I'm nearly as addicted to signing up for new software as I am to buying kitchen gadgets and Kilner Jars - I blame my IT background! But if I had to name my favourite business software. It would be Canva.

Canva is a graphic design platform that can be used to create all the visual content you need for your business.

The platform is free and you can do an awful lot with the free version, but if you are planning to use it a lot, I really recommend paying for Canva Pro. It's just £99.99 per year or £10.99 a month. Find out more about Canva Pro here 

In this blog post, I'm sharing 10 ideas for how you can use Canva in your B&B Business.

1. Create your business plan

Whether you need to borrow money or not, if you’re planning to buy or set up a bed and breakfast then you’ll need a business plan.

In the online B&B course I include an example B&B business plan and template.

Writing a business plan is actually the first step you need to take BEFORE deciding whether a B&B is actually the right move for you.

You need to prove to yourself that it is a realistic plan and that running a B&B will actually achieve the financial and personal goals you have.

A business plan is an essential tool to:

• Estimate how much it will cost to set up or buy your B&B
• Project how much money you’ll actually make
• Convince the bank or building society to give you a mortgage or loan
• Understand the competition and gaps in the market
• Anticipate any problems that may arise and how to overcome them

If you need to borrow money to fund your bed and breakfast, whether it be to get a mortgage to buy a Bed and Breakfast or to convert an existing home into a B&B, you’ll definitely need to write a business plan.

If you're the creative type and you're just writing the business plan for your own use, you could write your whole business plan in Canva.

If you need the business plan to secure finance, then it's probably safer to stick to a more traditional word/google doc/excel/google sheet combo.

Note

If you need to get a mortgage to fund your new B&B, whether it be setting one up from scratch or buying an existing business, to maximise your chances of success. I do recommend talking to a Hospitality Finance Specialist such as Stewart Hindley before you get going on your business plan. If you’re new to the hospitality business, they may be able to help you to secure a deal that you may otherwise have difficulty getting by yourself.

2. Create graphs for your business plans

You can create graphs to show financial projections and other statistical data for your business plan in Excel or Google Sheets. But if you wanted to create something a bit more visually pleasing and want more design options, then Canva is a great option.

 3. Designing your room information folder

There are several online apps such as Hostfully that allow you to create a room information folder these days. But I still think it's nice to have one printed off which you can put in your rooms or send as a PDF for your guests.

I've included a full training ( and a link to a template to use ) on How to create a room information folder in the How to set up, run & market your own B&B full online course.

4. Creating Images for your website, blog and newsletters

It's important that any images on your website don't take up too much computer space. An image taken straight from your phone will just swamp your website, newsletter or blog, making it very slow to open and losing you customers.

With Canva you can resize your images to any dimension you want and save them as JPG file without losing any resolution in the picture.

5. Put together a last minute gift voucher

If you have a request for a last minute gift voucher and it's too late to post one, then you can create a gift voucher on Canva and email it as a PDF.

You can view the template for this design here >> 6 x4 Gift Voucher Template or  A4 Gift voucher Template

6. Design your own recipe cards

I used to find these cards were very popular with my B&B guests. They'd often ask me for the recipe of something they enjoyed eating at the B&B. And I was able to give them a postcard with this recipe.

Click here to access the template for this postcard >> Recipe postcard template

7. Write a bed and breakfast recipe book

If you wanted to go one step further than a recipe card, you could produce a recipe book using Canva, then get them printed using either a local printer or an online printing service like Doxdirect. Get the template for this page here >> Lemon drizzle A4 recipe

8. Let Canva help you decide on your B&B branding

The Canva blog has some great resources for helping you choose both  colours and fonts that go well together.

Then, if you buy Canva pro you can save them as a brand kit for quick access when you're designing.

Canva has a colour palette generator. You can upload a photo and it will generate the colours with their hex codes for you. Or you can choose from  one of their colour palette schemes

Here is Canva's ultimate guide to font pairing