We are dedicated to helping our guests enjoy the total São Gonçalo experience and believe that only through partnership with other service providers – innkeepers, restaurateurs and barkeepers, merchants, artisans, guides, and  local characters – can this be accomplished. We can‘t do it all by ourselves. And so we are passionate about transforming the existing culture of competition and exclusion into a culture of communication and inclusion in order to offer our guests as many options as possible during their stay in São Gonçalo.

Our most important challenge is figuring out how to increase capacity during off-peak periods. During holidays and vacations we fill up rapidly and the recent increase in inquiries is very encouraging. We can host a maximum of 30 guests, which enables a high-level of individualized, personalized service. We have no plans to increase the number of accommodations, and will focus only on continued quality improvements.

And so we really are not able to leverage alone the holiday influx to cover the slow times. How do we create an offering that is attractive year-round? What opportunities are there to help maintain a reasonable and continuous flow of guests?

We are thinking along several lines. We would like to target special interest groups of ten to twenty people, offer a package including total use of the inn, customized menu, and whatever additional services might be required. We had a successful pilot with a group of ten studying the medicinal plants of the region with a resident expert. Other possibilities might include writing or poetry workshops, yoga or meditation classes, bird-watching, culinary seminars, executive team-building sessions. The inn is also ideal for small family reunions.

Another angle would be to work with a network of inns and ancillary service providers grouped by certain criteria, limited to Minas Gerais or expanded to all of Brazil, and offer tourists a menu from which to build personalized excursions. The traveler could select a timeframe, a duration, a handful of desired destinations, and we would deliver a total package linking those selections.