The Innkeeper's Resource

Online Travel Satisfaction Declines

An interesting article from HOTELMARKETING.com talks about a decline in consumer satisfaction with the online travel industry. This comes at the same time that overall consumer satisfaction with online commerce is rising. Is this a problem for our innkeepers?

To the extent that the report from the University of Michigan and ForeSee Results focuses on the portals like Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, and Priceline, it doesn't matter, as most small inns don't use these travel sites. However, if you do use them, realize that the public perception, while not bad generally, has declined for two years running.

It seems to me that this report reinforces the mantra that unique inns excel at one thing above all others: personal service and doing a good job of assuring guest satisfaction. If you're monitoring the travel review sites like TripAdvisor for comments about your bed & breakfast, you'll know if your guests are feeling truly satisfied with their travel experience. If not, you need to pay attention. As Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results, said, "...survival in this economy depends on customer satisfaction, because switching costs are low and an alternative is just a mouse click away." Does that sound like "online booking?" It does to me!

Of importance, Mr. Freed also says, "Standing still is not an option. As the smaller players change the game, satisfaction with the big players will decline if they just tread water." While he's talking about online travel aggregators, it sure sounds like good advice for innkeepers, too. The travel industry is up for grabs. Who will be around and flourishing five or ten years from now?

Peter

Inn Photography, A Tool for Success

Every bed & breakfast inn that is even remotely serious about attracting guests has a website, right? Well, most do. Are all inn sites created equally? Thankfully, no. Can most websites be improved? Thankfully, yes! What is one of the key elements missing from most bed & breakfast inn websites, even some of those that are beautifully designed? Great photography.

Sandy Soule of Bed and Breakfast.com has just written and published what should be the definitive article on inn photography entitled, "Good Photography: Essential Marketing Tool." Whether you currently own an inn or are simply thinking about it, read the article. Not only does she address the prevailing fallacies about photographs (and dispels them), but she points out just how critical images are to marketing. A picture really is worth a thousand words!

Photos of an inn should be high quality, and they should be professionally taken. In the digital age, it's amazing how many people think that, because it's easy to snap a picture and upload it to a website, that the images themselves will do the job. Sometimes they can, but it's very rare. The article, however, does give the do-it-yourselfer some tips for getting a better picture, and also talks about how to select an architectural photographer. Interior photography is very different from almost any other specialty, so choose wisely.

Have you had any good or bad experiences with photography? Let's hear about them. And read Sandy's article. You'll be glad you did.

Peter

Weddings and Leisure: Marriage or Divorce?

This afternoon I was interviewed by Melana Yanos, a writer for NuWire Investor, an online newsletter and website with information about investing in everything from real estate and precious metals to green investing and bed and breakfast inns. She already penned one article about B&Bs and wanted to follow it up with some insight into wedding venues and inns. She asked some great questions, which are worth talking about.

Most innkeepers have, at a minimum, been approached by someone wanting to get married at their B&B. Many have tried it, at least once, sometimes with the conclusion, "Never again!" Others have found that weddings can be very profitable. With the right site, facilities, location, marketing, strategic partners, and temperament, weddings can be an unusually profitable way to use an inn. Not only do you derive room revenue (generally with a full house), but there are site and facility fees, perhaps catering or other income from services provided, commissions for other services contracted for, and even event planning fees. Of course, a weekend wedding is much more work than a weekend full of guests, beginning with the preparation. And there's also the stress.

Not everyone is cut out for weddings. Did I mention stress? New brides-to-be and their mothers are famously difficult and fickle, and successful wedding hosts know how to deal with them. They also know people: florists, caterers, tent and chair/table providers, musicians, photographers, electricians and carpenters, and limousine services, just to name a few. They also know where else wedding attendees can stay, as most inns aren't incapable of sleeping 100-200 people!

If you're considering a "marriage proposal," be sure to do your due diligence regarding zoning, event permits, ABC licenses, parking, etc. If you can't do more than one event a month, you won't become a real wedding venue.

But key to the decision to host weddings, if you have an operating bed & breakfast now, is whether you're prepared to divorce your current stable of guests. Because if most of your business is in leisure travel and on weekends, you will sacrifice those travelers in favor of weddings, which are also on weekends, shutting out your leisure guests. But if you've got the temperament, location, and skills, weddings can be very profitable. Do you host weddings? Tell us about it here!

Peter

Strategic Partnerships, Lasting Friendships

Rick and I are just back from the Conference of the Carolinas in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Hosted by the South Carolina Bed & Breakfast Association (SCBBA) and North Carolina Bed & Breakfasts and Inns (NCBBI) it was three day gathering of innkeepers, vendors, and aspiring innkeepers to learn, network, and have fun. We certainly had fun, but we also learned and shared a lot.

Rick Wolf addressed a group about "Inn Branding, Market Positioning, and the i.guest." I spoke to another group on a topic called "Your Inn's Value and the i.guest." We continue to focus on the importance of recognizing the contemporary traveler. Together with Rick Newman of Commercial Capital Network, a lender who focuses on the bed and breakfast industry, we spoke about the importance of a standard, industry-specific chart of accounts both for tracking your business and for obtaining a loan or refinancing.

The keynote speaker at the conference was Berkeley Young of Young Strategies and Randall Travel Marketing who talked about travel trends for 2008. The consensus is that travel expenditures will increase 6-8% in 2008 with leisure travel outstripping business travel. Not surprisingly, boomers will dominate the market. ADR (average daily rate) and RevPAR (revenue per available room) are both up, which, as Jay Karen from PAII (Professional Association of Innkeepers International) pointed out, is good for the bottom line. Occupancy was flat in 2007, due in part to increased capacity nationwide.

Berkeley talked about some of the things we at The B&B Team have been discussing on this blog: time poverty, the Internet as the #1 source for travel planning, and the new consumer, whom he calls "transumers." The "transumer" is catered to in a variety of ways from malls in airports, retail sales generated from lodging rooms, to visitor centers becoming "heritage centers" to cater to the demand for education in travel.

But, the bottom line takeaway from Berkeley Young was that innkeepers need to IDENTIFY their guests. We've been saying this, and he talked about researching your guests to learn who they are. We are pleased that Berkeley Young and Young Strategies have decided to form a strategic partnership with The B&B Team to bring some of the high level, comprehensive research that they have been doing for years down to the level of smaller, unique lodging properties. Stay tuned for more about this exciting venture!

Peter