A
Potential Diamond Mine in Your Back Yard
Are you living in a place
that you love, a place that attracts visitors? If so, you could be
sitting on a logical profit center — the proverbial acres of diamonds in
your own back yard. Hospitality is big business and there are wonderful
small-scale opportunities to meet and greet guests who come to your part
of the world.
After Ronald Winkles
retired from the U.S. Army, he decided to settle in the Czech Republic,
a country he had fallen in love with as a visitor during his tour of
duty. Winkles and his wife bought a vacant 12-room villa near Prague and
converted it to a bed and breakfast inn. "The country never has fewer
than 18 million tourists a year since its borders first opened in 1990.
This is one and a half times the number of people who live in Czech,"
says Winkles. The influx of tourists has created plenty of opportunity
in this newly entrepreneurial country.
If being a full-time
innkeeper is not quite your cup of tea, another option is to run a
part-time guest house, sharing your home with visitors. Some of the most
successful operations of this sort are those that target a specialized
clientele, such as traveling businesswomen, families of hospital
patients or visiting academics and artists. Many homeowners in New
England, for instance, open their doors to the annual leaf-peeping
crowd, earning hundreds — even thousands — of dollars during this short
season.
But renting out the spare
bedroom is only one possibility. Creating a profit center that is aimed
at out-of-town visitors can take many forms — even in very small places.
The key, of course, is to genuinely enjoy meeting new people and making
them feel at home. It's also helpful if you feel a sense of pride and
enthusiasm about the unique qualities that are part of your hometown.
Here are some other idea
starters to consider.
Show off your
city. When David Lucia settled in Washington, D.C., after a
long career with an international nonprofit association, he decided to
pursue his passion for photography. He started doing commercial
photography, specializing in photographs of national monuments. His main
client for these pictures was a postcard company. Then he added another
profit center called Photo Tour of D.C. showing tourists how to get the
best shots of our famous landmarks. Since Lucia is multi-lingual, he
conducts his tours in several languages, making his tours even more
marketable.
Walking tours have long
been popular in cities that attract a lot of visitors. When American
writer Alan Epstein relocated to Rome, he offered his tour guide
services to visiting Americans. On a larger scale, London Walks presents
dozens of specialized walks throughout the historic city, with the most
popular being Jack the Ripper's London (conducted at night, of course).
Tour guides often are experts or actors who revel in making a real
production of the walk.
If this idea appeals to
you, consider how you might create a specialized niche. How about a
bicycle tour? Or a walk to admire local architecture? Areas with unique
attrac-tions such as wineries or a historic neighborhood have obvious
opportunities for sharing interesting stories with out-of-towners.
Become a
destination. In the days when I used to visit my friend Chris
in Connecticut, our favorite pastime was visiting several friendly and
creative shopkeepers who had opened businesses in small towns. These
businesses were so delightful that people came from great distances to
buy unique items. In tiny Riverton, three old houses had been turned
into an antique shop, an art gallery and a lunch room. Many days the
number of visitors was greater than the population of the town.
This small-town
revolution is happening all over the country. After artist Tracy Porter
opened her shop in Princeton, Wisconsin, other entrepreneurs renovated
sagging buildings and welcomed an influx of visitors who went out of
their way to uncover the treasures that they offered.
With the migration of
people back to small-town living, this idea has a fresh appeal. In my
former hometown, an old church has been resurrected as a charming
antique shop and a rambling old house is now a bed and breakfast inn.
This new wave of entrepreneurship is creating recycling on a larger
scale and attracting visitors to places that would have been drive-throughs
in the past.
In many ways, a business
that offers hospitality combines the best of several worlds: you can put
down roots and still have the enjoyment of meeting a steady stream of
new people. So take a look around and see if the spot that you call home
might be ripe for the kind of innovation that attracts and welcomes
others. There may be a diamond mine waiting to be uncovered right where
you live now.
Note: For additional
possibilities, check out the tip sheet "More
Welcoming Ideas."
There's
more where this came from.
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