Taking the time to get it right

Column

Q: I’m from Transylvania, where I’m working on opening the first five-star boutique hotel in the region. I’ve invested my savings in the project and it’s nearly complete, but I don’t have enough funds to finish it. Do you think it’s wise to open the hotel as it stands now — with three out of four guest rooms ready to go — or should I wait and finish everything first?

— Zsolt Székely, Romania

A: Your problem is one that many entrepreneurs encounter when starting their businesses. The most important advice I can give you is this: You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Which means you might want to wait until your boutique hotel is finished before opening it to the public. First you need to be sure that you’ve established your brand identity and finessed the details of your guest experience. The short-term gain of opening early isn’t worth the long-term risk.

Word-of-mouth is a great promotional tool, but it can also be used against you. If your hotel is missing anything crucial when it opens, your guests will notice — and word will spread fast. Many of your early bookings will be based on your hotel’s reputation and if you open too quickly and guests have bad experiences, you’ll have a tough time trying to turn things around.

That doesn’t mean you stand still, of course. You can do a lot to raise awareness about your brand before you even open your doors. Just look at Virgin Hotels, for example. We opened our first location, in Chicago, in January 2015 after a lengthy renovation of the Old Dearborn Bank Building, a city landmark. We wanted to make sure we got everything right, which meant taking our time with the project (and truthfully a few of the hotel’s amenities, including the rooftop lounge, didn’t open until later in the year). But in the meantime, we were able to focus on getting the public excited about our hotel and what makes it different.

To that end, we had a bit of fun at the expense of our rivals — who unlike us were still charging for Wi-Fi — by turning up at their hotels and offering free Wi-Fi to their guests.

We also hosted a competition called Virgin Rumors in which we invited future customers to make anything-goes predictions about what features our hotel would include. Unsurprisingly, we received some pretty outlandish predictions — everything from lickable wallpaper to teleporters. But the winning feature was far more down to earth: A couple predicted that we would read bedtime stories to our guests. So on opening weekend in Chicago we made that happen. I read the winners their favourite book, Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” and even tucked them in to bed.

From day one our guests have been raving about how we created a hotel that champions the customer above all else. In fact, in 2016 we were named the best hotel in the US by Condé Nast’s readers. Before we opened, we took a look at everything that our rivals did and tried to solve the problems faced by everyday travellers. As well as offering free Wi-Fi, our Chicago hotel got rid of early check-in and late checkout penalties, and we made sure items in the minibar were modestly priced.

I visited the hotel for a hard-hat tour while it was still just a dusty shell, with the carpets rolled up along the walls. But even then I could clearly see the impressive hotel it would eventually become, and I took note of the passion of our staff, whose eyes lit up with enthusiasm for the project.

It’s great that your hotel is going to be the only five-star boutique in the area. But you need to make sure your vision is fully formed before you reveal it to the world. And then you need to keep building that vision, by doing everything you can to prove that your hotel is worth the extra money. Having a good team at your side can make that happen.

I know it can be tough to plough your hard-earned savings into a new venture. It’s a scary position to be in. When I started out in business with Student magazine, I had to work extremely hard to sign up advertisers for the first few editions. I was living from issue to issue. However, if you’ve done your research and are clear about how to give your customers something they can’t get anywhere else, then you’ve got a great shot at success.

But don’t stop dreaming once you open your doors. At Virgin Hotels, we’re gearing up to launch our next property in San Francisco. We could have opened it earlier, but as we did in Chicago, we wanted to make sure everything was in place to provide the best possible customer experience. And we’ll do the same with all of our future hotels. We’ve broken ground on sites in Dallas, New York, New Orleans and Nashville, Tennessee, with plans underway for properties in Palm Springs, California, and Silicon Valley. We’re also exploring opportunities in Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Washington, DC, and London.

Zsolt, you should be immensely proud of the progress you’ve made on your hotel — but you’ve got to finish the job before you show it off to the world. And remember, this is just the beginning of your business adventure. With a lot of hard work and a little luck, once you open these doors, you’ll end up with many more in front of you.

(Questions from readers will be answered in future columns. Please send them to Richard.Branson@nytimes.com. Please include your name, country, email address and the name of the website or publication where you read the column.)

© 2017 Richard Branson (Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate)