What drives the good reviews are two things:
1. Our personalities, which makes "Happy Satisfied Customers."
Our personalities put us right up there as excellent innkeepers. At the Island Guest House, guests feel like their stay is all about them. We try to make people feel like they're family or they're right at home. A lot of people spend all year saving up because it's expensive to go on vacation, so we want to make it worth it to them.
Being here as long as we have been, we have a lot of repeat guests because we make notes about each guest to remember who they are. When we have "Pinot and Pops" in the garden, where we do a wine tasting with guests, we try to have a conversation with each guest. We have a saying we display in our kitchen: "Arrive as strangers, leave as friends."
We also take care of people's dietary needs, whether they be vegan, Paleolithic, gluten free, etc. It takes an innkeeper that wants to go above and beyond for each guest to make homemade food like that. People appreciate that we like to do what we do.
Dogs are included, too. We make homemade, organic dog biscuits in the morning for our guests' pets. We're one of the few rental places on the island that are pet friendly, which is strange because pets are family. People that have dogs are the type of guests that are lovely to have.
2. We're always updating our renovated inn.
This year, because of COVID-19, we had a lot of families come visit. Normally, people visit for a few days, but this year they have been staying for one week or a week and a half because guests want to work remotely. We reinvented ourselves by getting the best internet, so people are able to work while staying with us.
We also got COVID-19 certificates and training, so our guests can know we're clean. Since we're smaller than a typical hotel, guests can interact with small amounts of people here while still feeling safe and enjoying the beach.
We're always looking at our competition to make sure we're state of the art and up to date. We make sure to put our money back into our place to make sure it looks fresh, so when people come back, they can see that there have been changes for the better.