{ Elevated Guest Experience Series: The Background }

I previously mentioned that I’d be sharing some posts in a series I’m titling our Elevated Guest Experience. Prior to really delving into it all, however, let me back up to even explain the background behind the title of the series. And there is significant history behind it, so bear with me while I explain every little detail…

For years, we have prided ourselves on making sure our guests feel well taken care of when they’re in our home. I worked very hard to try to think of everything and make each stay as pleasant as possible. Friends joke about us needing to add comment cards to complete the experience, or they’ll complain we didn’t turn down their bed. Aside from that, it’s a pretty complete five-star experience. Or so we thought…

This past summer, Doc & I headed out west to see friends and family. One of our first stops was in Denver, where we stayed with a friend of Doc’s & his lovely wife. We’ll call them Jason & Lynn because…well, those are their names. That’s why.

As mostly irrelevant (yet fun) background, Doc & Jason went to optometry school together in Florida and have remained close friends ever since. Jason married Lynn a few years ago. Shortly after their wedding, we met up with them in Miami. We fell in love with her as soon as we met her. She is absolutely delightful.

Whenever we stay in Miami, we’re fortunate to have a five-star suite at a hotel where one of Doc’s friends is a financial analyst (or something like that) and it is truly an experience I wish every single person could have at least once in their lifetime. While at the hotel, I try to take in as much as possible and aim to pick up on little tricks they do that make our stays more pleasant. For example, they know that I love cookies & milk, so there will be a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and a carafe of milk waiting for me upon arrival and each day thereafter. Doc likes fresh fruit, so there are plates of that. Jason loves mojitos, so there are make-your-own-mojito trays left in Jason & Lynn’s room when they join us. It’s just little touches like that which really make the stay memorable.

Side jaunt: especially memorable is the last stay in Miami, when Doc & Jason had a continuing education conference to attend. Lynn & I did not have such boredom to attend to, so we just relaxed, shopped, ate, and lived it up. (And, of course, we sent Doc & Jason text pics along the way. Not to rub it in or anything that we were having a great time while they were stuck in cold meeting rooms with cheap hotel food…)

My personal favorite of that particular trip was having breakfast in bed with Lynn. We got up and went down to my favorite little French café a couple of blocks from the hotel to get breakfast, stopped at Starbuck’s to get drinks, and then we piled back into mine & Doc’s huge bed to pig out on deliciousness while watching the boats go by below. (Our room had a large curved window that went around almost three full sides of the room, so we had a fantastic view. It was made better by having a plate of ricotta pancakes with berries in my lap.)

Anyway, back on track, last year Jason & Lynn came to the Glorious Christmas Party and we gave them what we thought was our five-star guest experience. But then we went to visit them this past July.

When we walked in the door to the guest room they were putting us in, it happened. And there was no hiding it. Doc later said that he’d never seen such a look upon my face…but that he’d also never seen someone out do me before either. Yes. That’s right. That oh-so-delightful Lynn became my arch nemesis in that very second. From that moment forward, it was game on. Well, after I pulled my deflated self back together that is…

Over the next few days that we were in Denver, I contemplated, I pondered, I may have even cried a little, but by day three, I had a plan & I could not wait to get back home to test out my ideas. But first, we had the rest of our trip to do. So, I used Amazon to start getting various elements shipped to the house so that I had a head start upon our return. I told Doc that I needed him to not question me, but to just support and love me as I embarked upon creating an elevated guest experience. (And thus, the title of this series.) He looked at me oddly, but agreed to just love and support, no matter how crazy I got. He knew how deeply affected I’d been by this, so he was wise enough to also know to just stand back and not get in my way while I tried to recover from the trauma.

You see, Lynn took guest treatment to a whole new level. Whereas we had provided all of the toiletries in our guest bathroom & each night I placed water bottles by each side of the bed, she streamlined the experience a bit more and also spread it into the bedroom itself. Instead of the towels stacked on the bathroom counter, for instance, she had a giant basket in the bedroom filled with bath towels, wash cloths, and—wait for it—snacks and drinks. That’s where she got me. She totally got me, in fact. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that, but I hadn’t. So, I set out to outdo her and her Pinterest ingenuity. Curse you, Pinterest, and your great ideas! Curse you! (OK, not really, Pinterest. I take it back. I was just going for dramatic effect there, but I really do love you oh-so-much. Please don’t leave me out in the dark…pretty please. I promise I’ll do better.)

It took some doing, but I have finally gotten it all together and have tested it out a couple of times. While in beta mode, I have learned a few more things and now I’m ready to share them all with you. In the next blog post, I’ll be covering the ideas for the guest bedroom itself. I’ll go over some obvious and not-so-obvious ways you can really help elevate your guests’ experience while staying in your home—and then we’ll move on to the guest bathroom. Stay tuned…

{ Elevated Guest Experience Series: Refillable Toiletries }

At our home, probably much like your own, we already have a lot going on to get ready for the holidays! With guests coming (including my mom for 10 days—hooray!!!!), our annual Glorious Christmas Party to host, and a large house to decorate—including adding & making the decorations for what will be our 11th Christmas tree, woot woot!!—there’s just a lot happening. In fact, just a few minutes ago I was battling it out with our housekeeper over the schedule to get the oven cleaned, floors waxed, windows washed, etc. You know—all the extra crap you have to do to make it look like you’re actually on top of it the whole year, when in reality your oven is rarely clean, your floors don’t always shine, and your windows have plenty of spots. But, at Christmas, everything is…well, glorious!

Anyway, as part of all the preparations, I’ve decided to do a series of posts related to entertaining and hosting in general. This is the first in that series, which I’m calling the “Elevated Guest Experience”. I’ll be sharing very easy and (perhaps, most importantly) inexpensive ways for you to create a five-star experience for your own guests, regardless of if you have a dedicated guest space or if your guests just sleep on your couch. Either way, you can always provide guests with an elevated experience using just a little bit of extra effort!

Doc & I love to host and to entertain friends and family. It’s always so nice for them to have taken the time to come visit us. So, we work very hard to make sure that those staying with us feel like they’re being taken care of and don’t have to worry about a thing while they’re here. We try to think of everything for them—and then some. We’ve been very fortunate to stay in some luxurious hotels and I’ve tried to incorporate some of the things I’ve observed happening there into what our guests experience when they stay with us. It just makes for a much more fun experience and I know it’s what we ourselves appreciate when we stay with others, too. Here, I want to discuss the toiletry situation.

So, I have this thing about staying in other people’s homes: I hate using their half-used toiletries! It can be some of the nicest product you’d ever imagine, but I feel so weird squeezing shampoo out of the same bottle I know they themselves (or 100 other guests) have used. Don’t ask me why. It just is. My simple solution, of course, is just to travel with my own shampoo and body wash. But what about when guests stay with us? Do we just put out mini toiletries we’ve collected along the way? Short answer: no.

Having said that, I do travel quite a bit and have to admit I find myself taking the soaps and mini shampoo bottles from the hotel bathroom whenever I leave. I feel like a mini-toiletry hoarder. But, here’s the thing—I don’t like mini toiletries when it comes to the guest bath. Heck, I don’t typically even use the hotel ones myself (yes, I’m a product snob). So, why I take them after a hotel stay is beyond me. It’s like my little perk for paying for the room, I guess. At any rate, mini toiletries are not what I want to put out for guests. Especially because it’s a bit tacky to have a Hilton-branded shampoo bottle sitting in the shower at home. Guests know full well we aren’t a Hilton and there’s no big ol’ Hilton logo on the front of our house, so why would there be Hilton toiletries in the guest bathroom?!

To solve this, I keep full-sized toiletry bottles in the shower. My trick is that I have back-up bottles stored underneath the sink. After guests leave, I use the back-up bottles to refill the bottles in the shower so that each guest doesn’t feel as if they’re dealing with a half-used product. However, once I got my Cameo, one of the first things I knew I wanted to change was the full-sized bottles themselves. You see, the labels on the bottles didn’t match the bathroom. And that annoyed me greatly. (I know. I need help.) So, after a great deal of searching, I came across some frosted pump bottles (at Target, of all places!) that fit the bill perfectly.

I used my Cameo to cut vinyl labels for the bottles, making all of it coordinate nicely, regardless of what color the bathroom walls or towels may be. This is how they turned out:

Now, what’s funny here is that when I filled the bottles, I reversed the shampoo & conditioner and didn’t even realize it until my sister came to stay with us and pointed it out. So, that’s been changed since taking this picture.

It works beautifully, looks coordinated, and best of all—there’s no half-used bottle for guests to use. In fact, with these bottles, they can clearly see that they’re full. My neurotic self thinks that’s fantastic.

So, a couple of possibilities when you’re looking at your guests’ experience:

1) Forget the mini toiletries. Put full-sized bottles in the shower, refilled after each guest leaves using back-up bottles of the same product. Even if you just use the bottle the product came in instead of putting it in non-branded pump bottles, that alone will make a world of difference. And all for about $5. (I just buy Tresemme products at Target for the guest bath refills.) That’s it—$5!

And, if you have a bunch of mini toiletry bottles already and you don’t want them wasted, you could always use them as the refill for the bottle as it gets emptied until you’ve used them all up. Unless it’s a different color toiletry (i.e., pouring green shampoo into a bottle of white shampoo), nobody’s going to know the difference.

2) Spend a few more dollars to find or make labeled pump dispensers. (Remember to avoid anything with metal so that you don’t have to deal with rust.) My three bottles? Yeah, they cost a total of $12. Love that!

This is a very inexpensive & simple solution that will help your guests leave your home feeling like a million bucks!