Welcoming guests

Guests reach a holiday house at the end of a long day: a flight, a wait for the hire car, then a drive on roads they have never seen, often after dark. Most of what can go wrong in the next hour can be settled before they leave home: a missed turning, a code that will not work, a stifling house with an empty fridge. On St. Croix, the managers of The Cerulean deal with it in the simplest way there is. Every stay at the villa begins with a guided drive to the house and a full tour of it, and only then are the guests left to themselves.

Not every owner can send someone to the airport, and not every guest wants to be met. The steps below work either way. They come from houses in the Amorielli Collection, and from what their guests wrote afterwards, the good and the less good.

Directions that work after dark

Send the arrival details well before the trip, a week ahead at the latest, and write them for someone tired, in the dark, with a weak phone signal. One guest, in a five-star review, still noted that they “did not get information until the day before trip”. SP Vacations, which manages all the St. Croix houses in our Collection, tells guests at booking that the arrival details will follow by email closer to the date, and that is the right order: the confirmation first, then the directions while there is still time to read them.

Good directions give the address as it appears on a map and as a person would describe it, the last two turnings with a landmark at each, the gate and its code, where to park, which door to use, and a number that someone answers at night. Say what the road is like. The listing for The Buck Island Overlook, high in the East End hills, strongly recommends a rental car and warns that some of the roads are narrow, winding or steep. Its advice is to “drive carefully, particularly after dark”.

Assume the phone will lose its signal. A guest at Moko Vista, a hilltop house on the same end of the island, found that the house had Wi-Fi but “you don't have mobile network unless you drive 2 mi away to the west”, and drew the obvious conclusion: “This means you need to download the offline map or you need to have a paper map.” Send the offline map with the directions, and leave a printed map in the house for the days out.

Where you can, lead guests in on the first drive, above all where they must drive on the unfamiliar side of the road. St. Croix keeps to the left, and on the north shore the team that looks after Toes in the Sand Beach House has done just that for its guests. Lindsay, on a family holiday in May, wrote that Rich “did guide us from the airport”, which “helped us get accommodated to driving on the left side of the road.” Fred, who stayed in April, wrote that “Joleigh helped us get from the airport to the house.”

In Salvador, where the upper town’s streets are steep and cobbled and the airport is about 30 kilometres away on the far side of the city, guests who book direct with Via Avantgarde, which runs the Penthouse Jacuzzi and three other suites there, can ask for a private transfer. It spares them a search for the right door with their luggage.

Plan for the late flight too. Groups sometimes arrive on different flights, and the person whose name is on the booking is not always the first through the door. When Amanda’s group had flights delayed in March, Rich “easily switched main contacts for someone that wasn't delayed”. Ask for every adult’s mobile number, and send the directions to all of them.

The door and the keys

Self check-in suits guests who land late or want no fuss, and several houses in the Collection rely on it. At Sea Sun Maui, one of four Kihei condos run by Megan and Bryan, check-in from 3 pm is “self-service with a keypad or smart lock, so you can arrive on your own schedule.” In Salvador, the Penthouse Jacuzzi opens with a smart lock and Vista Elevador & Mar with a keypad, so nobody has to wait up for a late arrival.

A code is only as good as the light it is read by. One January guest at a St. Croix condo wrote: “The first night we had difficulty getting inside the condo due to no outside lights”. They “couldn’t get lock box to work until 4 th attempt in the dark”, and then found that the “Lock box contained 3 different keys.” The bulbs were later replaced. The fix is cheap and should come first: a light on a sensor or a timer over the door and the lockbox, a code tested before every arrival, and a tag on each key naming the door it opens.

Buildings with staff need their own instructions. At Art de Vivre’s Copacabana Penthouse, on the thirteenth floor of a beachfront building, there is a concierge on the door around the clock and a private lift that opens straight into the apartment, so the arrival note should say what to tell the desk. At Lux Vidigal, halfway up the Vidigal hillside in Rio, the building has a gated entrance and a doorman by day but no lift, and the apartment is a third-floor walk-up. That is worth saying before guests pack the heavy case. In a gated community, give the guard the guests’ names before they arrive. Toes in the Sand sits behind a gate with 24-hour security, and a July guest noted that “they take the gating seriously”.

Lights, air and water before they arrive

A house should look lived in when the car pulls up: lights on along the path and at the door, a lamp lit in the main room, the outdoor lights on if the drive is long. Timers make this easy when nobody can be there at dusk.

In the heat, cool the bedrooms before the guests walk in. At Hook 'em on Paradise, on St. Croix’s north shore, each bedroom has its own air-conditioning unit; switch them on ahead of the arrival rather than leaving a tired family to hunt for the remotes. The Cerulean is air-conditioned throughout, kitchen and living rooms included. Some houses need a different approach. Moko Vista’s rooms are set up to catch the trade winds, and a guest there in March found the breeze cool enough to leave the air-conditioning off, so open the shutters instead. Bananaquit Bungalow runs entirely on solar power and batteries, and its listing warns that running the air-conditioning hard can drain the batteries. There the welcome is fans, open doors and a clear note on how to use the power.

Then check the things a guest will try first: the hot water, the showers, the fridge, the ice maker, the Wi-Fi, the television and the pool. At Shoy's Beach House, a December guest wrote: “The house was immaculate on arrival, and everything worked — from A/C to appliances.” Something will still go wrong now and then, and what guests remember is the speed of the fix. Lloyd, who brought a family of ten in January, wrote that “A few hiccups upon arrival were corrected immediately after notification.”

The first hour’s provisions

Nobody wants a supermarket run after a day of flights. The simplest service is to stock the kitchen from the guests’ own list. SP Vacations puts it plainly on its concierge page: “Send a list — coffee, the kids' cereal, a case of rum, whatever the week needs — and we'll have the basics in before you walk through the door”. Guests who would rather shop are pointed to Seaside Market and Plaza Extra on the way from the airport. At The Cerulean the kitchen can be stocked before guests land and topped up through the week, and a private chef can cook the first night’s dinner, so the evening starts at the table.

Even without a shop, leave enough for the first evening and the next morning: drinking water in the fridge, coffee and tea, milk, something for breakfast, and a light supper or the number of a place that delivers. Then add what the house is for. At Toes in the Sand, a family of four found sunscreen, after-sun and insect spray waiting, and wrote that “the complimentary sunscreen, after-sun products, and bug spray were an unexpected but wonderful surprise.” Megan and Bryan keep binoculars on the shelf in one of their other Kihei condos for watching whales from the lanai, and a March guest wrote that “the provided binoculars were so lovely.” In Salvador, Vista Elevador & Mar will set the suite up for a romantic occasion on request.

On the table, leave one page: a welcome in two lines, the Wi-Fi name and password, the number that answers at night, and the one thing about the house that matters most on the first evening. The full house manual can wait in a drawer.

The walk-through

The Cerulean’s own site sets out its rule: “Every stay begins the same way regardless: a guided drive to the villa and a full tour of all the amenities by our experienced villa managers.” Guests notice the difference. Kristina, who stayed at Toes in the Sand in April, wrote: “From the phone call the day before our arrival to the in-person quick tour of the property, the personalized service was exemplary.”

A good tour is short and runs in the order a guest will need things: the locks and keys, the air-conditioning controls, the hot water and the showers, anything unusual in the kitchen, the pool gate, then the breaker panel and the main water valve. Ready.gov, the U.S. government’s preparedness site, advises that everyone in a household should know where the main water shut-off valve is, and suggests tagging it so it is easy to find. Point out the fire extinguisher and the first-aid kit; the CPSC, the U.S. product-safety agency, lists a fire extinguisher in the home among its safety points for vacation rentals. Show two ways out of each bedroom, as the U.S. Fire Administration advises for every room in a home.

Then show what is particular to the house, the things a guest cannot guess. At The Cerulean, that means the water in front: the snorkelling starts at the shore, and as Emily put it, “Rocky entrance but water shoes do the trick.” At Toes in the Sand, guests describe the beach as rocky with surf, a place for walking and watching the surfers rather than swimming, so the pool is the swim. At Shoy's Beach House, a guest’s advice was to keep clear of the manchineel trees along the beach and the east property line. At Bananaquit Bungalow, it is the power. Where there is nobody to give the tour, a short page in the manual, or a video, has to do the same work.

The first message

Once the guests are in, send one short message that evening: a line to say you hope they found everything, the number again, and one useful thing for the morning, such as where to buy bread or when the sea is calmest. Then leave them to it, checking in lightly once or twice during the week. At Toes in the Sand, Scott singled out Joliegh, who “was wonderful from the beginning and made sure to check on us throughout the week.” Kristina noted that “Island recommendations were given for activities and dining.”

The message only works if someone answers the reply. Megan and Bryan live five minutes from their Kihei condos, and a guest at one of them who messaged on a Saturday evening wrote: “She replied immediately and came over 10 min later to check it out.” At The Cerulean, Timothy wrote of the manager, Rich: “We had a minor issue he resolved immediately early on a Sunday morning.” At Lux Vidigal in Rio, the reviews keep returning to two things, the view and how quickly the host, Bruno, answers. That speed is the part of a welcome guests write about afterwards.

None of it needs a front desk. It needs a list, a light on a timer and someone who picks up the phone.

Questions owners ask