Guest interview - Kent & Michele Benson of Belvedere B&B, northern Italy
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Kent and Michel run the Belverdere B&B in the Alta Val Chisone Piemonte, an ideal location for cycling and skiing holidays. They have achieved the dream of escaping from the rat race to run their business in this beautiful region of Italy.
1 What is the aim of your business?
The aim of our business is to offer a welcoming and comfortable place to stay for guests and to enable us to live our lives in a more sustainable way in a healthy environment as well as allowing us to enjoy a simpler life. Running a B&B enables us to combine all of this and gives us more flexibility and family time than a “normal” job.
2 What prompted you to start your own business?
We both worked in and around London. For a long time we looked into what we could do to run our own business so that we could be in control of our own lives. It was actually a skiing holiday that helped to point us in the right direction. We decided that we should try and combine the things we enjoyed and to help others enjoy the same. Unfortunately the UK is not the ideal place to set up a skiing and cycling business.
3 What has been the hardest aspect of having your own business?
We have not found anything particularly hard as such. Living in a foreign culture has its difficulties, especially language, legal system and culture but for us that is all part of the challenge. All this is far outweighed by the beautiful environment that we are now lucky to live in. We did endless research before coming to Italy and did not have an idealised view of “La Dolce Vita”. We are also relaxed and flexible enough to deal with any problems that came our way. The attitude of some Italian organisations can be very frustrating and very inward looking and the red tape is endless. This is especially true of the local tourist board.
4 What is the funniest thing that has happened to you running your own business?
There have been many things have made us laugh but these are usually caused by the language difference or more specifically by the expressions that do not translate literally. Such as “Coda di rospo” which translates as “Toad’s tail” on a menu. This sounded disgusting /impossible as toads do not have tails. We later found out that it was a deep sea fish and highly sought after!
5 Is there anything you would do differently with the benefit of hindsight?
With hind sight the only thing we would have done differently would have been to make the move earlier in our lives.
My comments - Sounds to be like you were pretty sensible and realistic not to think that everything would be just perfect when you made the move. I think that if you are your work entails things that you really enjoy, you don’t have to commute and you live in a beautiful area then it is a foundation for a much more relaxed and contented lifestyle. Your last answer about wishing you had made move earlier, is reinforcing my feelings that I really must give up my day job soon to concentrate on the travel business.
