We were lucky to catch up with Melodie Midwood recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Melodie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Our business idea came about as a happy accident!
The early days of the pandemic slowed down all things; but not for long & not for everyone. For my family, like many others, the hours got longer, the grind became grittier & finding down, or family-time, seemed impossible in the city, in our condos. Remember, in the earliest days of the pandemic, the advice was not to go into other homes. As all of our family members lived in condos, which all had balconies that were only accessible by walking through our personal spaces, as a family, we had no choice but to meet outside; and ‘outside’ in a city is often busy and not the best for quality time.
By 2021, we were looking for an easy weekend recreational property; no planes, trains or ferries involved. Purchasing these cottages that August brought positive changes for our family! Barefoot picnics, city dogs running free; slow days & quiet nights. Our Cottage Days’ Playbook was a Covid creation. Again, remember that no attractions or provincial parks were open, so there were no ‘must-sees’ or Instagram moments to capture.
Imagine it. Every visit to the cottages was like a mini holiday with no expectations – We LOVED It!
If we couldn’t travel, we would ‘stay’cation in style & elevate the whole cottage experience. Each cottage is self-contained with no shared amenities (very pandemic friendly, even for families ;-). The cottages are intentionally decorated in a modern Pacific Northwest style where calming tones, simple lines and carefully chosen necessities give minds room to breathe, space to wander and to have unhurried thoughts.
Ecotherapy (also called nature or green therapy) involves connecting to Nature for health and happiness; our rainforest acreage provided us with an ecotherapy refuge. Each cottage has an outdoor shower and a 2-person hot tub that provides the opportunity to indulge in hot/cold therapy (Thermotherapy) a treatment that involves alternating between hot and cold temperatures, followed by a rest period. Each cottage is a perfect, personal, wellness retreat complete with a full kitchen to cook to your specific dietary needs, a cosy gas fireplace, spa-inspired bathroom and an organic mattress with luxurious linen!
Wistful and wishful comments from friends made us realize our family burnout was universally shared. So we wondered if a slow time, self-care cottage stay might appeal to others. The answer was, “Yes it would!” It was a logical leap. By creating a special place that addressed and soothed our own needs, we had also created a haven that could provide respite for the burnout crowd. So when we are not using the cottages, we share them.
Melodie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Sure! I was a trailing spouse and a stay at home mom for most of my adult life. Until my husband retired we were a Canadian military family, moving every two-three years between the cities of Halifix, Nova Scotia; Ottawa, Ontario and Victoria, British Columbia. During our military life we also lived in Monterey, California while my husband attended the US Naval PostGraduate school. We also were privileged to enjoy an overseas foreign exchange posting to The Netherlands during those years. Our children are used to moving around and we are all accustomed to making new friends and being comfortable in new situations. After a 30 year career in the Navy, my husband retired and then immediately took a job with NATO so we all moved back to Holland for 12 more years and during that time we lived in The Hague. When my husband retired from NATO we all moved to Victoria, BC.
Purchasing the cottages in 2021 has been life changing for us all but it has probably impacted my life more than the others. After decades of having no work outside of the home, upon retirement and putting down roots in Victoria, I enjoyed the service industry jobs that appeal to folks that only want to work part time (clothing sales, receptionist jobs etc.). After purchasing the cottages my life changed dramatically.
Currently I like to say that I have a full time job that is seasonal, or I like to joke that I really do have a ‘cottage industry’! My sons and husband look after all of the maintenance and yard work and I manage the rest of the cottage business. I handle the reservations that come through our website and the larger platforms, I help out with the housekeeping and laundry when it is busy and I do all of the sourcing and purchasing for any items and materials required at the cottages. I also am the creative behind our Instagram account. That has been a learning curve! I am the person who takes most of the photos for our Instagram account, and I have also learned the ins and outs of other apps to help me create the posts, stories and reels for Instagram. None of the jobs are particularly difficult, but you do need to have an eye for detail, enjoy staying on social media and have an organized calendar so no dates are ever double booked and maintenance happens when it is a quiet time at the cottages.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
As I have mentioned I entered the short term rental market accidentally when I started offering up our cottages to friends that needed respite from the day-to-day and couldn’t really get off of Vancouver Island due to the pandemic restrictions on travel. When they all enjoyed the experience, I saw the potential for a small business that would also be a mortgage helper for our recreational property. With no experience in the area I started slowly and have purposefully kept our outreach limited. We only have four public faces: our website, our Instagram account plus Airbnb and Vrbo but even with this purposefully limited exposure, we have 50% occupancy which does indeed help with the mortgage and leaves time in the calendar for our family to still enjoy the cottages. That being said, as we enter 2024 we have more reservations on the books than ever for this time of the year. Looks like we are growing, along with our reputation!
So, how have we built our reputation within the market while keeping things very low key and therefore manageable by me?
It’s been two things: Word of mouth locally and public reviews on the large platforms. Just that simple, but not that easy – lol.
People tend to trust and believe what they hear from friends or valued colleagues and so to make sure the word of mouth is always positive I focus on customer service and the details of every stay. Specifically I centre my attention on three things for great word of mouth advertising: 1) the personal details of each guest stay, 2) the cleanliness of the cottages and 3) the authenticity of my online presence on Instagram and our website.
You know, aside from friends and family, I have never met most of our guests and yet through our pre-visit emails and texts, I feel connected to most guests before they even arrive. Often I will know their age, their interests, their special occasion and even their allergies (chocolate, down etc.). A two-way trust is created and as Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I try to make, through my customer service, every guest feel understood, expected and welcome. This front-end loaded effort to sort out all the details of their stay means that by the time our guests arrive, they are confident and comfortable and have no reason to contact me, so their downtime starts immediately. If guests all feel special while staying at the cottages, they will certainly tell their friends about their stay. Remember enthusiasm for a service or product is caught, not taught.
Cleanliness is king! The pandemic has created such a huge awareness around shared spaces and ‘touch points’. To address this, my housekeeping staff is very small and the cleaning of the cottages is of paramount importance. Light switches, thermostats, door knobs, handles, faucets are always wiped down. Baseboards are always dusted and dishes, serving ware and cutlery are all sterilized with a built-in dishwasher. If guests open the door and the cottage is spotless it goes a long way to calming their nervous system.
An authentic online presence has helped build our reputation. “Looks exactly like the photos” is a big deal in the age of photoshop. Our website has current photos and our Instagram account is of the minute. I encourage guests to check out our Instagram page and see what is happening in real time. No secrets, no surprises and no filters. I believe that this approach invites future guests to ‘anticipate the wait’ for their stay and also works as a tool to manage expectations. It’s not always blue skies and bathing suit weather here. The flora and fauna are brown in the winter, it does rain often in a rainforest, and yes, we are waterfront but we are highbank waterfront. I am upfront about all of this and people appreciate it. As a matter of fact, I think it sets the tone for their whole cottage experience.
It works like this:
Imagine arriving at your destination, and everything is easy. As you come to the end of the lane, you recognize our logo with its arrow pointing you onwards. You recognize your cottage, the view, the patio and interior; it is exactly like all of the photos you have seen online. You already know this place and you already feel ‘at home’! It’s obvious when you open the door & see the gift you choose for yourself that this is a curated experience, created with care, especially for you. You not only feel excited, you feel relieved – it’s clean, it’s what you paid for and it’s better than you expected! You are already relaxing in the most pleasant way. Clean is king and without a speck of dust or smudge, you feel you are already getting your money’s worth. You decide right then, that this bed will be extremely comfortable, this duvet will be just perfect and you are going to have a great night’s sleep.
Finally, our online reviews have really helped our reputation. I find that consumers spend a fair amount of time reading all of the reviews and will even visit the other website and read the reviews posted there as well. How do I know this, because most reservation requests will have an opening line that is a variation of “We are looking for some place that _______ and your reviews mention this a lot.” or something like, “Your photos caught our eye, and the reviews all say good things about _________”. Reviews are a big deal and the customer care aspect continues right to the end of the experience with a personalized response to any public online review. By responding to each review our guests know that they still matter to me even after they have departed, and that has got to be a good feeling.
Attention to those four things: customer care, cleanliness, online authenticity (IG, Airbnb, Vrbo and our website) plus our platform reviews are the cornerstones to building and maintaining our reputation.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
This is the simplest to answer of all the questions! We are a family owned and operated business. Our children are adults and together we all contributed financially to purchasing the cottages. Keeping it all ‘in-house’ has made everything from the vision to the details easier to manage. As I mentioned earlier, to keep our costs as low as possible we do most everything ourselves and anything we can’t do ourselves we hire professionals for. We hired a professional for our website design & to create our brand identity, so everything reflects what we feel is our message and also separates us from our competitors, and so start we hired a professional photographer to take the photos that are on our website. *As new business owners that is a top tip. Hire the pros to start you off on the right foot. As you develop skills (marketing, photography, IG design skills etc) you are more able to take over some of the work yourself while maintaining a professional appearance.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.oceansongcottages.ca/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oceansong_cottages/#
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oceansong/?originalSubdomain=ca
Image Credits
Photography: Melodie Midwood (3 photos) – Selfie of myself in the snow at the cottages, the orange sunset, exterior buildings and personal relaxation area. Photography: Michelle Pichert (3 photos) – The interior shots with no people. Photography: Emerald UnRuh (1 photo) – The exterior, sunny day shot with the food on the bistro table. Photography: Colin Yen (2 photos) – The exterior shots with people, hot tub and outdoor shower