The Innkeeper's Resource

Service and Marketing, Not Just for Innkeepers

What does Apple Computer have in common with your challenges as an innkeeper? Not much, you say? Well, you'd be surprised, and probably pleased with the reasons and the lessons.

As Pete Blackshaw writes in his Advertising Age article, "How Apple Is Blurring the Line Between Marketing and Service," Apple is an iconic company with some of the hottest products in the world, some of the greatest growth prospects in the technology sector, a history of making some of the hugest blunders in business, and, apparently, a less than stellar record in customer service and tech support. Well, they're trying to change, and in the process are demonstrating some of the most basic addages about marketing: SERVICE (not sex, well, that too...) SELLS.

Apple's new stores are pushing a whole new philosophy (for them) which is that if they provide great SERVICE to their customers, especially when they have a tech problem, the customer is HAPPY! The customer TELLS THEIR FRIENDS. To that end, they are hiring very knowlegable people to solve problems and help sell their products (duh). They call them "service concierges." Now, concierge is a word that has its origins in the hospitality industry, so Apple is just taking a page from you!

The bottom line lessons that Apple has perhaps belatedly learned are threefold. First is that "Service is Marketing." We've written about word of mouth marketing (WOM) in this blog before, and we all know that stellar service is one of the great advantages that innkeepers have over their larger counterparts in the lodging industry. But by providing service even BEFORE the guest books a room, you increase the odds that they will, in fact, book with you. And if they experience service above and beyond their expectations, they'll likely return.

Second, "Problems are Opportunities." In the bed & breakfast industry it's long been said that "a complaint is a gift." When you get a complaint, you have a unique opportunity to make it right. With the explosion of social media, you hear your complaints in places like TripAdvisor. Handled well, that complaint becomes a great marketing opportunity which arguably has the potential to make a bigger impression on a prospective guest that all the nice things people say about you and your inn.

Lastly, Apple has recognized that "Employee authority and passion aids selling." Again I say, what a novel concept!!! You love your inn and can sell a room, right? If you need to speak to someone to do that, you might be missing a sale. Does your passion show through on your website, just in case you don't get a chance to talk to someone before they book? Are your staff empowered to solve problems? Do they really understand your inn? If not, loosen the reigns and see what happens. But before you do, try something different.

We'd love to hear from innkeepers who not only allow but encourage all of their employees, from the lowliest to the mightiest, to spend a night at the inn as a guest periodically. How many housekeepers and servers and yard people might appreciate their job even more if they had a chance to experience it as a recipient? Try it, and tell us about it. Maybe Apple can learn a lesson or two from you. Cheers!

Peter

A Summer 2008 Viewpoint

“The twin effect of the economic downturn and the increase cost in gas prices just has people more economically-minded than we have seen since 2001, “ says Rod Caborn, executive vice president, at Ypartnership, a leading consumer research firm.

Another piece of great news...except that this quote is coming from HotelMarketing.com and is directed at the hotel chains and particularly the Super 8's and Days Inn type of properties.  Higher end properties seem to be exempt from these concerns.

Others offer a more upbeat assessment of the US market. "It's not quite as terrible as Wall Street makes it out," says Jan Frietag, vice president global development for Tennessee-based Smith Travel Research. He suggests the gloom cast by Wall Street's credit woes has led to a "disconnect between Wall Street and the Main Street operators."

Most certainly, we in the B&B and Country Inn business would fall into the latter category...the higher end.

There is some concern out there that we may again see a round of lodging discounts as we saw post 9/11 in an attempt to fill rooms.  Needless to say, that type of random discounting didn't work and there is no reason to believe that it either is necessary or will work now.

From a series of our own phone calls, emails, and other personal contacts, we're hearing some pretty positive things about the summer.  Rates are in many cases up...advance bookings are coming in...and the consensus is that Americans will still be taking vacations, tho' fewer will go to Europe because of the weak Dollar/Euro exchange.  So where will Americans go and stay?  Here at home!  For 2008, we have a traveling American public and projections for more Europeans and Canadians coming to the US for their vacations.  Could make for a good mix!

It's still not too late to evaluate your rates during the shoulders and/or even to see if there is any upward mobility for measured peak season rate increases.  The point is that once again, there is still time to take a look at your strategies to drive business to your inn.  Look again at your site for relevant content, good pictures, creative packaging, and to be sure you are offering (your promise!) a uniquely wonderful experience to your guests.

The business this year may come with some aggravations, but creative innkeepers will be the ones to garner the lion's share of the business in 2008. Don't sit on the sidelines and just let things happen...be one of the movers and shakers and make things happen!

As always, we love to hear how you are seeing the market and what you are doing to be one of the movers and shakers!

Rick

The Challenge of Declining Leisure Travel

Alright, so the news about leisure travel for 2008 isn't great. In fact, it's a bit alarming. But all is not lost!

According to the 2008 National Travel Monitor, as reported in Ypartnership's recent article "Would If I Could," there are several reasons why 16% of leisure travelers plan to take fewer trips this year. There are those that you'd expect, like "Current economic conditions make it difficult for me to travel" or the "Price of gasoline is too high." While people's Time Poverty continues to be an issue, economic issues seem to prevail this year more than in 2007. So, what's an innkeeper to do?

Let's look at it this way: the travel "pie" is made from a pot of blueberries. If you look around you, there are a certain number of inns who are sitting at the travel table, and each wants a piece of pie. Naturally, each wants the biggest piece! But, not only are there a finite number of pieces to go around, but the pie itself is slimmer this year. So, how do make sure you get your share? Or better yet, how can you get the biggest piece of a smaller pie?

Some would argue that it's not fair for one inn to do really well while others around them are struggling. I've even heard that there are innkeepers who feel that referrals should be shared in an equitable way! Needless to say, this doesn't wash with those bed & breakfasts that get the lion's share of referrals. After all, these are the innkeepers who are delivering an exceptional experience day after day, week after week, season after season. They are also the ones who have figured out how to reach their guests who are increasingly weary, worried, and wondering how to spend their hard earned dollars. When things are tight, people do like to splurge once in a while, and travel close to home, to a B&B for instance, is a great way to go.

So, dust off your thinking cap and put on your spectacles! Look at your inn's "experience offering." What separates you from other bed & breakfasts in your area or region? How is your marketing? Does that website need some tweaking? New pictures? SEO? Are you engaging your future guests? Do you understand your guests and how to market to them? If your revenues are declining, or you're worried that they might because of the prospect of fewer travelers, now is the time to increase your marketing budget. You absolutely cannot cut back or you will ensure a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have you been doing some creative things to attract leisure travelers in a declining market? Is your piece of the pie bigger than everyone else's? Tell us about your successes (but you don't have to share the recipe)!

Peter

2008 Inns and Bed & Breakfasts For Sale Study

For the fourth year Inngenium, LLC, Lodging Management Consultants has completed a fascinating study of the marketplace of inns and bed & breakfasts for sale nationally. The only study of its kind, it looks at the availability of properties for sale that are actually current or former inns (excluding those marketed as "potential" B&Bs). The study's author, Hilary Jones, looks at each state individually, then aggregates by region and nationally. The result is "a snapshot of the inn and B&B real estate market."

To put this year's report into context, the residential real estate boom of the first five years of the millennium are over; the real estate and mortgage markets are in turmoil; prices in many areas of the country have plunged, and inventories are at all time highs. Therefore, it is very illustrative to note that the B&B market has tracked that trend similarly.

Nationally, inventory of inns for sale is up 26.3% over 2007. Average asking prices have also tracked residential trends with prices generally showing a decline, the exception being at the very high end. In the 5-10 room category, prices have declined 7.3% to $1.1M in the past year, while prices are down 8.7% to $1.7M in the 12-15 room category. There were also some individual records set in this study, with the lowest price nationally being in Texas ($160,000) for a bank-owned B&B, the most expensive bed & breakfast (no restaurant) at $8.5M in Florida, and the highest price inn of any kind recorded (a full service property in Pennsylvania) for $10.5M. The price range with the highest percentage of inns for sale was $750K - $1M, with 22.4% of the properties falling into that category.

Of particular note, twice as many inns as last year (43.6%) have been on the market more than a year, and 24.2% have found their way into the study for the past two years. This confirms what professionals in the industry have long said that marketing periods of 2-3 years for an inn are not unusual.

The B&B Team, Inc. was please to be the sole corporate sponsor of the 2008 Inns and Bed & Breakfasts For Sale Study. For a copy of the report, please contact us.

Recession Proof Vacations

Are we entering a recession?  Are we in one? Are we going to avoid one?...I don't know but seemingly neither do the talking heads and economic pundits.  Nevertheless, the topic of Recession Proof Vacations hit the news this morning.

Not sure how many innkeepers had the time to watch the Today Show this morning, but there was a very interesting piece about travel with host Matt Lauer and travel editor Peter Greenberg under the heading of Recession Proof Vacations.

The nuts and bolts of the piece revolved around several topics, some relevant to our industry, and others more relevant to the larger hotel chains...but for us the key points are, the US is a bargain for overseas travelers due to the strength of the Euro, Yen, Canadian Loonie, etc.

Next key point is that people should investigate the shoulder seasons as good times to travel as rates are often lower than during the peak season.  So far so good!  Next came the question about staying at the smaller B&B "hotels"and Greenberg's response was for vacationers to look at the midweek, check in on Sunday and check out Friday morning, as the ideal time to stay at B&B's because as he put it, the B&B's make their money on the weekends.

Nothing new here as we've always been concerned about increasing the off/shoulder season business and the midweek business, but when you have high profile people and shows , like the Today Show giving advice to travelers on how to get the most bang for their buck by traveling during the shoulder/off season and staying during the midweek, it creates a potential WIN-WIN situation for all!

OK, now what to do?  Review your marketing strategies and your website to see if you truly are making your property attractive to the foreign traveler but probably more importantly, have you created a legitimate reason and call to action for today's contemporary traveler, the i.guest, to book a stay with you...when you really want ( and need)  to see them, during the shoulder season Sundays through Thursdays?

If after your review, the reasons to exercise your call to action/make the reservation aren't there...create them and now.Take a few minutes and turn this newsworthy topic into a money making opportunity!  We'd love to hear from you with some success stories!

Rick

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

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

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

When innkeepers take a reservation from a repeat guest or learn that a new reservation was referred by a previous guest, it's always a good thing. The higher the percentage of repeat and referral guests, the better, because word of mouth advertising costs nothing. Or does it?

In the day to day reality of most inns, word of mouth is free. But in the larger world of marketing, advertisers (that's anyone asking someone else to buy their product or service, including innkeepers) are spending an increasing amount on Word-of-Mouth marketing, according to a recent article from PQ Media. PQ Media reports that "Spending on word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing jumped 35.9% in 2006 to $981.0 million and is expected to top $1 billion in 2007." If WoM has now extended from just friends and family talking together to social media outlets where future guests get referrals from "friends" they may not actually know, this is huge.

According to Nielsen Online, the most popular social networking site, Myspace.com, had almost 59 million unique visitors in October, 2007, up 19% from October, 2006. Facebook.com grew 125% in the same period! The B&B Team has been addressing this issue a lot lately, because it's important. Does this mean that you have to start spending money to get the word of mouth that has always been free? No, not really. To partcipate in the virtual WoM world takes time more than anything. If you set up a blog the cost is minimal, but it costs nothing to belong to and read various social network sites where a lot of this word-of-mouth marketing is happening. So what are you waiting for? Eavesdrop a bit. Join the party and find out what everyone's talking about. We are!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Peter

Remember Web Basics

In all the discussion about social media, blogs, Web 2.0, etc., I am reminded that it's important to remember the basics when it comes to marketing your inn.

There's no substitute for the elemental aspects of hospitality, but to get i.guests to visit you, you have to attract them, and that means starting with a decent website. Your i.guest is intelligent, informed, and Internet savvy, so you can't afford to neglect the core elements of a successful website.

You need to have GOOD DESIGN, GOOD PICTURES, copy that is appealing and is OPTIMIZED for the SEARCH ENGINES, page TITLES that actually describe what the page is (also for the search engines), and listings on the major INTERNET DIRECTORIES like bedandbreakfast.com and bbonline.com at a bare minimum. You should also be linked to your local chamber of commerce and other organizations that are sources of local information and help attract visitors to your area. Consider group marketing with other local inns.

While we at The B&B Team believe that the best and most successful inns will be doing a lot more than this, we are often reminded that many bed and breakfasts are still neglecting the basics. Take a look at your marketing to see if you are taking care of them. If you are, then venture into some of the new media to see what else you could be doing. But if your basics need attending to, that should be at the top of your "to do" list.

Peter

Understanding the i.guest

Who is the i.guest? What is an i.guest? The i.guest is the contemporary traveler who is changing the face of hospitality marketing. Welcome to Travel 2.0.

The i.guest is Informed. Internet-empowered. Independent. And, importantly for innkeepers, is Identified.

The i.guest is finding places to stay and booking rooms (not just seeing availability at midnight) on the Web. Everyone knows that. But many innkeepers don't realize yet that their prospective guest is not just looking at their website to make a decision. Increasingly, especially with a younger demographic, the i.guest insists upon hearing what others have said about your inn. They want independent confirmation of your advertising claims from first hand experience. Tripadvisor is king. But so, increasingly, are other social media sources and communities on the Internet.

Your i.guest wants to learn about you and your area from more than one source, and they will book at their leisure and pleasure, not yours, but only if you let them. This independent and informed guest uses the Internet as their core tool, but blogs and other social media sites will affect their decision to buy more than your inn's website. So, what are YOU doing to attract the i.guest? Do you have a blog at your inn? How does it work? Do you track reviews on Tripadvisor? We're all ears!

Peter