Exceptional countryside agritourism – Agroletnica with BedBooking reservation system

Welcome to the world of Agroletnica Country House, a charming and historic agritourism destination that has found its place in the hearts of guests. In the spring of 2022, the owners, after two decades of city life in the hustle and bustle of Warsaw, decided to create a unique home in the countryside for young people with autism. The purchase of this picturesque property marked the beginning of an extraordinary journey, filled with challenges and triumphs.

Utilizing the BedBooking reservation system from the very start, they effortlessly manage the booking calendar, allowing guests to discover tranquility, a sustainable lifestyle, and exceptional hospitality. Join us on this journey through Agroletnica, a place distinguished not only by its natural beauty but also by the unique experiences it offers to its guests.

Tell us a bit about your place. When did you decide to start renting your property, what year was it, and how long have you been in this business?

David James: We bought Agroletnica Country House (“Gospodarstwo Agroturystyczna “Agroletnica”) in the spring of 2022, having lived in Warsaw for about 20 years previously. We wanted to move to the country in order to set up a forever home for the care of autistic young people including our own two children with autism. When we looked around for suitable properties we found our current place for sale and it answered all of our prerequisites.  However it was necessary to maintain it as an agritourism ranch for five years in order to have the permission from the agricultural land authority to buy it.  So we decided to keep running the existing agritourism business built up over 20 years by the person who built this property. So after we took it over and made some repairs in June 2022, we have been providing hospitality services since July 2022, which is now a year and a half.

What are you proud of about having your place now?

David James: We’re proud of the investments made for disabled persons, including wheelchair ramps, handrails, stairlifts, and more adaptations. We’ve also added fencing to keep autistic people safer if they have a habit of wandering off, as some do.

We’re proud of our sustainability initiatives, including composting nearly all the organic waste and subclassifying the metals and plastics streams into more easily recyclable fractions. We have eliminated most of the single use plastics and in our food growing avoid use of persistent agrochemicals.  We produce a lot of our own food here and source more food from local producers.

We have made a major investment into a heat pump and further energy saving initiatives. We have now not burned one piece of coal for the last 8 months.

For the above reasons we have been awarded certificates from the Polish Organisation for Tourism for both “Tourism without Barriers” for the disabled – very rare among agritourism ranches – and “Sustainable Tourism”.

We are proud of our rescue animals and also of our kennel for the breeding of a breed of dogs which was brought back from the brink of extinction, namely the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, of which we have two fine females at our property.

We’re proud to keep bees in an ethical way also, allowing them to keep most of their own honey.

We are proud to have grown high quality and nutritional food, to provide tasty meals with local as well as our own recipes, and to have probably the best water in the region, as the Letnica water was famous and a brewery, the Laettnitz Brauerei, was based in this village for that region before the second world war. As the highest property in the village we have the best water in the whole aquifer.  The closeness of the forest with its pine ethers and high quality air (usually showing up on maps of air quality as among the best in Poland) means that we can be proud of the benefits a stay here can bring our guests. Mostly now we receive repeat visits from most of the people who have been here before.

We are proud to have kept guests very happy (with few exceptions, you cannot please everyone, some turn out to have allergies to the rural conditions offered, or fears around the insects you get in the countryside) and this is why we have very high rankings on booking.com and Google, as well as our own guest book.

Lastly, we are proud of our cultural offer, with workshops for the harmonica taking place here two to three times per year, and people coming from all over Poland.  We have also hosted concerts for the disabled here in our dining hall. We have an outdoor camp fireplace very suitable for jamming away with guitars and harmonicas and that happens here a lot.

What type of guests most frequently come to your property? Do you have a specific target audience for your offerings?

David James: During the winter it is largely working people. In addition we find that drivers going to Germany or coming out of Germany find us well-priced for somewhere only half an hour from the border. In the summer when the swimming pool is working we are additionally a destination for holiday makers who want to use the pool or explore around the Lubuskie region. In Autumn we are full of people coming to Zielona Góra’s wine festival or to pick mushrooms, for which we are a very suitable location. Because we are a good value location offering good conditions for an affordable price, we do get people on the move from the war in the east. As we speak their languages it helps them to feel at home with us.

The target group long term is families with autism, or families with wheelchair users. Also people who love peace and quiet and get along with animals. We don’t want party types, with fireworks and we wouldn’t be good for people who have allergies to cats and dogs or who get into a big panic if they see a bee, wasp or gnat flying nearby or a spider on the wall and expect us to kill them. We won’t. We didn’t come to the country to pretend to be still in the city.

What sets your accommodation apart from others in the area? Is there something special you can offer to your guests?

David James: Guests love the swimming pool, the forest walks, the mushroom picking, the natural scenery (we have some great views). We have nice spaces for family groups or school reunion parties or small business colleagues to connect. We have bicycles that we can lend out, and other equipment.

Since when have you been using the BedBooking system?

David James: We used it from the time we took this over. The previous owner used a pencil and paper system which was fine for him when he was always present, whereas I still need to travel and Elena is here then on her own. Having an App which we can keep the calendar on and both see it and work on it in our phones is the key benefit of this system. In addition  the ability to place a widget in the agroletnica.com website, which I maintain myself without an IT person (so it has to be simple as I am really quite deficient in technical skills) is a big advantage.

Which feature is currently the most important for you, or which one do you use most often?

David James: The calendar.  We don’t actually try to use the invoicing function, you know how things are in Poland it’s not so easy with the KSEF handing over our heads, but thankfully the new government announced this weekend that this will be put back. For some people the invoicing facility will be fine but we do need a standard accounting package for that so we don’t use that. And what is good is that in this system it all still works perfectly well without using it. What we want we get and what we don’t want we don’t have to have, which is very good.

In second place I would put the widget. We haven’t had that many book via it, but we have had some. Enough to know that it works. And it looks good on the website. 

SUMMARY:

Thank you for providing your answers and sharing the story of Agroletnica Country House. We wish you continued success in creating exceptional moments for your guests and facilitating the day-to-day aspects of short-term rentals through the BedBooking reservation calendar.

If you are looking for a place like Agroletnica Country House, we leave you with all the necessary information:

WEBSITE >> https://agroletnica.wpcomstaging.com/

FACEBOOK >> https://www.facebook.com/AgroletnicaFarmstays

BOOKING >> https://www.booking.com/hotel/pl/gospodarstwo-agroturystyczne-agroletnica.pl.html