Awards!!!
We did it!! Our first award!! You can imagine me dancing around the kitchen when we got the email and then the parcel in the post with the actual award. And it is not any award! It came from booking.com or I should say it comes from our marvelous guests based on their reviews.
We achieved an astonishing 9.8 out of 10 which brought us a Guest Review Award for 2016!! I checked how many of these reviews we had in 2016 – it was 100!
100 guests found time to think about us, went online and wrote something nice and scored us very highly. You know what is coming next – a massive THANK YOU to all of you out there who trusted us and stayed in the Old Parsonage in 2016. It was an absolutely manic year but it looks like we are doing something right.
It is all very surreal as only a year ago we were still trying to get all the finance and legal paperwork in place, nothing was confirmed until 5 days before moving.
We went into this with our hearts & souls, and put in everything we had and now we are receiving our first award, it is well beyond our expectations. Of course it is not about awards but it is nice to get one 😉 Like a nice juicy bonus at work 😉
By far the best thing about running the guest house is the people we meet. People from around the world, different ages, skin colours, religions, opinions, life stories and talents. I remember a lot of our first season. Sometimes (in our case very often) we just clicked with people. Finding common ground comes easy and it feels like you have known each other for ever, so the arrival time can take from 5 minutes to over an hour. We welcome all our guests with tea, coffee and biscuits (this year my goal is to bake, bake a lot cakes!) and when our guests start relaxing after their journey the conversation starts flowing.
The same happens at breakfast. When we were only dreaming about our own B&B we thought we would love to have one big table for breakfast and we did it. But don’t worry, we also have a small table for two for those who are not at their best in the morning.
We want to encourage people to talk to each other and it works amazingly in our house… There is nothing better than walking into the breakfast room and seeing our guests deep in conversation. Sometimes breakfast goes on until 11:30 am (we start serving from 8:15 a.m.) because our guests cannot stop talking and we with them. We have one rule in The Old Parsonage – we won’t start a conversation about politics. I learned very quickly that this is very slippery subject …. You are on holidays so we want you to relax. If politics arise as the breakfast table there are always homemade blueberry muffins to smooth the atmosphere.
We believe this is our path. To look after people, to make you feel good on your travels. Our house is a home and our guests are treated like friends. Everything we do, we do for our love of Cornwall, good food and a comfortable relaxed lifestyle. So hopefully see you soon! I promise you will be looked after very well
Big love!
Iza, Tim & “the Monsters”
