Innkeeper interview #2
The Mountain House Lodge Bed & Breakfast.
Johanna Kolsen.
I decided to become an innkeeper in 1998, after 12 years of doing bookkeeping. I chose to become an innkeeper for the exciting cultural and meet and greet tourists lifestyle, also the opportunity to live a rent free life in almost all cases.
I found many bed & breakfasts on line or in local yellow pages ot B&B online websites. Special and unique about my inn is the warm hospitality we exude and the views of Aspen mtn. in town as well as the great breakfasts.
Most rewarding part of the innkeeper job is the talking to all the different guests, helping when they get lost and are calling you from the road frazzled and you lead them to the inns door by cell phone and they are so happy to see you, a perfect stranger!! But it all melts away once they get to their rooms and begin soaking in the beauty of the area and the ambience of your clean, friendly, inviting inn!
The hardest part of innkeeping, i feel is the micro-managing the housekeeping staff. They tend to come and go. I find it all very easy and enjoyable. I even do the laundry. II prefer inns who have housekeeping help. I do not like to clean the rooms. the job gets easier as you gain experience with it over the years. I have been doing it for 6 years now. in Calif, Colorado and Arizona.
Advice to aspring innkeepers is to learn how to effectively "multi-task". This is what is required for innkeeping, and also to learn some light maintenance, for ex how to program the remotes in the rooms, how to get up on a steep stool and change and clean the lifgt fixtures for dead bugs, how to repplace burnt fuses and how to deal with lighting surges and blackouts like we have all the ime in these mountain lodges.
