English

Location, location, location. Not only when it comes to purchasing real estate – but also when it comes to choosing your next holiday destination – location is an important (or the most important?) factor. Anyone who does not want to spend their scarce holiday days among other Dutch, Belgians and English people in a city that never sleeps…

There doesn’t seem to me to be a greater contrast than that between August and September at the moment. While we were still packed in August, people seem to be slowing down in the first weeks of September. Many restaurants are closed and I hear from various suppliers that this also applies to a large number of other companies. No problem.

It is the first time in a long time that we are cooking for our guests again. It’s Tuesday and all restaurants in both Benialí and Benissivà remain closed for dinner. While our guests used to be able to go to L’Aplec on Tuesday evening, Luisa has now closed her restaurant doors. Just like her, El Jabalí (already) and La Placeta (from this weekend on) are also going…

Last Saturday I discovered that ‘after dinner’ does not always mean ‘immediately after dinner’. While three of the four couples had arrived neatly within the regular check-in times (from 15:00 to 20:00), I decided to send the last couple a WhatsApp-message asking them at what time they approximately expected to arrive. Their liberating answer soon followed.

Where the start of the summer season in Zermatt as been put on hold, bookings here are slowly starting to trickle in. While the rain keeps my sister confined to the house, we owe the careful switch from little to a little more mainly to the sun. Forget the summer solstice. The longest day of the year. Or the bonfires of Saint John. With the opening of the swimming…

It is (in my opinion) only normal that we, as starting entrepreneurs, are still searching. Sometimes literally, but more often figuratively. For example: what do you do if guests want to have a late check-out because of the nice weather or a late lunch reservation? At times when the room has not already been rented, we do not really mind. It only becomes difficult…

I wake up startled. Surprised, I reach for the telephone that is next to me, already ringing. What time is it? Eight o’clock. Time to get up anyway. While I’m answering, I try to sound as awake as possible. “This is Michelle.” A neighbor with another Bed and Breakfast, who’s on the other end of the line, immediately apologizes for the early hour. “I made a mistake!” she exclaims.

A study conducted by the Spiegel Research Center shows that ratings between 4.2 and 4.5 inspire the most trust. According to this study, mistakes happen in every company and every industry, and stressing over a single bad review or striving for an unsustainable perfect score is a waste of time. According to them, more important than the company’s score…

Now that we have put the changeable weather behind us and my sisters are still here for a few weeks before they have to go back to Switzerland again, it is high time to prepare the garden for summer. With the little money we have left from the winter season in Switzerland, we take stock. What do we really need and what can wait? A new coffee maker? The suitcase racks…

I was eighteen when I went abroad by myself for the first time. I had just completed high school and my mother, who also comes from a family that loves to travel, encouraged my sisters and me to travel for a year before we would start college. That I got (somewhat) fluent in English, and not Spanish, after an eight-week language course in Barcelona, didn’t matter.