Bed & Breakfast Occupancy figures

One of the most important factors in buying any accommodation business is what level of occupany you can expect. We have uploaded an excel spreadsheet which shows a summary of our occupancy figures since we bought the B&B in late 2000.

There are various ways of measuring occupancy. The figure we use for occupancy is based on the price of the rooms, rather than on bedspaces or rooms.

For instance we currently have 2 double (at £63), 1 twin( at £63), 2 family rooms (at £78) and 1 family suite (at £100) so our maximum income, assuming that all rooms are as full as possible is (2* 63) + (1 * 63) + (2 * 78) + (1 * 100) = £445 per night.

Tonight we have 2 double (at £63), 1 single (at £45) and 1 family suite (at £100) booked in so our income will be £271 out of a possible £445 or 60.9%

Spreadsheet showing Bed & Breakfast occupancy summary

Occupancy spreadsheet in PDF format (use this version if you can't open the .xls version above)

Sadly 2007 was a very poor year for occupancy, poor weather and a weak dollar certainly contributed to the lack of guests. South West Tourism estimates that occupancy across the region dropped by 25 bed nights per bedspace in 2007. We have 16 bedspaces so we did worse than average by dropping 498 bednights from 2006 to 2007.
Still as a potential B&B owner you need to know that this can happen. 2008 has started slowly but May was a good month and forward bookings are strong, we are certainly hoping that 2008 will be a better year than 2007.