I always try to offer to be the best help following a booking and many of my future guests use that service by asking me this type of queries: what route would you recommend, what wine would you buy, where could I have my son's birthday party. I always tend to be polite and offer assistance to the best of my ability. I always try to make the answer short and sweet but I always end up with probably too many options and at the end I always feel like a travel agent or travel rep (with a smile!). I consider this part of the service. I provided similar service to guests who arrived this saturday by answering 4 separate emails of general enquiries (what wine, what type of barbecue we have, etc... ) a few days before their arrival.
Anyhow, I happened to talk to my neighbour on Saturday evening and she informed me that they still did not arrive at the house and it was 9.30 pm in France so I was a little concerned. My concern pushed me to ring them on their mobile to make sure they were not lost (although there was little I could do from Ireland!). I think this was the first mistake I had made.
They welcomed my call and said they were just arriving and opening the house. Oh, well ...wait..now... they actually now had a problem opening the front door. Some of the keys would go in but they could not open it. I recommended them to try to stay calm and try again. After 5 minutes (I was still on the phone listening to my charge per minute ticking away...!). They did get in and said it looked beautiful. As a matter of saying goodbye I had the infortunate initiative to say ''if you need anything else, just call me...''. Well, I was about to start put on telly when the phone rang. My new caretakers had set up only one cot and left the other one not up (probably in a rush and not knowing where they guests would want it). Well the guests could not put it up and claimed it was broken. I had bought these cots new two years ago and they probably been used 4 times in that space of time as not all my guests have infants with them. My husband talked to them this time and said a bit too quickly he would get a replacement to them. After discussions between us, we agreed to get a relation near our house to go down with a spare cot and try to look at the broken cot. We informed our guests by email of this and answered more queries. The 2nd cot was not broken and was set up by my brother in law in 2 minutes. He also mentioned the instructions were there so it was just a matter of following them up. They asked him why I did not have air fans in the house. I told them earlier on that day, advising about replacement cot delivery, in a text it was safety (children fingers/hair catching up in them) which is half the reason I suppose. The other reason is electricity costs as I don't mind the odd fan but I know most guests would probably leave them on constantly wether they were in the room or not. I certainly did not advertise my house air-conditioned or said fans would be provided.... I know it is hot but is that not the reason why you go on holiday/to south of France?!! Also the house has a nice swimming pool.
Finally (thank god I hear you all say...! for the ones that are still awake) they said they could not find paddling pool as advertised. What is in the shed? What there a key to the padlock to get it? What they were refering to is a inflatable baby pool that takes one baby only rightly advertised as '' And to be fair I did list it among the toys and things on offer for babies and children (playpen, drawing tables, toy plastic house...). I had omitted to tell my pool maintenance man to get pool toys out of the shed as my old caretakers did that automatically last year. I had since requested him to take them out at his next visit.
I just feel that it is only Monday and I have two weeks to go with them and I am not sure wether I will be able to cope with them. I just don't know what to do or how to behave. Wether to start being slightly stand offish but remaining professional (hard go for me!) or just keeping smile on and answer each little query they throw at me in the next few days.
Your views will be of interest and experience also if you have been through similar cases (although I read a few in previous threads...).
Kind regards
SAbine
