A lot has happened since our last post. Dan and I are officially in Italy, and the road to get here was as smooth as a backwoods fire route trucking road full of giant rocks and ruts.

Yet here we are, and now Eric and Dan and I are diving head first into getting the property back into fighting shape and making plans for renovations.

It is easy to get mired in the day to day of a property this large, so before we go up to our elbows in figuring out what to do with 14 rooms in a villa and 30 pigs in the fields. We want to take a moment and remember why we are doing this: because we really care about making a place that embodies the spirit of true hospitality.

But you’ve heard this before. Which is why we asked you all about your pet peeves in the hotel world, so we could see if we aligned on what we assume are the challenges to overcome. I give everyone who responded five stars, because your answers were exactly what we were hoping to hear—that is to say, your pet peeves are our pet peeves too.

A lot of you wrote in saying that dirty rooms were a dealbreaker. We couldn’t agree more. What is the point of going to your home away from home if you feel like someone else has been there getting it dirty? It is impossible to provide good service if you start from a place of your guests not feeling comfortable in their own rooms.

Extending hospitality to your guests should start the moment they set foot on your property. If you walk in to the world’s most beautiful and luxurious hotel, and then you have to stand around waiting for someone to acknowledge you, that feels less like luxury and more like trying not to upset the man at the Greyhound counter so he will still let you on the bus. It doesn’t matter what level of hotel you are in, if you have to stand around at check in, you don’t feel like a guest, you feel like a reservation number.

And if you have to stand around after a long day of travel just for someone to tell you your room isn’t ready, it feels like waiting for the bus only to be told it’s full, you’ll never get on, and also you are ugly.

This dovetails into painful check-ins. Any level of hospitality should anticipate that when guests arrive, they are tired and ready to put their bags down, and our job is to make that something you barely have to think about. The most elevated level of hospitality is not solving your problem once you’ve brought it to our attention, it is making sure you never think you have a problem to begin with. Further, it is making sure you never feel like you have problems, and hearing at the beginning of your trip that it is your wife’s birthday, but she told you she didn’t want a big deal made, but we still bake a cake so that after dinner when she has decided cake actually sounds pretty good, we tell her you asked us to make one special for her.**

**Pro Hospitality Tip: always buy a cake when someone says they don’t want one. The worst thing that happens is they really don’t want cake and you now have a free cake all for yourself.

Italians get a lot of things right, and one of those things is having never developed a tipping culture. I have worked in the service industry for years, and I abhor tipping culture. If you pay your employees a living wage, they are not forced to live for tips, and it is easier to develop pride in a job that compensates people fairly for their work. It also hollows out the hospitality experience. Imagine going to your friend’s house for dinner, enjoying a beautiful meal, and then at the end as you’re saying goodbye at the door, they cough and hold out their hand for a tip. That would be insane, and I should really stop doing it.

We also agree with everyone who wrote that one of the most frustrating experiences you can experience on vacation is feeling nickel and dimed to death. Our philosophy is you should only be thinking about the price once, and that is when you are booking your trip. That way, when you arrive, you can leave your wallet in your room and get down to the business of relaxing.

When we started talking about this project, this was the number one thing that came up for us, and it is the number one thing that came up for all of you too, which leads us to believe this is absolutely the worst part of being on vacation. Walking into a room shouldn’t be a game of Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego? but instead of Carmen Sandiego, you’re looking for your light switch.

Our villa should be your home away from home, and as good hosts our job is to make sure you know how to use our stuff, so you can get the most out of your experience. If you are spending precious time trying to figure out the thermostat, that is time not spent learning to make your own perfect Aperol spritz by the pool.

Thank you to everyone who wrote to us, as your feedback keeps us moving toward building a property that eliminates all the things we hate about vacation. If you wanted to vent about the worst parts of your vacations and you didn’t get a chance to last time, we love hearing about it all: just drop your responses here.

Now, surely the buying process was the hard part and now that we are here, it will just be downhill, right? After all, how hard could it be to renovate a villa and then open it as a hospitality business?

Well, I suppose we are about to find out. Stay tuned for more about our first weeks here, discovering all the secrets of the property (so far), and what it really takes to run this thing.