Hello Rockmere Lodge Friends,
First off on this long-awaited newsletter, it is with a heavy and broken heart that we tell you that we said fair well to our beloved Gromit who crossed over the rainbow bridge on August 28th. He had pneumonia and his weak immune system couldn’t stand the strain and Andy had to make the decision to say goodbye to him. Andy is devastated because Gromit was always with him like he was glued to him. Our hearts are breaking.
It has been awhile since out last newsletter and that is because of trying to play catch up on getting the inn ready for the 2018 season.
Speaking of which we have to say because of last year and tis year we have made some changes to our Rockmere Lodge’s policies.
We want to say right up front; these changes do not apply to our returning guests who appreciate what we offer at Rockmere Lodge.
Next year we may not take one nighters because they are the ones who have run us ragged! They want everything and anything that is free but leave nothing in the envelope for the Animal Shelter. So, if we do take a one nigher there will be an additional charge of $15.00 over the normal room rates. We are one of a few B&B’s who will take a one nightery. The others are two nights and more for a reservation and they run $10 to $20 more per room per night than us and they are always full. Therefore, we decided enough id enough. We offer a lot free with the room rate and certain guests have taken advantage of that too. For instance, other B&B’s charge $2.00 for bottled water. At Rockmere Lodge we offer it free. We have had guests who before leaving take 6 – 8 bottles for the road! Do you think that is fair?
We over heard a guest saying to another isn’t this nice. They offer a lot of things free and the other said yeah but it isn’t Starbucks. The other guest said no maybe so but you would be paying $8 for that mug of coffee if it was! You know we offer 6 – 7 different creamers and sweeteners among a lot of other things like hot chocolate, cider and tea. Again, never can make them happy lately.
Now let’s get to our breakfast we offer every morning. It is always a fresh homemade breakfast which is different each day served on different china and linens. As Michael, a regular guest, said in his review, you won’t find boiled eggs that you peel yourself served on paper plates and paper napkins like another B&B here in town.
And those who have a special diet will be charged from $3 – $5 per day depending on how long they are staying here. It cost us more money and extra work over our standard breakfast. We are not a health spa charging three times our room rate for that special needs person. We are sorry, but we have found those what need special breakfasts again do not leave anything for the animal shelter after our extra hard work. Gluten free English muffins cost $5 for 6 muffins while normal English muffins cost $1.50 for 12 muffins. We used to bend over backward for those guests but sorry not anymore. We know what we offer, and we also know what other B&B’s don’t. All this will be spelled out on our webpage for out 28th season in 2019. If this upsets you, we are sorry, but we can honestly say we tried our best over the years to accommodate you but when we are taken advantage of we will run Rockmere Lodge as a business like everyone else in town does.
We also had more guests and yes mostly one nighters wanting to check in at 11am instead of our posted 2pm check in time. As our regular guests know, check out is 11am which gives us time to do the rooms and hopefully have some lunch for ourselves before 2pm check in. They get all hot and bothered when we say the room isn’t ready! No, it’s what you call get an extra 3 hours free at that room rate. At other places check in is at 3pm.
Then we have people who want to put three people in a queen size bed! One wanted to put 6 people and a dog in one room. We are not kidding! We find it so hard to believe how rude and obnoxious people have become. So, to sum it all up those of our dear guests who appreciate and return every year will not be affected by the changes.
As you all know Andy have redone every room at the inn at a cost of $200,000 from his own pocket plus we had the house painted and new stair railings to the front porch at a cost of $25,000. We are always trying our best to improve and make your stay more enjoyable each year you visit us.
So, what we are doing is weeding out those who belong at a motel, not at our home which happens to be Rockmere Lodge. You see Andy lives here 365 days a year. Don’t come into our home and insult us because we will not take it any longer. Over the years the three of us welcome you into Rockmere Lodge as guests to enjoy what we have to offer. Don’t tell us we have too many pictures on the wall! They don’t even know that those rooms have painting not pictures whose value can be anywhere from $500 to $800. There are Waterford lamps and bowls etc. but those that complain wouldn’t know Waterford from cheap crystal. We had one guest who said we had cheap Wal-Mart prints on the wall in a review. We read it and checked the room they were in and on the wall, there was one painting Andy paid $1000 for. Andy said he got a great deal on it from Wal-Mart. So, this is what we have been living and putting up with for the last two years and it will stop. We have informed out sender that they will probably get a lot of unsubscribes which is fine with us that will help us to clean up out mailing list.
So, we are sorry this is not our usual up-beat newsletter.
We are fully booked for Christmas-by-the-Sea weekend with our wonderful repeat guests and it will be party high Friday and Saturday for us all. We do have rooms open for Ogunquitfest, October 19 – 21 for those of you not offended by this newsletter. We would love to see you then with the smell of Fall in the air along with the sound of the ocean as background music. Andy will be turning Rockmere Lodge into a Fall wonderland.
One last thing for those who don’t leave a tip for the animal shelter, we would like to say that as of this writing Little Abbie has raised over $1000 since her death in May in donations to the animal shelter we support. We thank each and everyone of you who sent donations to them.
Until we see our regular guests again, stay well and happy. We at Rockmere Lodge appreciate your support over the years.
Andy, Bob, Tony and Max
