A glass of the last of the summer shandies rests tepid and with slanted meniscus, upon a wonky beer garden table. The thinning summer hoards nod only briefly to the dead metrosexual who was attempting to drink lemonade in Millwall.

As this autumnal scene fades into tarmac, it's last chance saloon for investors in the traditional, British, bargain guest house break. If you are considering this, then remember to account for the following risk factors:

1) Benchmark the difference between concentration camp, cut-throat survival and the queues for food and ice cream on the beach. If you can't tell the difference between traumatic footage of one and the unnecessary violence of the other - then be careful - you're probably near Whitby or somewhere and trust me, Ray Mears would be shitting his home made squirrel pants.

2) Question your desired business outcomes. Do you really expect your customers to spend a week in the house of a stranger who makes you get up for breakfast (sometimes even banging a gong) at least an hour earlier than if you had to go to work? If your friend did this to you, you'd drive back home again. Remember: this is England - we don't do customer service. While this is funny if we are watching American tourists who won't go for a crap unless escorted by chauffer, will this be funny halfway through the holiday, when you're looking for break-even return on the £150 you have been charged to sleep in damp mould?

Any business brief worth its salt will tell you these risk factors already outweigh the benefits. Which is why I would encourage anybody investing in this ailing British hinterland to consider product re-alignment:

1) Save investment capitol by not asking the traditional, family run guest house to change any of the above. Then get on to the marketing team and tell them to sell the holiday to rich tourists who want to see an 'authentic, British peasant holiday fresh from last century'.

2) Expand the market this establishes, by offering supplements we can live up to:

3) Branding: always 'go the extra mile'. Are you being quite fucking miserable enough? If not, go on a team building weekend to Yorkshire. Or perhaps one of those East Anglian campsites where every toilet is 'out of order' and buckets are curiously the price of platinum for this week only.

4) NEVER undermine your own brand. Do not be tempted to say: what's so good about coming from a particular place anyway? E equals MC squared had fuck all to with Yorkshire and it did much more to advance physics than a rock hard scone and a cow pat.

And don't make the mistake of ignoring further foreign investment. Obama has just reorganised his torture squad to ensure they don't look like one anymore. Why not invite them to a team meeting in a guest house in Cleveland and show them just how far they can go? Not only to hide people's pain behind a pale, chintz curtain, but to make them save up and pay for it themselves, in advance?