News You Can Use - our weekly cruise thru the issues and topics for the
business of Innkeeping.
Greetings!
I had the pleasure of traveling to Michigan last week, to attend and keynote at the Michigan Lake to Lake B&B Association Conference. The ‘lake to lake’ moniker is a ready reference: when I asked an innkeeper about their location, the response was “I’m on the Lake Huron side” or “I’m on the Lake Michigan side” of the state! We all enjoyed sessions on getting beyond burnout, building guest loyalty, social media marketing tools and more, plus a robust trade show. In my presentation, we took a look at the innkeeping industry (past, present, future) and examined a few of the challenges that you as innkeepers face daily – specifically, trying to keep up with marketing / social media, and unfair competition by unregulated lodging properties listed on a number of websites. This slide illustrates this unfair competition using the cost of doing business:
We had a lively discussion on whether / how B&Bs can differentiate their lodging from the unregulated lodging … and there is no easy formula that will appeal to all audiences – just as marketing must be differentiated.
I’ll be attending another state B&B conference this coming week – the joint Wisconsin & Minnesota B&B Association Conference – and we say “East or West, B&Bs are Best!” This will be my final event as Executive Director of WBBA. Many of the presenters I first saw at a PAII Conference – which I’ve always looked to as the go-to-source for the speakers that I would want to bring to the state B&B conference. And now as the Executive Director of PAII, that’s a tradition well worth continuing – the upcoming PAII Innkeeping Show will feature the best & brightest & most experienced in our industry. As we’re just over 2 months away from the trip to Austin, we’re turning our focus to the program details – and we’ll share them with you as soon as finalized. BTW, early registration discounts are on!
On-going education is vital, and on that note, this week’s News You Can Use has plenty of food-for thought, including:
The continuing shift in online bookings from the ‘brand’ (directly with the property) to the OTA’s … while lodging properties have focused on the guest experience, OTA’s have invested in digital booking technology.
TripAdvisor now provides analytics to its registered businesses, with the insights sourced from Tripadvisor itself: its reviews, rankings, and competitor analysis. And, check out the LINK on this article to the “Naked Truth…”
‘til next week –
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