We haven't done our usual year end business review for 2022. This is actually good news: We've been too busy! Now February approaches and it looks like we will have another couple weeks of lull in bookings. This would be the second year in a row that Feb is dead. A great time to get some more work done to get ready for our upcoming 6th season.
Planning ahead always carries the bias of our grasp on the past. Recent years have been more difficult to look at while our very survival meant keeping our eyes on it. 2022 though, has been totally different.
People who know me will easily visualise the excel sheets full of formulas that we use to manage everything. From bookings to invoicing and accounting to communication. Then a dashboard of sliced and diced indicators with grated measures on the side served on a salad of colors.
In 2022 we hardly looked. No time. No worries. And a lot to do. We had a record year. In every single measure possible, except one, we beat our past, current and future targets. In every single measure possible, except one, we reached the top of our 'best case on paper' estimates. 2022 just flew. A great year.
Until the rain came. Just at the end of the year, we got so much rain in so little time. We (meaning I) left a car window open, it was flooded, anti-theft short circuit: the Cayenne is a brick. It's xmas eve, the garage guy wants to close and go off on a 2 week holiday. A guest put petrol in a diesel car... towing, on xmas eve... to the same garage guy, whom we're stretching his patience and maybe our friendship. Water also got into the villa's alarm system somewhere.
It started SCREAMING inside and outside the villa. VERY LOUD SIREN. We couldn't find it, so we just unplugged every wire behind every wall mounted box we could see. No luck. In the attic, the main brains! Unplugging was not enough, even the battery had to be removed. Ah silence at last. The main gate shorted a few days prior. Then a TV box. Later the main water pipe to the pool popped, after we'd fixed the pressure balloon that had popped earlier... All in a week. Wild boar come play disc golf every night and all the wood around the land that should serve to heat us is left scattered, and wet, because the quad bike won't start, ... but the new year did.
This having been said, we love this place, and consider ourselves very lucky. Europe's recent love affair with Portugal coincides with our move here, tourism has grown every year since. Now the government has sponsored a marketing push in North-America that is creating a wave of tourism from the US and Canada, that in turn is feeding an investment binge. Airlines are opening routes as fast as sprouts. Canada is one of our top 5 markets for 2023 already! Tourismo Do Portugal is doing a fantastic job. Better than this one Canadian living in Portugal could ever hope to achieve.
So 2022 went by so fast and so well, except that last week of hell, which in the end, is now also past and mostly resolved. Just a few new bills to pay. A bit like Covid. So we've been busy busy busy on all fronts, doing what we have aligned everything in our lives to do: Monte-Bougainvillea. And we did. And many of you think we did it very well, again. So for 2022, pretty much all we can say is:
Thank you.
Because fixing a pipe is easy, but maintaining a near perfect score of 9.8 over a growing record number of bookings is not. Thank you so much to all our guests for sharing the love.
(The awards say 2023 but it's this years' recognition of last years guests. This can be confusing but in our case it doesn't really matter since the only thing that changes is the year :-) Thank you.
The land clearing work for 2023 is, as of the 26th of Jan, already done! Just in time as the Algarve starts flowering. The seasonal rains have come and gone and we are already feeling the extra minute and degree or two of Algarvian sunshine under an ever bleuer sky. Around here spring is already just around the corner.
Barely the end January, and we already have a third of the year booked. 2023 is looking good, and we are working hard making sure Monte-Bougainvillea does too.
Now that everything is going according to plan we wonder what life will throw at us in 2023, because we know better by now. But we also know whatever it is we'll likely catch it, as we always do.
In the meantime we think it's safer to not rest on these laurels with it's 121 thorns. The head of 'service après vente' department expected us to reach 1000 Facebook followers within 5 years. On this one metric, we failed to be successful. So the head of making it happen get's called in to explain his sorry self.
His best guess is that to get new followers we need to get current 879 followers to share. But that assumes they are reading. Most likely it's just 'liked' and permitted to live on people threads. And we must say we are most grateful for that already. But to get to 1000 we need people like, uh, you maybe, to read this sentence here that says please hit the share button please! It's like a like only better because we like share more than like. Next step is to cross our fingers and see how it goes.
To be clear though, what we like most is sharing Monte-Bougainvillea with you.
Why not have a look, and who knows, book yourself a slice of the right spot.
Hope to see you soon,
S&jc
www.Monte-Bougainvillea.com
PS...the best place to book the right spot is ours: www.Monte-Bougainvillea.com ;-)
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