As Hanumann (the author of this blog) has traveled in many countries, in particular Costa Rica and Thailand, and throughout the Caribbean, I have occasionally stayed in guesthouses rather than your traditional hotel or resort. The classic definition of a guesthouse is where somebody rents out the rooms in their house to short term visitors on a year around basis and lives in separate quarters. In many instances, the guesthouse is more like a small hotel or inn but with less amenities and typically with less than 10 rooms. Another very important thing - guesthouses are a lot cheaper than a hotel and are a favorite among the ‘so called backpacker crowd”. The Government Tourist office of each country in general may establish different criteria between a guesthouse, an inn and a hotel.

In many owner-managed guesthouses, there is certain casualness about the place and there is considerable interaction between the guests and the owner. In many instances, a genuine friendship may result between the owner(s) and guests, which result in repeated patronage and referral business. However, this is a dual-edged sword - there are occasions when there is a personality clash between the owner and the guest (and that can get very, very ugly). The owner in general has to straddle a fine line between being friendly with his guests and keeping his distance, and by all means, keep his feelings and temper under control at all time. The person who runs a guesthouse must be a very likeable person and must genuinely like people. I guess you could say, the guesthouse takes on the personality of the owner- that could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view!

In Thailand, I have stayed at “so called guesthouses” on 5-6 different occasions. It seems that the common denominator between all these guesthouse operations, is that there is no housekeeping. In other words, the guest is expected to tidy up his own room and make his own bed unless he makes prior arrangements with the management for maid service. In general, the maid comes in to clean up only after the guest checks out. That’s fine by me! In Sukhothai (Central Thailand), another idiosyncrasy of the guesthouse in the area is that the guest is required to pay a small amount for toilet paper. One Guesthouse owner explained the rational behind this practice -
‘As most the guests are backpacker types, it is not uncommon for these guests to take the toilet paper with them after they check out, hence we have to charge them for toilet paper”.

For your information, the toilet paper costs about 13 cents (or 10 baht) per roll.

In future posts, I will discuss qualities of a good guesthouse and relate some of my own personal experiences with this particular lodging type.

Thailand
Travel

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