There is going to be quite a lot of vagueness in the following lists of characteristics. Words like "often", "typically", "usually" and so on crop up many times. That is unavoidable. Let us start with a few characteristics of hotels that matter when explaining these differences.

A hotel:

• Is usually owned by people who are not involved in the day-to-day running
• Is usually purpose built
• Often has all-day catering and room service
• Has numerous staff who are always present
• Most often features equally-sized rooms with standard content and decor
• Typically has a large number of rooms
• Provides quick cleaning to achieve early check-in times
• Very often provides evening meal facilities
• Has an all-day reception (sometimes all night as well)
• Will often have guests' luggage carried to and from the room
• Heavily depends on the quality of its staff and management

A guesthouse:

• Is often a large house converted from a private home
• Can have owners who live on site, though that is not always the case
• Usually does not have a reception that is permanently staffed
• Is generally smaller than a hotel
• Hardly ever has identical rooms (decor, furniture, layout)
• Often has staff (apart from the owners)
• May provide meals to its guests other than breakfast

Now it gets trickier, because the differences between a B&B and a guesthouse are not very well defined. The internet has a lot of conflicting information here. What we are working with is the following:

• Residents are guests in the house of the owners
• There is usually no other staff than the owners
• There are typically only up to three letting rooms
• Guest luggage is rarely carried
• A B&B does not usually cater for lunch or evening meals

From this, especially the number of rooms, it is somewhat clear that we really ought to advertise as a guesthouse. However, we chose not to do that, because of confusion. The terms are not very well defined even in the UK, and our guests from abroad cannot be expected to know all the niceties if the country itself can't even figure them out! As a term, B&B is widely understood, yet guesthouse is much less so.

Also, we do not provide any meal service except breakfast (and packed lunch on request), so bed and breakfast covers what we do perfectly. And there you have it: this is why we advertise as a B&B, and not as a guesthouse.

And now for the most important bit: we have no staff. All the work is done by just the two of us. That is often underestimated. When the last guests checks out (10:30 at the latest), the time for cleaning begins. That must be complete before the earliest check-in (4pm), and that can be quite a challenge (believe it or not, but we also have lunch!).

That is why early check-ins are generally not possible, and certainly not unless agreed by us. We will always try not to be exasperated by those who expect to be able to arrive at any time. We always mention the check-in time during the booking process, but, well, people on holiday are not always paying attention. The unfortunate consequence is that there is quite often some muttering about our check-in time. That is a pity, but our guests also expect high standards of cleanliness. It is one or the other. The choice we made is to be clean rather than sloppy and fast!