The one true factor in tough economic times is that most businesses, especially Innkeepers, need to increase their marketing budgets to retain market share and hopefully maintain or even increase revenue.  No question that this is getting harder to do as more internet companies shift from “free services” to business models designed to produce revenue.  [...]

The comments to our recent blog post on maintaining conversations with bed and breakfast guests on Twitter really helped to expand the discussion.  Both Karen Thorne from the UK (@HoptonhouseBnB) and Heather Turner (@forfeng) added several suggestions for Innkeepers to try to expand the return on investment of their Social Media Marketing efforts.  In this [...]

A lot of Innkeepers have found out that Social Media like Twitter and Facebook are great ways to reach your customers.  Social Media Marketing is all about conversation and trust with your customers, i.e. your guests.   Many Innkeepers who are on Twitter and Facebook have many followers or fans who are other Innkeepers.  In fact, [...]

HOTELMARKETING.COM recently published an article by Daniel Edward Craig, a hotel consultant, entitled “The Guest is always right, and why it sometimes pays not to respond to guest reviews.”  This article clearly has relevance to Bed and Breakfast Inns as well.  Craig’s premise is that word of mouth reviews from guests have “. . . [...]

On September 23, 2009, Rebecca and I attended the first annual Social Media FTW Conference in Portland, Maine.  This was a collaborative effort of several social media savvy people from Maine who put together a great collection of speakers presenting to a sold-out crowd at the University of Southern Maine’s Abromson Center.  While mostly dedicated [...]

In our last post about Twitter we explored the concept of finding your unique voice.  Many writers and social media experts are trying to figure out what’s next with the various social media outlets.  This post will explore some of these ideas and relate it to what you should be doing to anticipate, and hopefully [...]

This blog post will explore the many images, pictures, and persona that are portrayed on Twitter.  It is an essential part of the learning of how to market Bed and Breakfast Inns on this new social media.  Here are my thoughts on this subject:
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Now for a bit of the downside of Twitter. When you put yourself out there to the world, guess what?  Some people don’t particularly like what you have to say.  Sometimes you forget that a lot of people may be listening (more likely watching) what you are tweeting about.  Here are my thoughts on having [...]

As we travel to work with Innkeepers this spring, we are hearing the same from everyone. Advance bookings are down. So, what are we suggesting that Innkeepers do? It gets back to the basics. We all know what they are, but it does not hurt to step back and think about them again:
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I posed the question on Twitter yesterday as to whether Innkeepers think that their Cancellation Policies help or hurt their businesses.  I received some really interesting answers; not a scientific survey, but the reactions of some very smart people in our Bed and Breakfast Industry.  It turned into a sort of on-line discussion, and Twitter [...]