Limited-time TripAdvisor Promo with PAII

We’ve worked out an arrangement with TripAdvisor, so that all innkeepers in the B&B industry can continue to receive the 50% off deal for their new Business Listings Program through April 8^th .  You must use discount code TRIPDISC to get the deal.  If you haven’t investigated their new Business Listings program, I encourage you to check it out.  Basically, for a fee you can now add your email address, phone number and hyperlink to your inn’s web site on your TripAdvisor property page.  This is a new program for the entire lodging industry, and they’ve had several thousand properties already sign up.  I think innkeepers should sign up for three reasons:  1) you’ve poured a lot of time and effort into your own web site, and by having a direct link, you stand a better chance of getting TripAdvisor guests over to your site, 2) through your web traffic analytics program, you now have the ability to directly track the traffic coming to your web site from TripAdvisor…many innkeepers are now reporting this web link as one of their top sources of traffic, and 3) the 50% off price is low enough to give this a shot for at least the first year.  Properties with fewer than 11 rooms would normally pay $600 and properties with 11-25 rooms would pay $1,000 for this link – innkeepers can pay $300 and $500 respectively with this coupon code.  Go to www.tripadvisor.com/BusinessListings to sign up!

HomeAway Purchases BedandBreakfast.com

It was just announced a few days ago that HomeAway purchased BedandBreakfast.com, as well as their other companies RezOvation and Webervations.  Click here to read the press release, and you can read Eric Goldreyer’s post on our forum (as well as some responses) by clicking here.  If you want to read Trent Blizzard’s (internet marketing expert who works in both the B&B and vacation rental industries) reaction, click here.  My two cents?  First, I’m very happy for Eric.  He poured his heart and soul into ELG Hospitality and all its programs and services – what resulted was a highly successful operation.  There were bumps along the way and he could always count on a wide spectrum of reactions from innkeepers about their products and terms, but it’s hard to deny that he helped innkeepers move into the 21^st century and brought them plenty of business.  No company has generated more PR for our industry.  Every company that goes through a major change like this will announce that things will still be great, even with the new owners.  For some it’s true, and for others things can change dramatically.  HomeAway prides itself on marketing alternatives to the typical hotel stay, which aligns nicely with what the B&B industry likes to portray.  I think the best case scenario will be if the new ownership gives the old staff in Austin, TX and Logan, OH, all the latitude they need to stay highly involved in the B&B industry.  The people at BedandBreakfast.com care a great deal about the industry, so I hope HomeAway allows the leadership at BedandBreakfast.com to maintain a great deal of control and authority.  But HomeAway can leverage their much-greater resources to bring fantastic amounts of attention to our product and industry, and I hope they do this.  HomeAway, after all, was one of the few companies that ran a commercial during the recent Superbowl.  In addition, I’ll bet there are forms of technology, business practices and other aspects of running a successful business that HomeAway will share with BedandBreakfast.com to keep them on the path of continual improvement.

2011 Innkeeping Show Dates and Location

Mark your calendars for January 11-14, 2011 for a trip to Charleston, SC for next year’s Innkeeping Conference & Trade Show!  After some extensive research about innkeepers’ preferences on the best times to get away for a trip to “innkeeping’s main event,” and preferred locations to visit, we landed on January in South Carolina at the Charleston Area Convention Center.  We realize there is no perfect time or location for all innkeepers (a few innkeepers near ski resorts aren’t too happy about the move in dates), but please know we did a lot of homework to figure this out.  Thank you to all the innkeepers and the Committee of 100 for participating in our surveys last year.  We negotiated very good room rates at adjoining hotels ($119 per night, which includes breakfast and internet) and we’re going to take a hard look at how we can bring down the costs of attending.  Stay tuned!

2009 Year-End Performance Survey

Now that we’re about to enter the Spring season of 2010, we hope you’ve wrapped up your 2009 numbers and are ready to share them for the sake of reporting our industry’s performance.  At the end of 2009, we had approximately 800 innkeepers share their year-end data. We’re hoping to beat that number this year and top 1,000 participants!  We have put together a brief, online survey at www.innkeepingsurvey.com that asks for data such as occupancy, average daily rate, revenue/expenses and a few other tidbits of data.  This survey is not nearly as lengthy as the bi-annual Industry Study of Innkeeping Operations and Finance, so it will take you only a fraction of the time to complete.  This is our industry’s one shot at collecting rich information about the performance of B&Bs and inns.  We will share the results with the industry, and we’ll break out data by state where there has been sufficient participation.  Please take a moment and print out your year-end P&L statement from your accounting software and take our survey at www.innkeepingsurvey.com.  Any innkeepers who give data, as well as PAII’s Gold and Platinum members, will have online access anytime to dig into the data and compare your results to aggregate data by state, number of rooms, budget size and other factors.  This is a new feature!

Now is a great time to be an innkeeper and involved in your professional trade association! Not yet a member of PAII?  Join for as low as $89 at www.innkeeping.org.

Onward and upward!

Jay

Heather Tyreman
Bronze Antler B&B
Joseph, OR

Greetings from Atlanta and the 2009 PAII Conference! Today’s pre-conference activity included the Association Leaders Meeting. Twenty-five innkeeper-leaders from across the United States and Canada assembled for a full day of idea gathering, presentations and collective thinking. Of course, a tasty salmon filet lunch didn’t hurt either. Roll the tape! (The session was recorded.)

The meeting started off with a local presentation by Janet Cochran, the Northwest Georgia Historic High Country Regional Tourism Representative for the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GA’s home for state level tourism). GA divides its state into 9 marketing regions with a representative for each. Janet gave us an overview what the state office does to promote travel in the state. One particularly notable fact–any lodging entity in Georgia can be listed on the state’s website at no charge!

Jeff Logan from InsideOut Solutions continued the morning with a detailed presentation, “Effective Internet Marketing Tactics for B&B Association Websites.” Very interesting and definitely useful. Jeff touched on the importance of incorporating blogging, Google maps and photos into bed and breakfast association websites. He encouraged associations to post specials and events to provide more fresh content. Using free products such as Google docs and Google analytics are also good ideas. Jeff provided some interesting, limited statistics about association websites.

On an annual basis:
74,000 visitors per year (202 per day)
normal visit length is 5:15 minutes
55% of site visitors originate from within the site’s home state

Lastly, Jeff spoke extensively about effective search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing tactics for associations. He wrapped up with things to watch for when launching a new site and pitfalls to avoid. All in all, a thorough presentation from an industry professional.

Stop the tape! (Everything from here on is committed to memory.)

The afternoon was an off-the-record, animated, interactive session led by Jay Karen, PAII’s CEO. Jay started off by noting that there’s a Twitter feed live on his blog to capture conference tweets.

Of course, I can’t reveal everything that came from this session, but can reveal a few details:
- PAII mails out over 16,000 copies of the Innkeeping Quarterly magazine to both members and nonmembers. What a great source of information!
- PAII staff members are available to speak on a variety of subjects. They’re a good resource if you’re planning a local conference.
- The industry study of finance and operations is soon to wrap up. If you haven’t sent in your data, please do so soon. More data makes for more robust study results.
- Key Connections, PAII’s new newsletter targeting communication between PAII and state associations and other allied leadership groups, is on the street.

Lastly, we were given a sneak preview of PAII’s new website and asked for constructive criticism. You know a room full of innkeepers, especially leaders, aren’t short on opinions!

All in all, it was a very successful, eye-opening day. It was enjoyable meeting so many innkeeper leaders and talking about what’s happening in their states and provinces. Geez, it’s worth taking a spin on your bed and breakfast organization’s board of directors just to have the opportunity to attend!

And, if you’d like to see this blog post with links and photos, please see it on the Bronze Antler Bed & Breakfast blog, http://blog.bronzeantler.com.

Every business in the hospitality industry to some extent crosses their fingers and hopes the customers keep coming. But crossing fingers is not all that successful businesses do. They try new things. They experiment. They take risks. The reach out to new audiences, who may or may not be receptive. They depart from old ways of doing business.

As we look forward to the rest of 2009, here are some thoughts for you to consider…all in the name of seeking different results by doing things differently.

1. Love them or hate them, embrace the online review phenomenon. Properties with reviews get double the traffic that properties with no or few reviews get. Don’t ignore negative reviews. Too often I hear innkeepers say, “I will not dignify that review with a response.” On the other hand, I’ve heard many innkeepers say they earned business from guests who were impressed with their response to negative reviews. Dignify them with a dignified response! Many innkeepers choose to ignore or be indifferent towards the online review realities. At the same time, those who embrace it (despite all the unfairness I know exists) are earning business away from their competitors. Plain and simple.
2. Don’t follow suit with the hotels and stop the amenities. While I hear that guests today are more interested in a good price than what amenities you offer, I still believe that the amenities they enjoy on site will keep them loyal to you and our industry. What new amenities could you introduce to supplant ones that guests might not value?
3. Are you engaging at all in niche marketing or other new marketing opportunities? Do you offer babymoon packages to expectant mothers, and have you checked out a babymoon directory? Are you GLBT-friendly, and have you listed on any GLBT directories, or optimized your sight or purchased Google Adwords to attract the GLBT crowd? Do you even purchase Google Adwords at all? Experts in the industry cite very good ROI when you wisely choose your key words. Have you explored the advertising opportunities on Facebook? An innkeeper friend of mine is telling me he gets more referrals from those ads than one of the major B&B directories. Have you tried your hand at being a pet-friendly inn? If you have concerns about moving in that direction, just talk to one of your peers on the PAII forum about how surprisingly good that business has been for them. Pet-owners will go out of their way to find pet-friendly properties, and will pay a premium. You could always try it for 6-months and go back if it doesn’t work for you. Take some calculated risks with marketing!
4. Have you checked out your competition lately? Have you asked a friend to look at your web site compared to others in your market and give you the brutal truth about how those sites might be better than yours? Along that point, when was the last time your web site had a facelift or an overhaul? Quality, well-designed sites are winning business they lost before their sites were updated. Many innkeepers who tell us business is good cite updated web sites as a major reason. I highly suggest you use someone in our industry to work on your site. Don’t use your nephew, friend down the street or anyone else who doesn’t intimately know the B&B business, effective B&B sites, search engine optimization in our industry, etc. Your money will ultimately be wasted, with few exceptions.
5. Seek out those $25,000 ideas, rather than sit back on your heels and hope this year is a good one. Where can an innkeeper get an idea that might make a major difference in her business? By stepping forward, rather than backwards, and getting on innkeeper forums and going to conferences, rather than staying home. The only place to get those $25,000 ideas, meaning ideas that will bring you new business or increase the repeat visits of happy guests, will be at thought-provoking events where you will be among thought-provoking peers. Sound like a shameless plug for the style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Innkeeping Showstyle="font-family:trebuchet ms;">? You bet it is; but I contend you should go to any innkeeper conference in our industry. I’ve seen attendance down as much as 30% at state and regional innkeeper meetings this winter. Now is not the time to retreat and hope the $25,000 ideas arrive at your doorstep.

What are you doing differently that is producing results? What are you doing differently that you hope will produce results? Here is the place to share! You never know which idea will really make a $25,000 impact on your business.

Jay