Our recent posts wondering if our observed improvement in the number of referrals from BBOnline was a sign that the troubled directory was returning to its former status as one of the higher referring directories turns out not to have statistical support across the board. Far too many properties are seeing numbers that still appear to be in free-fall. We asked other innkeepers to provide stats showing traffic changes for specific dates (just so we would all be looking at the same numbers).

Following last week’s post about a possible recovery for BBOnline, we received a few emails with stats from other properties. So far the results are about evenly split, half the properties reporting have seen an increase in traffic from September 1, 2012 through April 15, 2013, similar to our own, while the other half have seen referrals from BBOnline continue to decline. That said, the jury is still out, as we need more data to determine whether anything meaningful is going on.

Is there any new information on the decline in traffic from directory BBOnline? We’ve been interested to see if traffic from BBOnline has improved over time, since the huge decline observed beginning in November, 2011, and lasting about a year. If you haven’t see the earlier discussion of the lost traffic (up to 90% drops, in some cases), just click on the “Directories” tab at the top of the page.

Where do bed and breakfast guests come from? How do the find you? At the Mid-Atlantic Innkeeping Conference there were some great presentations. One of the special opportunities was to hear from the members of LocalU, a group of nationally recognized experts in local search – who present papers and seminars on local search opportunities. This one was geared toward B&B’s and small lodging properties. Much of the valuable information has been presented in a blog post by Mike Blumenthal, one of the LocalU members, in the form of a survey of members of the public on how they find a bed and breakfast.

As small business owners, it seems we are constantly receiving calls verifying our business information. In the slower season it can be 4-6 calls per day, though it seems to slow down a bit in the busy season. Not long ago, a thread on an online innkeepers’ forum discussed this issue, and it seemed appropriate to discuss it here, as well, for a broader audience. It is the nature of innkeepers to want to be helpful, so verifying business information seems helpful, painless and appropriate.

At the end of January we gave two presentations on Google Analytics for innkeepers at the PAII (Professional Association of Innkeepers International) annual conference in Las Vegas. Last week we provided the presentation called “Getting Started with Google Analytics“. This week we’ll wrap it up with our other presentation, Google Analytics – Climbing Higher. In this presentation we’ll look at Ecommerce Tracking, Goals, Multi-Channel Funnels, and a custom dashboard for a quick overview of the performance of paid listings.

At the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) annual conference last week in Las Vegas, we presented two sessions on Google Analytics – Getting Started with Google Analytics, and Google Analytics – Climbing Higher. This week we’ll post the presentation from the session entitled “Getting Started with Google Analytics” and next week we’ll post the follow-up presentation. You can download the Dashboard mentioned in the presentation by logging in to Google Analytics, then clicking on this link to add it to your Dashboards.

[Updated, December, 2014] In our previous posts, we’ve talked about organizing a year end review of your bookings and about the information that will help you identify guest booking trends and stronger or weaker performing rooms, providing an outline of the information you can track (or should start tracking) to prepare you for next year’s review. In this concluding post we’ll talk about a year end review of web analytics, specifically emphasizing paid listings.

The first part of this series discussed the sources of information for our year end review. In this post we’ll look at ways you can “drill down” in the information you have to learn more about the year’s performance. If you haven’t been keeping records that will give you the information, we’ll talk about how to get started keeping those records. We’ll look at two different areas for our year end review.

Wouldn’t it be nice to do a year end review of the year’s bookings and see if there are areas that can be improved? As the calendar year draws to a close, our natural tendency is to take a look at how we did this year. But what will give you that information? Most of us will look at total revenue, total number of room nights sold, and perhaps one or two other statistics, and then hope we’re on track and getting better.