist is so satisfied that he recommends the guest house to his friends, relatives and colleagues.

From the point of view of market attractiveness, the question of how to open a guest house in Russia is not very difficult to solve. Conduct market research or a survey, pull up statistics on the region's tourism industry and find out what tourists in general and members of the target audience in particular want. In general, the statistics are as follows:

• At a seaside resort, the ideal option is to provide people with beach equipment: sun loungers, umbrellas, and so on. The closer the house is to the beach, the better.
• If there are historical sites nearby, excursions can be offered as an additional service.
• There are other ways to diversify your vacation, depending on your geographic location. This includes diving, surfing, rafting, jeeping, skiing and snowboarding, hiking and horseback riding.
• Comfort depends a lot on the little things. Make sure you have Internet access and don’t skimp on furnishing bathrooms and restrooms. Let your guests feel cozy in every room: upholstered furniture increases comfort, and curtains on the windows protect from prying eyes.
• Transfer, parking, as well as car, motorcycle, scooter or bicycle rental services allow guests to feel freer and make their stay more attractive.

The issue of food should be addressed separately. There are two main approaches. The first is to provide guests with a modern equipped kitchen with a dining area so they can prepare their own meals. The second is to take care of the availability of catering establishments as close as possible or even open your own cafe on the territory. If possible, these two approaches can be combined to give guests maximum freedom of choice.

Additional elements that can make guests comfortable are fishing, a Russian bath or sauna, an equipped picnic area and a barbecue set, a children's playground, a kindergarten, an outdoor or indoor pool, and so on.

Recruitment

In order for the guest house to operate without breaks and weekends, ensuring the comfort of guests, the following personnel will be needed:

• Chief Accountant;
• administrators - from two or more;
• for walking excursions - a tour guide;
• for transfers and travel arrangements - drivers;
• to work in a cafe or bar - a cook or bartender;
• security guards working in shifts;
• cleaners or cleaners.

In a small guest house, the administrator can perform several functions at the same time, but as attendance grows, he will have to differentiate responsibilities. Key qualities for staff are honesty, diligence, friendliness and non-conflict.

Arrangement of the building and land

If you are thinking about how to open a guest house in a residential building, then keep in mind: it is much easier to do this in rural areas than in urban areas. In this case, the allocation of land for a guest house will not require an auction procedure. It will be quite difficult to find a plot of land in an already developed resort or tourist town: usually everything there is already occupied. Small settlements should be considered: villages, villages, towns or even hamlets.

The ideal building for a guest house is a cottage with two, three or four floors, which will have from four to ten rooms. If you can find a building in good condition, you will save on repairs, but you still cannot do without starting capital. The finishing of the premises and the building itself should be accompanied by the arrangement of a common guest area, kitchen or dining area, utility rooms, and parking. Depending on the environment, the issue of the fence is resolved separately. As a rule, it is made solid, two to three meters high, so that guests feel safe.

The composition of equipment and materials includes the following categories:

• for the kitchen: stove, sink, tables and chairs, cabinets and shelves, hood, dishes and cutlery;
• for bathrooms and restrooms: plumbing fixtures, bathtubs or showers, a replenished set of hygiene and shower accessories;
• for living rooms: furniture, bedding sets, air conditioners or split systems, curtains and decorative elements;
• tools and consumables for cleaning;
• ensuring security and safety: alarms, surveillance cameras, fire and anti-burglary systems, doors and locks.

Using the services of a professional architect and interior designer will allow you to avoid annoying mistakes when remodeling and decorating a building.

Legal basis and compliance with standards

If you are not yet planning to develop a hotel chain, opt for an institution with an income level. This will save you from claims from the tax service, and will also allow you to negotiate on equal terms with tour operators, excursion organizers, and entertainment venues.

If you are thinking about how to open a guest house, you will need to prepare documents in accordance with the law. Documentation procedures include:

• obtaining permits from Rospotrebnadzor, fire and sanitary-epidemiological services;
• certification of the guest establishment in accordance with Russian regulations based on the international ISO standard;
• if you have your own bar, licensing for the sale of alcohol and concluding related agreements;
• if there is a kitchen, dining area or cafe - obtaining permits, concluding contracts for sanitary services, garbage removal, treating the premises from pests.

To make yourself known and attract guests, you will need to cooperate with travel agencies and information aggregators and hotel establishments. If you want two, three or four stars to attract the attention of guests reasonably and legitimately, read the requirements and check that everything meets the required level.

Since the legal framework on how to open a guest house is quite complex and highly dependent on the specifics, do not overdo it in saving and seek support from qualified lawyers. A few consultations will help you comply with legal requirements and avoid many problems.

Approximate calculations

The total cost, as well as the return on investment, of a guest house depends on the region and location. The average costs are approximately:

• Purchase of a building with a plot - from one and a half million rubles.
• Re-equipment, landscaping, finishing, construction of additional structures - from one million rubles.
• An advertising campaign for “promotion” costs about 100–150 thousand rubles.
• Staff salaries per month are about 100–200 thousand rubles.
• Taxes and related costs for maintaining a guest house per month - from 50 thousand rubles.

Thus, the minimum amount of initial investment is close to three million rubles. At the same time, rooms are usually rented at a price of 500 rubles per person per day with a minimum set of services. If you have additional services and comfort at the level of three or four stars, you can increase the price of accommodation to one and a half, two or three thousand rubles per person per day. With average attendance, five standard two-three-bed rooms will generate income of about 400-600 thousand monthly. Thus, it is possible to pay for a guest house in a period of eight months while maintaining attendance throughout the year, and in one and a half to two years if there are high and low seasons.

A guest house as a business can be recommended to entrepreneurs with initial capital of five million rubles and above. The profitability and stability of a business will be high if you approach the choice of location and arrangement of the establishment correctly. It is not recommended to rely entirely on yourself - it is better to use the experience of specialists: a lawyer, an architect, an interior designer, and so on. If you already have a business in this area, it will be much easier for you; if not, you will have to devote a lot of time to studying the features of the tourism business, starting with the basics.

The hotel business in Russia is not slowing down, despite the economic crisis. One of the most popular areas in this business has become hostels - economy class mini-hotels that came to us from the West, arranged like hostels. In contrast to established Soviet ideas about hostels, hostels are positioned as clean, tidy establishments where traveling students, young businessmen on business trips and unpretentious youth can find inexpensive accommodation for the night, and at the same time make new acquaintances. Hostels are also interesting because they do not require large initial investments compared to the hotel business in general, and allow young entrepreneurs to try themselves as a homeowner. Today we will tell you how open your own hostel in a private house, what legal framework is needed for your enterprise and what difficulties you will have to face.

For a long time, hostels in apartment buildings and separate hostels in private houses were not classified as a separate category, as there were no special requirements for such establishments. In many ways, this played into the hands of the first wave of hosteliers; it was their hostels that announced to the world the opening of such a business in Russia and became an example to follow for the next generation of young entrepreneurs.

This does not mean that initially the hostel business was not subject to taxation, but had not yet acquired a heap of regulations and prohibitions, like any profitable area of ​​business under the vigilant control of the state. The absence of bureaucratic restrictions has provided fertile ground for the unfettered growth of economy class hotels throughout Russia.

New requirements for hostels

In January 2015, the first state standard was released, defining hostels as a separate category for providing temporary housing, and establishing a number of mandatory requirements for hostels. Since the first law was written in a hurry, having discovered that a very promising segment of the hotel and tourism business had been living and thriving uncontrollably for almost 10 years, the restrictive measures were not too strict.

They concerned mainly the minimum requirements for communications and equipment of such premises, and SES standards. And, in a way, they protected the guests’ right to free space, limiting particularly zealous entrepreneurs in the ultra-profitable use of the square footage, dooming guests to suffer in cramped spaces. The obvious idea that the client himself has the right to choose the degree of acceptable comfort, just as the owner of the hostel is interested in creating such a thing, is alien to legislators educated in the economics of the State Planning Committee.

If the first version of GOST made us think about the further profitability of apartment hostels, then the package of amendments in 2016 puzzled even the owners of hostels in private houses. Nevertheless, the rigid machine of public consciousness still presents hostels as an extremely profitable enterprise in Russia. This cannot be completely denied, but if you have seriously decided to try yourself as a hostelier, do not rush to try on rose-colored glasses. We will dwell on the features of the updated law in more detail below.

Against the backdrop of the new requirements for the presence of a separate bathroom (handroom + shower + toilet) for every 10 guests, it is easier to organize a hostel in a private house, if only because it is easier to obtain permission from the BTI and the department for the protection of historical and cultural monuments for redevelopment, which is now probably not possible to avoid. Opening a hostel in a private house is also made easier by the absence of neighbors.

Despite the fact that sometimes their complaints are indeed justified, but for the most part, accusations from the ever-vigilant volunteer staircase concierges are a real headache for hostel owners. The regulatory authorities, in turn, will be only too happy to warm their hands to the fire of your business, despite the fact that the law is on their side. Therefore, if you share a private home with someone, gain their support and trust in advance. And be sure to try your best to maintain friendly relations with your neighbors.

What other innovations have affected hostels in private homes?

If previously the question of whether it was possible to open a hostel in a private house was not in doubt, now the situation has changed radically. From now on, it is only permissible to use the area for commercial purposes in non-residential premises. That is, if you were dreaming about your own personal guesthouse, give up these thoughts. The premises for the hostel must be removed from the housing stock and transferred to non-residential use. This initiative had a certain meaning regarding apartment-based hostels, and according to the authors’ idea, it should protect the sleep of the hostel’s unwitting neighbors. But why this practice is applied to owners of private houses remains a mystery.