Traditionally this is the time of year to reflect on the last 12 months. Well, it’s certainly been a very exciting and challenging year for us!
It’s hard to believe that a year ago we were celebrating our last Christmas in Inverness. At that stage not many people knew about our plans to give up our jobs in Inverness, sell our house and move to Invergarry to run a hostel in May!
We had come up with the “Saddle Mountain” name and that was about it! So, as you might imagine, it was the start of a very busy few months working at our jobs by day and spending evenings and weekends business planning. And we’ve not forgotten the help we had from family and friends along the way.
We’ve been running the hostel for 7 months now. We are adapting to our new lifestyle which is so different from before. We were thrown in at the deep end at the start of the peak season for the hostel. At the time it felt like we were working non-stop. And we were!
Never having worked in a tourism business before we’re very grateful to have received feedback and comments from our guests to help us learn and improve the hostel. On a more personal level, we’ve been delighted to read the kind things our guests have said about the hostel, the coffee, us!
Whilst we’re open all year round, there’s definitely a seasonal pattern to the business and it seems to be much more weather dependent in the off season. We’re using the quieter times to catch up with life. We’ve been decorating the flat above the hostel so that if feels more like our “home”. We’re also making plans for 2016. Look out for our next blog welcoming in the New Year to find out more.
In the meantime we would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a merry Christmas full of festive cheer!