The Innkeeping Blog

Recently we announced a new partnership with TripAdvisor that allows only innkeepers in the B&B industry to enjoy 50% off rack rate pricing for their Business Listings program.  In addition, those innkeepers who are not members of PAII who sign up during our promotion (ends April 8), will get a free Silver Membership in PAII as an additional incentive.  TripAdvisor’s Business Listings program allows property owners to add their phone number, an email link and a link to their own property’s web site to their TripAdvisor property page.  This may seem like a minor addition to your TripAdvisor page, but it could be very meaningful in capturing bookings you otherwise might have lost.

Since announcing the promotion with TripAdvisor, the PAII office has fielded numerous questions.  I’m using my column this quarter to do a little Q&A about the program and how this does or does not change the nature of our relationship with TripAdvisor.

Is this really worth it?
Especially in 2010, here’s why I think it is in fact worth the investment.  First and foremost, the price will double next year, so now is the time to give it a shot and test the effectiveness of having the added contact information and links on your TripAdvisor page – especially the direct link to your web site.  To that point, you invest a lot of your marketing energy and dollars in your own web site.  You want potential guests getting to your site as quickly as possible, so you have the best chance of keeping their interest high in your property.  And, you know you’re going to receive the highest possible net rate when people book directly with you.  It naturally follows that a visitor to your TripAdvisor page – if she likes what she sees – will have a better chance of making it to your own web site if a link is right there in front of her.  I call this the “stickiness factor,” meaning you want impressed TripAdvisor visitors to stick with you and not move on to check out the competition.  Also, with this new link, you can now start tracking the amount of traffic coming to your web site from your TripAdvisor page.  This doesn’t reveal how many people are viewing your TripAdvisor page, but it does tell you how strong of a referring site TripAdvisor might be.  We are hearing from many innkeepers that their TripAdvisor link is among their top referring links.

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Well, there is a good bit on my mind these days, as you can tell from the long title of my column this month.  I’m busy with last-minute preparations for the Innkeeping Show in Austin, which starts in a few days (although you will get this while we’re all in Austin learning and laughing together).  This column will focus on my two cents about the big purchase in our industry that was announced recently, as well as some other exciting news.  Be sure to click through and read this month’s column!

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!

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Click here to read the story, which is mostly about a new web site offering “professional” reviews.

I chatted with author, Laura Bly, for an hour and a half the other night. 

What do you think about a review site made up of reviews solely from the web site’s employees who visit the properties?  Even though it doesn’t seem as though they’re interested in covering B&Bs, do you think consumers would see these kinds of reviews as more valuable than peer travelers?

I reported recently that TripAdvisor was going to work on my suggestion to change a small, but very important, part of a property’s page.  And,…I’m happy to report, the change has been made!  This is good news.

Every property page has a “Best Deals” box on the right side, in which are likely included sponsored links to various properties in your area.  Prior to the change, the title of the box would have said something like “Best Deals: 1889 WhiteGate Inn,” only to find links to competing properties that are completely unrelated to the 1889 WhiteGate Inn.  It was misleading and felt unfair to the people at the inn who worked hard to develop their business and brand.   I understand that business on the web and within TripAdvisor can buy Pay Per Click advertising using terms that might contain competitors’ names.  For example, if you Google “iPhone,” the first ad you’ll see on the right side is for Blackberry (I can’t imagine what they’re paying for that, by the way).  It would be wrong if the Blackberry ad said, “Best Deals for iPhones” and took you over to the Blackberry page.  That’s sort of what this “Best Deals” box felt like.

The small change TripAdvisor made (thanks to the staff I’ve been working directly with and their CEO), is that the box now says, “Best Deals: Asheville,” in the case of the 1889 WhiteGate Inn in Asheville, NC.  It no longer conspicuously uses the name of the B&B to drive traffic to competing properties.  I believe this results in a better experience for the web site visitor and is much more palatable for innkeepers everywhere.  Thank you, TripAdvisor, for listening and acting!

And, while I had seen these changes in the works while I was at the TripAdvisor offices earlier this month, I see today that BedandBreakfast.com members now have a direct link to their listings on that directory within that “Best Deals” box.  These links to the BedandBreakfast.com listings (while they say “Official Website”, which isn’t totally accurate unless your BedandBreakfast.com listing is your inn’s official website) are a good way to maintain the industry’s competitive  approach to hotels.  Before this addition, you’d most likely only find competing hotels in that “Best Deals” box.  Efforts to keep potential “inngoers” looking at potential inns instead of being baited to hotels are good in my book! Read more »