Stopwatch by Casey Marshall

Segment Everything

Google Analytics ninja Avinash Kaushik points out the value of Advanced Segments, saying, “Segment everything.” This is great advice, and it is the approach we will use to clarify the results we see from our directories or paid listings. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account, and click the Advanced Segments button near the top left.

2. To the bottom right of the new section which appears is a button reading “New Custom Segment” – click it.

3. Give the new segment a name that will help you identify it by filling in the Name field at the top.

4. Add the Source fields you want to include. This will be the domain names of the directories or paid listings you want to include. First set the green section to Source, then add the domain name to the directory to be included. Google Analytics will suggest domains from your existing Sources as you type.

5. Continue by adding “OR” statements, set the “dimension” (the green part) to Source for each additional Source directory you want to track.

6. If you want, you can test your segment by clicking the “Test Segment” button to see how many matches each of your conditions (sources, in this case) it matches.

7. Save the segment by clicking the Save button, and you’ll see your usual search results are now limited to only the sources listed in your new advanced segment. To turn it on or off, go to the Advanced Segments button and check (or un-check) the box next to the segment you want on or off.

If you want to create another segment for other paid listings, just create a new “Paid Listings” segment, and repeat the steps above.

Once you have the segments set, if you activate one or more, all your Standard reports will show the segmented information, so you’ll be able to see referrals from the paid listings and compare them to each other directly. You can also compare goal conversions and ecommerce data from one paid listing to another. Great information!

For more information, Google’s Help Center can provide more details on Advanced Segments and other topics of interest.

We’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Pinterest lately, but surprisingly little of it comes from within the Innkeeping community. I say it is surprising, because Pinterest seems almost as if it was made for innkeepers – it is easy to use (we jumped in for our Freeport Maine B&B, and were happily pinning away in minutes), plentiful graphics grab the attention of the visitor, and it is so addictive that users stay connected for a long time.

According to comScore, Pinterest ranks just behind Google+ in number of visitors, and third (behind Facebook and Tumblr) in the amount of time a visitor spends on the site. This is very impressive for a site that is not yet open to the public (you can join using a Facebook login, or you can request an invitation on the Pinterest home page).

So what is Pinterest?

Pinterest describes itself as a virtual pinboard, but we think it is being far too modest. From where we sit, Pinterest is a fantastic tool for sharing interests, or ideas, with others. It seems to be a combination of bookmarking sites (like StumbleUpon, Digg, or Reddit) with photo sharing sites (like Flickr, Panoramio, or Photobucket), with the added ability to comment, share, etc., that you find on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Why do people share?

The reasons for sharing seem as varied as the backgrounds of the people sharing. Some are sharing their own memories or activities, much like other sites. But since Pinterest allows (even encourages) sharing of sites you visit (they retain info attributing the original source), you can also share your interests, dreams, and ideas.

Why would an Innkeeper use Pinterest?

There are several reasons to use Pinterest. First, as Heather Allard notes, “If you had the opportunity to make your business part of someone’s vision board, would you do it?” Of course you would.

Second, you can use it to share not only information and photos about your B&B, but about the entire experience of a guest at your property (OK, maybe not the entire experience, but you get the idea). An excellent example is provided by Whole Foods. As noted in a recent ReviewPro article, Whole Foods isn’t just sharing the food, but the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. B&B’s can share the accommodations and the experience, as well.

Several other uses for innkeepers, as well as some basic ‘how to’ information about using Pinterest is shared by Heather Turner in her recent article on Pinterest.

Another benefit of using Pinterest is yet to be realized, but could be among the most valuable of all. According to SearchEngineLand, Pinterest’s traffic has grown 100% since August 2011, and now carries quite significant authority from the perspective of search engine SEO value. They note that every pin of your content is a link to your website. When a Pinterest user repins your content, you get more links. While the value is uncertain, social cues do impact rankings, so it is difficult to conceive of having more social links being a bad thing.

Ready to Pin?

As mentioned at the beginning, Pinterest is very easy to use. However, Heather Turner’s article has some quick steps to get started, and there is a very complete article from BlueGlass, called Everything You Need to Know About Pinterest.

Happy pinning!

Closing the circle in this series on the process guests use to book lodging properties is what WIHP Hotel Marketing calls the Second Moment of Truth – the arrival of the guest at your property. We have already discussed the four-step booking decision process, how the guest becomes aware of your property (the Discovery or Stimulus step), how guests make the decision to visit your website (the Zero Moment of Truth), and the process of deciding to book with your property (the First Moment of Truth). In this article we consider the guest at your property (and beyond).

Ready to share?

How do you get word of mouth recommendations that will bring more guests?

If review sites and social sharing are the sources of discovery, then we definitely want our guests to have a positive experience, and to share that experience. How do we go about doing that?

1. The Positive Experience

People usually have a good experience when it meets or exceeds their expectations. Conversely, when the experience falls short of their expectations, it isn’t usually a good experience.

How are expectations set for prospective guests? Proceeding through the booking process we’ve been discussing, some expectation is created by the initial recommendations or reviews. These are refined further by the visit to your website and booking process. The Second Moment of Truth is when the guest arrives at your property and learns whether or not those expectations will be met.

What can you do to set expectations?

You can not do much to affect the word of mouth recommendations, but you can affect online reviews. You can respond to the reviews to

• thank guests for positive comments,
• clarify any misunderstandings, or
• explain (and show sensitivity to) any problems.

Photos have the most impact, both because they tell the story most completely, and because they can be viewed quickly. On your website you can set expectations by making sure the photos accurately show what the guest should expect. Naturally we all want to show our property to best advantage, and to use the best photographs we can in order to do so. However, if your rooms are on the small side, and you use and extreme wide-angle lens to make them look a bit larger, you are setting the expectation that the guest will have a larger room than you are actually providing. This is a recipe for the guest to be disappointed.

Make sure the website information is current. If you no longer provide an amenity, make sure your website doesn’t say you have it. If you’re close to an area attraction, certainly say so. If you’re not too close, don’t pretend you are!

Make sure your service exceeds expectations, wherever possible. You already know how to do that! There is no substitute for a guest who checks out saying, “You’ve thought of everything!”

2. Getting the recommendation

Ask for it! If you send a follow-up email, be sure to include a gentle request for a review on TripAdvisor (or any other site you feel is appropriate). Don’t be rude, or hit the guest over the head with it. Please don’t try to make them feel guilty (“If you don’t review us, we’ll go out of business”), but do ask, and ask nicely.

Let people know about your presence on the networks they are on (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Goole+, or whatever). Ask them to follow you. Ask them to recommend you. That said, don’t forget to check the rules of the review sites you request guests to use – some discourage asking for reviews, and even penalize you for rewarding positive reviews.

Not only do their recommendations reach their friends (who may remember to check them again when they plan their next trip), but they also will appear in searches for a long time to come. One of the aspects of posting things on the web, for better or for worse, is that you have no control over how long they remain available on a site operated by someone other than you.

Going around again

The cycle has the excellent potential of repeating itself. Potential guests discover your property through reviews, social media and word of mouth. They investigate further with search engines, reviews and maps. Once they have the basics, they visit your website, where your excellent site quickly convinces them to book. Once at your property, the experience is so good that they can’t wait to share it with their friends, family, and other connections. Those people learn of your property, and the cycle begins again.

By having a good presence on social media (the platforms where your target demographic(s) are found, of course) and on review sites, encourages discovery of your property. Good search engine, local, maps and review presence encourages the investigating guest to dig deeper and visit your website. A site that shows the guest the three things they are looking for (value, location and comfort) encourages them to book. And a great experience (supported by a website that has accurately presented your property – especially in the areas of value, location and comfort), encourages the guest to share that experience with the next potential guest.

This is the fourth article in a series examining how B&B guests proceed through the decision process for booking a stay. Based largely on research from WIHP Hotel Marketing, the first article describes the four-step process for booking, the second describes how a guest discovers your property, and the third examines how to provide information to get the guest to your website. This article discusses how to get the conversion – to capture the booking – once the guest has come to your site.

What is the purpose of your website? Have you ever given that some thought? Is it to (a) show off your beautiful property, (b) get people to call you for more information, (c) get people to call to book, (d) get people to book online, or (e) other? For most lodging properties, we would venture to say that the primary purpose is to get people to book online, and, secondarily, to call to book. Is it doing those things well?

The Guest Arrives at Your Website

Our guest has decided where they want to go for their getaway, they have discovered your property (and, probably, up to 10 others), they have done some initial research and learned a little about your property, and have now arrived at your website. WIHP calls this the First Moment of Truth.

What happens in the next few seconds will determine whether you get the booking or not.

What is the Guest Looking For?

Again, WIHP’s research indicates that the prospective guest is looking for three things:

• Value
• Location
• Comfort

They also found two other things that are very important: Quality websites sell better, and better booking engine design results in more bookings.

How should your website be designed?

A search on “web design mistakes” will yield many articles on poor choices in website design. Some even contradict each other. As mentioned in our previous post, Acorn Internet Services has prepared a series of checklists, accompanying their Smarter Innkeeper Series, to assist with selecting a web design company and/or SEO firm. The first article in that series includes a checklist to ask your prospective web developer, and makes a good list of things you should be planning to address with your website.

There are lots of examples across the internet of websites that are attractive and effective. For some examples, view the portfolios of design firms in our industry, such as Acorn Internet Services, Whitestone Marketing, or Insideout Solutions. While you probably don’t want your site to look just like another site, you’ll notice some similar elements on each site designed by these professionals. Large, high quality photos of the property, the rooms (comfort) and of the food (and other amenities, if appropriate). Clear, straightforward, navigation. Clear statements of rates and what you are getting for them (value). Clear descriptions of location and nearby attractions or points of interest.

If your website looks less “polished” than the competition (who may not be your neighbor, but in another location, entirely), you are not encouraging your visitor to book. If you aren’t showing them the things they are looking for (value, location and comfort), you are making it harder for them to find the information they are seeking.

Finally, if your booking engine makes it difficult to see what they want, and to easily and conveniently proceed through the booking process, you are making it less likely that they will complete the booking process (you can validate this using Google Analytics and checking to see where the visitor leaves the booking system, but that is a topic for another post).

What should your website do?

The guest has chosen about 10 properties to consider, and will visit the websites of all of them. Each will have 3-7 seconds to answer their questions. The questions will primarily be (1) is this property a good value? (2) is this property well-located for my planned activities? and (3) is this going to provide a desirable level of comfort?

There may be other questions in the mind of an individual guest, but virtually all prospective guests will be asking these three questions. Consequently, your website must answer them, and answer them quickly.

1. Your design must look professional and current (the portfolios of the industry web design firms listed above will show you what is both professional and current).
2. Your site must load very quickly (this is a priority for Google, and the slower it loads, the less time a guest will wait to see if you answer their questions).
3. Your photos must be professional, beautiful, and must show the comfort and the value the guest will find at your property.
4. Your rates must be prominently displayed, so the guest can easily see the value you are providing.
5. Your location – especially your proximity to the most commonly visited attractions and points of interest – must be easy to find.

If your site answers these questions for the guest, and does it quickly, and if your booking engine makes the booking process clean, simple and easy (including on mobile devices!), you will be capturing the booking you are seeking.

Our first post in this series provided an overview of how guests find and book a lodging property, based on research from WIHP, a hotel marketing agency. The four step process assumes the future guest has selected a destination area and then proceeds through the steps of (1) discovery of a particular property, (2) seeking information about the property to see if it is a good prospect (the zero moment of truth), (3) the guest on your website (the first moment of truth), and (4) the guest at your property (the second moment of truth). Our second post discussed the process by which a guest “discovers” (or learns of) your property as a possible place to stay.

Our topic today, then, is the “Zero Moment of Truth,” or the time when the guest has decided on a location to visit, has learned of your property as a possible place to stay, but has not yet seen your website, and wants to find out more about your property.

Another 7.3% seek information from a review site (such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.). After that the numbers fall off radically for travel guides (3%) and social media sites (0.8%). Just a side note – if you’re counting on your social media sites (Facebook, Google Plus, etc.) to provide the information, at the current time you’re reaching less than 1% of those who want to find you.

We would ordinarily expect Google to be the most commonly used search engine, so we won’t be surprised to find that it is. Although many articles remind us not to forget Yahoo, Bing, and others, and other articles talk about Google losing market share at the expense of Bing, in particular, these statistics don’t match up with the results of WIHP’s research. They found that 89.8% of searches leading to a property’s website came from Google, while Yahoo and Bing brought 4% and 3.6%, respectively.

Before booking, the average guest will have viewed 10 different hotel websites over 6 days, and will have visited the one they ultimately choose at least 3-4 times. This is where your competition truly exists. Your goal, at this point, is to be one of the sites (perhaps the top site) the guest will consider, and to get them to visit your website.

We talked about how to help yourself be found on TripAdvisor in our previous post, and much the same advice would apply to other review sites (though no others provide the exposure in the lodging market that TripAdvisor does). Consequently, our focus here should be on search engines – particularly Google – and map sites.

How do guests find information through search engines?

Try it yourself. What search terms would a guest, knowing the location and the name of your inn, use to search? If you’re having trouble, pick a place you’d like to travel, find the name of a property there, and try to find out more about the property using your favorite search engine. Then use those search terms for your own property and location.

What do you see in the results? In the case of our Freeport Maine bed and breakfast (while signed in to Google, which may affect the results), I see our website, then our TripAdvisor reviews, then a couple of B&B directories, a news article we are mentioned in, etc. Verify these results while logged out of Google. They may also differ by your location, so you may want to have someone repeat the search using a different location.

One thing you’ll see in all (or nearly all) the search results is a description of the page the result will link to. Although Google, at least, reserves the right to re-write the description, you can “help” by putting a well-written description META tag in the head section of a page. If your description provides an accurate summary of the content of the page, it may well be the description that is used in the search results.

Bear in mind that just because your own website is the first result in the search results, that does not necessarily mean your guests will click on it first! They may choose one of the B&B directories, TripAdvisor, or something else. Our goal is to provide information for our future guests in all of these sources, so they’ll find it regardless of where they look.

Getting found on search engines (search engine optimization or SEO) is a topic that would make an extensive series in its own right. Fundamentally it breaks down into on-page SEO (signals on the page that help the search engine determine how to index the content), and ongoing SEO efforts (such as building incoming links to your website, dealing with local listings, maps, etc.). We are planning to break out this topic, and part of the next post in this series (on the First Moment of Truth) relating to your website, itself, into a short series of its own. Consequently we’ll just hit some of the high points here. Bear in mind that our brief discussion of SEO is not meant to say it is not important. Just the contrary. It is so important that it deserves a more complete treatment than we can include in this post.

In an excellent series entitled “The Smarter Innkeeper”, Acorn Internet Services has devoted two of the three topics to on-page SEO and ongoing SEO (the third point is on the web design itself, which we cover in our next post). In each post is a checklist of tasks you can perform (or have done for you) to make your website more easily found by the search engines and to make it more likely to be indexed for the relevant search terms. The checklists are written as something you might ask your web designer or SEO firm, to be sure they don’t miss anything, but they will do very nicely as a list of the tasks you should plan to perform, as well.

Both of the two SEO checklists make reference to creating and maintaining local listings. In addition to any local listings sites, such as Chambers of Commerce, innkeeping associations, area marketing groups, etc., the search engines have their own local listings pages. Properly setting up and maintaining these pages will help you be found – especially on the mapping websites.

What about maps?

If you have followed the steps on the SEO checklists, and your local setup is correct, you do want to be sure your location is correctly specified on mapping sites. Most will allow you to claim your listing (you did that long ago, didn’t you?), then to edit the location if it is not correct. Again, most will allow you to specify business name, phone, website URL, etc., as well as other details, much as the local sites will. Keep in mind that the search engines have a specific format for business names, addresses and telephone numbers, so you want to follow those formats and keep the information the same from place to place. If the information is not identical (for example, saying “B&B” in one location and “Bed and Breakfast” in another), you run the risk that a search engine (which is only a computer, after all) will think they are two different businesses.

When your guest searches on a map, it is likely that they want to know how close (meaning how convenient) you are to a particular location. To help them out, tell them how close you are to various attractions. There is no substitute for making it easy for the guest to find the information they are seeking!

If we’ve done all these things, we’ve made it easy for the prospective guest to learn more about our property before they come to our website. In fact, if we’ve done our job well, we have whetted their appetite to see our website! We’ll talk about what happens on the website in our next post.

In our previous post we introduced the four step process (identified by WIHP a hotel marketing firm) of a guest finding, and staying at, a lodging property, then feeding the beginning of the cycle again by telling others. In this, and the next few posts, we will break down the components and see how you can more effectively help future guests find you.

As a refresher, the four steps are

1. Discovery or stimulus (where the guest learns of a hotel and gets interested)
2. Zero moment of truth (the guest begins to research the hotel)
3. First moment of truth (guest finds the hotel website and begins to determine if this is what they want), and
4. Second moment of truth (guest arrives at the property and is either happy or disappointed – which will sometimes result in that reaction being shared)

We’re going to focus on the first topic in this article: How does a prospective guest discover your lodging property?

The semi-automatic reaction in today’s world would be that, of course, a prospective guest learns about your property through a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, or others). That is not what the data indicates. The results of WIHP’s inquiries indicate that the guests are most likely to learn about a lodging property from friends or family, an online travel site, or TripAdvisor. Specifically, their statistics indicate that nearly one-third of people who learn about a property discover it from friends or family (32.7%), followed by roughly a quarter who discover it from Online Travel Agents (OTA’s – 27.9%) and TripAdvisor (23.1%). Other sources have far smaller influence (see the infographic on WIHP’s site).

If you think about how you would find lodging for your getaway, this makes a good deal of sense. Most of us, I suspect, would decide first on the destination (“I want to go to Maine” or “I want to go to France”), not on the lodging property. Only after the destination has been selected (at least tentatively selected), and we’ve checked to see that there are things we want to do or see there, do we move on to the details of making the travel arrangements.

This indicates that, whether based on recommendations of friends and family, or other sources, the destination is selected first, then the accommodations. Why is that important? It greatly affects two things: (1) they type of search people make to find your property (more on that topic in our next article), and (2) the specific information your website should contain (for example, if you have relevant information on activities in your area, your site may come up during the search for information about the area).

With this in mind, how can we increase the likelihood that prospective guests will find us? Let’s look at the three ways they tend to locate a property, and see where we can make it easier for them to find us.

1. Friends and Family

Family is, well, family. But the definition of who is a friend, and the way we make/find friends today, has changed significantly with social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+ and many other platforms. A few years ago friends were people we knew in our neighborhood, or met at work or within other social settings. Today we add to that our online friends, whether or not we have ever met in person or spoken by phone. Our network of friends is many times larger, and far more widespread, than ever before.

So the question becomes, how do those family and far-flung friends learn of our property, so they can recommend it to our prospective guests? Perhaps they have stayed at our property in the past, and have shared their impressions with friends and family. To the extent they haven’t stayed with us, in most cases they have heard about our property from someone who has stayed with us, or is otherwise interested in our property.

How can we improve our reach to these people? We can think of at least a couple of ways.

First, encourage every guest to share their story of how they enjoyed their stay (hopefully this will be positive comments). If they will share with their network of friends and family, offline or online, it has the potential for a huge reach, and will help to reach those prospective guests.

Second, encourage them to submit reviews on one or more review sites. Be a little careful, as some sites (Yelp comes to mind) forbid you to ask for reviews, while others, like TripAdvisor, encourage you to do so. In addition to these well-known review sites, most bed and breakfast directories allow reviews, and reviews can be placed directly on Google and on several of the OTA’s. Even a “Like” on Facebook or a “+1″ on Google will help pass on a favorable impression of your property (and may help with search presence).

2. OTAs and Directories

As mentioned in our earlier article, we think that, for the bed & breakfast or small lodging property, online directories should be included with OTAs as a source of discovery. How can you use these tools to help your prospective guests find you? In this case it should be somewhat evident, but here are our thoughts:

• Be sure you are listed on the directories which place well in search results for your area. Most directories show up well in most areas, but some are better than others in specific areas. Go to Google, Bing and Yahoo and search for lodging in your area. Try “bed and breakfast your area”, “your area bed and breakfast”, the same substituting “b&b” for bed and breakfast, do it with and without the “&”, and substitute “lodging” and “hotel”. See what directories appear on the first page of the results (even if it is their listing for a competitor). Be sure you’re on those directories.
• If you’re not already, consider getting on the OTA’s. Bookings through them come at a high price (commission), but the exposure you get may be worth it. You can negotiate a specific arrangement with a Global Distribution System (GDS) provider, or work through some booking system providers, like ResNexus or RezOvation. Tnooz publishes daily reports on which travel sites have the highest market share in different markets. Choose OTA’s with strong penetration in your target markets.

3. TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor has its own way of doing things, and many innkeepers are not happy working with them. Regardless of your views of their system, TripAdvisor is a fact of the innkeeping life today. The best thing to do is to try to work with their system, to help your prospective guests find your property.

First of all, be sure to set up your property information in the TripAdvisor Management Center. You don’t have to like the way it works (we aren’t particularly fond of it) to use it. Make sure your information is current and correct – especially your contact information. As an aside, be sure your business name, address and telephone number are set out exactly as they are in your Google Place Page.

By default, TripAdvisor includes basic information on your property, but no link to your website, and no phone number. To help prospective guests find you, our second suggestion is to consider getting a Business Listing (paid), which will result in TripAdvisor displaying your telephone number and a link to your website. This is especially valuable to the mobile user, who can just click the phone number to call you.

While innkeepers of smaller properties are sometimes reluctant to spend the money it would require for a TripAdvisor business listing, and for the commissions on OTA sites, or even for some of the directories, if the objective is to increase visibility and therefore help your prospective guests find you (and through that process increase your occupancy), these are the areas where the prospective guest is looking, so they are also the areas most likely to produce results.

A few of you may have noticed that we seem to have taken a bit of a hiatus over the past several weeks. In fact, our Freeport Maine Bed & Breakfast had a very busy summer, and there wasn’t much time for About the Inn writing. Now that our busy summer and fall foliage seasons are behind us, it appears things will be back on a more even keel, and we hope to be able to publish more regularly.

How do you attract B&B guests? In the past several years, most smaller lodging properties have become aware of the importance of attracting guests through an online presence (oddly, though, some still seem to question the need – or maybe they question the long-term viability – of an internet presence). Gone, or nearly gone, are the days of buying print or television ads in huge volume, in hopes that a few visitors will be enticed to become guests.

For the smaller properties, in particular, this is a good thing, as few can afford the high prices charged for print advertising, let alone the several additional orders of magnitude for television campaigns – all for ads for which there is little hope of tracking their success, and for which industry analysts say the return on investment (ROI) is very small indeed.

So, then, all a small business needs to do is find a way to slap up a small website, and all the marketing is done, right? Unfortunately, many small properties seem to have adopted exactly that strategy, and are beginning to pay the price in reduced occupancy.

Print media (with the exception, to some degree, of direct mail), and for that matter television, tries to sell by sending an uninvited message to a large, but generally arbitrary, audience. The primary reason online marketing is more effective, is because the prospective guest is looking for you. They are, by definition, part of your target market. They are seeking exactly what you are offering: some type of lodging for a temporary purpose.

How do you reach the prospective guest?

It seems like an over simplification, but in order to get the prospective guest, seeking lodging like yours, to connect with your property and make a booking, you need to be found where they are looking. Which means that you need to know where they are looking, and be found there.

Where are they looking?

We usually begin by assuming that the guest has decided to come to your area, and needs to find lodging. This is because there are many, many different ways the prospective guest may decide to come to a region. However, you can play a role in this, by getting information about the area in front of the guest – either by more traditional means such as print or television, or by having that type of information on your web site.

Once the decision is made to come to an area, the question of lodging must arise.

According to WIHP, a hotel marketing firm, there are four distinct steps in the process of deciding on a lodging property: discovery or stimulus (where the guest learns of a hotel and gets interested), zero moment of truth (the guest begins to research the hotel), first moment of truth (guest finds the hotel website and begins to determine if this is what they want), and second moment of truth (guest arrives at the property and is either happy or disappointed). There is little doubt that these steps apply more or less exactly for smaller properties, as well.

Let’s look a bit more closely at these four steps:

1. Discovery or Stimulus

How does the prospective guest find out about a lodging property they may want to consider? WIHP’s data indicates that the most likely source of information is friends or family, followed by online travel agents (known as OTAs, including Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Booking.com, and the like), then TripAdvisor, and then, to a much lesser degree, other sources like Facebook, Travel Agents, Magazines, etc.

Because we’re interested in the smaller lodging properties, we would suggest that bed and breakfast directories could be included with the OTAs, at least for the guest who is interested in considering bed and breakfast lodging.

2. Zero Moment of Truth

How does the guest research the lodging property he/she is interested in? The data from WIHP indicates that nearly 73% will use search engines to find the hotel. Did you pick up on that? Most of our search engine optimization is around industry-specific keywords, but most of our prospective guests are searching by the name of the hotel!

Of the remaining 27% or so, guests will search map pages (9.6%), review sites (7.3%), travel guides (3.0%) and social media sites (0.8%) to find the lodging property.

3. First Moment of Truth

Once the guest arrives on the property’s website, you have between 3 and 7 seconds to help them decide to stay at the property. The average visitor will have looked at 10 other property websites, read reviews, checked rates, and verified the location on a map.

WIHP says the guest wants to know:

• will this save me money?
• will this save me time?
• will this make my life better?

For the property, this translates to:

• Is this the best value I can get?
• Is this located near the points I am interested in?
• Is the comfort going to live up to my standards?

How your website stacks up in answering these questions for the guest determines whether or not they will book.

4. Second Moment of Truth

When the guest arrives they will either be pleased with their selection of your property, or they will be disappointed. In either case, the results are likely to be posted on social media and review sites, and shared with friends and family. In exceptional cases, they may even appear in blog posts.

When you consider the likelihood of these results, whether positive or negative, being shared with friends and family, as well as the review sites and social media connections, you can see that these results will also become part of the Discovery or Stimulus phase of someone else’s search for lodging property. That makes it imperative that the experience be a positive one.

WIHP has provided a video infographic to illustrate these points clearly and concisely. The YouTube version is below.

In upcoming articles we’ll be looking at the ways we can reach the prospective guest in each of the decision-making phases of the booking process.

The Maine Innkeepers Association Educational Seminar for April, 2011, was held on April, 28, 2011, and the subject was Social Media – Beyond the Basics. We gave a brief presentation on Facebook: Beyond the Basics, emphasizing engagement and mentioning, to a lesser extent, optimization and measurement. Here is the video (transcript below):

Transcript:

Hello, this is Scott from AboutTheInn.com. This is a short presentation from on using Facebook, that’s beyond the basics from an event on Social Media put on by the Maine Innkeepers Association that was held on April 27, 2011.

So as we move beyond the basics of Facebook, we’ll be focusing on three areas. The areas will be engagement, to some extent optimization and measurement of the progress, but primarily we’ll be focusing on engagement. We’ll do mostly Facebook, a little bit on Twitter, and to some extent these things all apply to LinkedIn. They also apply to other things where you may find your customers, but most of the principles are uniform – there are some differences and we’ll talk about those as we go along.

So first of all we need to consider just what the goal is. Often times we get absorbed in Facebook or Twitter, or whatever your platform of choice may be, and we think about how we’re going to do it, and how we’re going to find time to do it all, and we really don’t think about what we’re really trying to accomplish. So much as I hate the terminology ‘heads in beds’, that is the bottom line, because when we sell rooms, for lodging properties, that’s how we pay the bills, no matter how we want to characterize it. So we need to consider whether or not we have a plan, and the plan should include engaging guests and then some measurable objectives, as well.

So as we consider those things, the first thing to consider is “Where are our guests?” We know that by sheer numbers, they’re on Facebook, they’re on Twitter, they may be following our Blog, they may be on LinkedIn, they may be on a number of others, including FourSquare, Orcut, Gowalla, or any of a number of others. Certainly you need to focus on any networks where the majority of your guests can be found, and if there are other networks where you think there are a significant number of potential guests, then certainly you need to be present there, as well.

So remember that what we’re really trying to do is to create relationships. You’re trying to use social media to make friends for your lodging property. We’re not talking about just selling, or the hard sell, but we’re looking at creating relationships in the places where the guests are.

The first step, from a Facebook point of view, is to create engagement through your custom welcome page. You can create a custom welcome page – one that is very attractive – usually modeled on your web site, and with attractive graphics and text that draws the user in, and also, as in the example here, you can offer specials and extras for those who ‘Like’ you – things that are not available to everyone. This builds a relationship and makes the user feel that they have an opportunity for something special.

Next add photos and videos – things that tell a story. We had an interesting thing happen at a recent innkeeping show, where one of the keynote speakers mentioned that he was going to use one of our posts as an illustration of telling a story. In this case it was in less than 140 characters. We were in the habit of tweeting our breakfast menu. People liked it, and when we stopped doing it, they got in touch and asked, “What’s for breakfast?” One day we had a young couple get engaged at the inn, so at breakfast we tweeted that the “Cute young couple got engaged last night” and what they were having for breakfast. Story told. People were engaged with it, and passed that tweet around more widely than would have otherwise happened.

Another way to do it is to ask questions. Now, in Twitter you can ask questions and sometimes you get no response other than the echo of your own voice. In Facebook you can ask questions, in the conventional sense, but you also have the ability to use a Facebook Question, which allows you to create a multiple choice question, and you can limit the responses to those you define, or you can allow others to suggest new answers. We’ve done a number of things with this. Sometimes we’re earnestly trying to get feedback from our guests, which is certainly a good thing. For example, we asked them if they preferred sweet dishes for breakfast or savory dishes, and we got some interesting information from that. We also asked them what kind of sweet dishes they like: pancakes or waffles or more involved things, or just what they like. We allowed them to add their own choices and we saw answers that included things we hadn’t even considered. You learn a lot of interesting things by asking questions.

Another thing you can do to create some interaction is to feed your blog to your page, because a lot of your Facebook followers are not necessarily following your blog – unless you feed it to the Facebook page, and Facebook, as a page, is like a big, hungry animal, just waiting to be served. So post your blog to your Facebook group so they can all keep up with your news. And, to encourage interaction, even in your blog you may choose to ask questions or try to get feedback directly, there.

You can also offer specials just to Facebook followers, as was alluded to when we discussed the custom welcome page. You can also sell gift certificates directly from your Facebook page, there is an application that will allow you to do that, or you can create an application, depending on your booking engine, to allow bookings directly from your Facebook page.

From the point of view of optimization, you definitely want to optimize your Facebook page, both your profile information and the business description information available to you. Facebook is its own search engine, so you want to use terminology that your guest or potential guests will be using as they try to find lodging in your area. So just as you would do this on a web page, you not only want to create your vanity URL, but you also want to think of profile attributes as something people might search on.

You’ll also want to be create when you select the name of your page. Think about branded names, like the name of your property, but also non-branded or descriptive names. For a hardware related page, called “Black & Decker”, and that would be interesting if you’re into tools, but a site called “Women with Tools” might get more attention.

Similarly, Siteman Cancer Center started with only a couple of hundred fans, and is now up to a couple of thousand, but compare that to the page “Cancer Sucks”, with 48,000 fans and lots of engagement. Both are basically information and support pages, but there is a big difference. That isn’t a recommendation that you copy this approach, but that you consider the concept of an edgy name that people can identify with. Something to think about.

Be non-commercial in your commercial approach. What I mean is, don’t just try to sell things. It’s been said many times, and I certainly wholeheartedly agree, that, in many ways, social media is like a cocktail party, or a conversation among friends. You carry on a conversation, you don’t just try to sell stuff. You know perfectly well that if you go to a party and you meet, to pick on an industry, an insurance salesman, and his entire conversation at the party is to try to get you to make an appointment or to buy insurance, you aren’t going to enjoy his company unless you desperately need insurance. But if that same salesman makes witty, interesting conversation, perhaps even giving you some helpful information, you may end up making that appointment. That’s the point of view that most people expect in the social media world, so it becomes an important thing.

So think of things to talk about that appeal to large segments of people. In our industry you might say, I need a vacation – well, who doesn’t? Or maybe it’s coffee… Whatever, but keep it on topic. Remember, our focus is heads in beds, but by building relationships. Now there’s nothing wrong with the occasional personal reflection, story or comment, if you’ve established your credibility by being a helpful, knowledgeable, source. People find that interesting and genuine. The problem comes when you show that you aren’t able to separate your personal “persona” from your business accounts. People don’t want to follow you.

Measure your results. In the Facebook world this isn’t just a “check your Google Analytics” comment. In Facebook there is a thing called Facebook Insights. To get to it, go to “Edit Page” and in the left column, click on Insights. There you’ll see Users and a summary and graph and Interactions and another summary and graph. Both also provide more details, and you can view the latest day, week, month, etc. This gives you a good idea of how much you are engaging people, and which posts were the most effective to encourage interaction.

Thanks for listening. I hope you find this useful, and that you’ll continue encouraging engagement among your social networks.

Groupon, Living Social, Woot, SmartBargains, Name Your Own Price, Cheap Fares, Last Minute Deals, Bargain Travel, and the list goes on and on. Whether we like it or not, we’re all influenced by things around us, and the loudest voices in marketing at the moment are those screaming “Get [whatever you want] at a discount.”

Giant Value, photo by Jason Schlachet

Value vs. Price?

We came across an article a few days ago that really brought this home. It was an article by a woman telling of her first visit to a B&B. She intended the article to be a glowing commentary on the website that helped her locate the B&B, but the article drew such telling contrasts between her B&B visit and her “bargain” hotel stay the night before, we couldn’t help seeing the difference in value.

Traveling on a tight budget, the woman and her daughter looked for places to stay. The first night was in an inexpensive hotel, the second in a similarly priced bed & breakfast.

While the hotel price fit the budget, it smelled of cigarette smoke, was tiny and “dingy”. When she overslept, the housekeeper awakened her to let her know she had to get out.

Fortunately, the next night was an entirely different experience. The B&B was located much closer to the area the woman wanted, was clean and attractive, and she was greeted by a friendly and courteous host. The list of amenities will sound familiar to B&B owners:

• Free juices and water
• Entertainment system
• Free WiFi
• Cable TV
• DVD collection
• Access to the owner’s iTunes collection
• and, of course, breakfast

The price? A few dollars less than the smoky hotel! Now that is a demonstration of value over price (and in this case, it was even a lower price).

This scenario, with a few local variations, is played out in virtually every location in America, and, no doubt, elsewhere as well. B&B’s usually provide charming accommodations, at a variety of price points, with a long list of included items that are often either unavailable, or only available at an additional charge, at the nearby hotels. Naturally, price can vary greatly, depending on the location, the particular properties involved, amenities provided, etc., but in many cases a B&B provides much, much more, for the same or lower cost than a hotel.

Does discounting work?

Even so, with the drumbeat from the media of “discount, discount, discount” we in the B&B industry are constantly asked to give more, and discount our rates. Despite being priced below local hotels, we feel this constant pressure at our Freeport Maine Bed & Breakfast. Yet study after study has shown that discounting does not bring in enough additional business to offset the discount. In other words, discounting, by itself, can only result in loss of revenue.

How does that work? The math makes it clear. If we discount a room rate by 10%, in order to make up the lost revenue from the discount, we must increase the number of rooms sold by 11% just to break even. To actually increase revenue we need even more volume. That means you must couple the discount with publicity that will increase occupancy by more than 11% for every 10% of discount given. For most small properties, that publicity isn’t going to happen, because advertising is too expensive for their budget.

More exposure is the best answer

One thing stands in stark contrast between the smoky hotel and the cheerful B&B in our example: the B&B is clearly the “better way to stay.” That should be the emphasis of any publicity or marketing. Thankfully, the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) and several partners, have created a campaign called “Better Way to Stay“, attempting to bring attention to this fact.

The first campaign from Better Way to Stay, called “B&B’s Kick Gas“, and responding to the sharp increases in gasoline prices, will include a variety of creative ways to spend less on gas, from free gas card giveaways to packages with alternative travel options.

We’re delighted to see such a large effort to promote B&B’s as a better alternative. While we think the sensitivity to gas prices presents an opportunity, the optional “giveaway” part seems a bit too much like discounting for our taste. Fortunately, innkeepers can choose to creatively participate.

When we combine the story of the woman contrasting her irritating hotel stay with her pleasant B&B stay with the study results showing the ineffectiveness of discounting, we think the message is clear: We need to get the word out about the great value offered at a bed & breakfast!

Instead of re-writing the article, we will simply mention and link to the great information provided by our friends at Acorn Internet Services showing a comparison of statistics on bookings from before there were Google Place Pages and currently, and also noting which directories produce bookings. This is obtained from Acorn’s customers who use Acorn’s Intell-A-Keeper tracking software.

We will comment more on this topic before long.

Enjoy this useful information!