Competition

I made a grid of all the B&Bs in Lancaster county - names, amenities, memberships, prices, etc. I have no idea what to do with all this information, but if you need a place to stay, let me know. :-)

I exchanged email with Historic Hotels of America, part of the National Historic Preservation Trust, wondering why they didn't have a similar program for B&Bs. I didn't get a good answer -- maybe I'll start my own. Dale & Suzanne are game.

Marketing Research

Dawn did some "marketing research" - calling local B&Bs and pretending to be a potential guest - and it turns out October is the busy month, and January through March are the quiet months because -- get this -- the Amish move to Florida for the winter. Not all of them, obviously, but enough that most of the restaurants and attractions in the area close. Dawn had no idea, and she grew up there!

No, I don't know how the Amish move to Florida

HGTV

I exchanged emails with a producer of Restore America on HGTV. Unfortunately they're no longer looking for homes to be restored, but now looking for homes in the middle of restoration. I guess I better buy a camcorder. I also sent a letter to This Old House, but they never responded. Their loss.

Incorporation

Today we formed Speedwell Forge B&B, Inc., a Pennsylvania corporation, with Dawn as President and me as Treasurer and Secretary. I immediately regretted that, as Dawn took to barking orders like, "take a letter" and "get me coffee." Oh wait, she did that before, too. ;-)

We also registered the web site. ("speedwell.com" was already taken.) I set up the first draft of the web site, and quickly realized I needed professional help. (The web kind, thank you!)

[Note: I wish I still had a copy of that web site -- besides the cheesy text, all of my pictures were pre-December clean-up, and generally focused on the problems. So you'd see a bedroom shot with a sagging mattress, no sheets, a bunch of junk on the floor, and a hole in the ceiling. It was precious.]

50 shares of Speedwell Forge B&B, Inc.

Workshop

We just completed a four-day B&B workshop in Santa Barbara. Wow, what an eye-opener: This is not the semi-retirement I had imagined; this was two full-time jobs at half-time pay! The odd thing is, I'm more excited than ever! I think I just need a change - I've been doing computer programming for 20 years now - and it doesn't get any more different than this.

We took a poll and they preferred "Speedwell Forge" - we want to be "elegant" and they said "Grandma's House" was just homey. They also recommended whirlpool bathtubs, so we're trying how to work that into a colonial theme...

Next month, the Professional Association of Innkeepers (PAII) is having a concert in Rhode Island. That's not too far from Pennsylvania, right?