It’s that time again. A new year, and with it lots of good intentionsresolutions to improve business for the new year. This is the time to go back over some statistics from last year to try to genuinely understand how you did last year, especially compared with the prior year, and to see what worked, and should be kept, and what didn’t. I’ve written previously about year-end reviews, so, instead of re-inventing the wheel, I’ve revised and updated the three posts for 2014/2015, along with the spreadsheet for checking on room performance, which you can download from the posts.

At last week’s Hospitality Marketing Summit Conferencein Denver, Colorado, I presented several sessions on Google Analytics for Innkeepers. The first of those sessions, entitled Follow the Money, gave an overview of how Google Analytics can help innkeepers evaluate their paid marketing to see if they are getting good value for the investment, that is, to see if they get an adequate return on investment. The slideshow is below. Beneath it is a description based on my HMS Conference session.

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.

Several of our previous posts on analytics have dealt with the “how to” aspect of setting up various things you might want to track across your website and your booking engine. A recent online forum discussion among innkeepers about this topic prompts an overview of what things you can track, why you might want to track them, and some potential problem areas. 1. Is your site set up to use Google Analytics?

Last week we looked at a survey by BedAndBreakfast.com, apparently designed to help it determine new prices for its online booking software products. Depending on the number and kind of bookings you take, the proposals could be better, or significantly worse, for your property. This week we’ll look at other ways vendors set online booking software prices. One thing is for sure – no matter how the survey BedAndBreakfast.com is conducting turns out, the results will be very suspect.

A recent survey from a vendor considering changing the pricing for its online booking products raises the question, “How (and how much) should you pay for online booking software and property management software?” Since the prices of online booking software and and property management software can be considerable, this two part series will look at the online booking software prices suggested by this survey, as well as the way other vendors price their products.

Just over 2 years ago we posted instructions for creating a booking form app for Facebook. That method used Facebook’s FBML app as its base. Of course, as some readers have noticed, Facebook later discontinued the FBML app (existing apps based on it continue to work, but no new apps are permitted to use it), so it is time (past time, some might say) to update the steps using newer methods that Facebook allows (at least as of this writing!

In our prior post on Measuring Social Media Impact we briefly mentioned Multi Channel Funnels and promised to discuss them soon. This post will discuss Multi Channel Funnels and what they can tell innkeepers about reservation sources. What are Multi Channel Funnels? A significant number of visitors make multiple visits before booking. That, alone, should make us pause before we draw conclusions about the value of a referral source only from the number of visitors it sends.

If you’ve experimented with Google Analytics, you probably know you can set up and track Goals with it, but two things can make it challenging – (1) how to track goals from your site through the booking process, which usually takes place on a website managed by your booking software company, and (2) how to set up your goals so they are useful. Just to add to the confusion, Google has recently updated Analytics, changing the way you track from your site to the booking engine.

Based on data from its sister company’s directory (Destination Nexus) Reservation Nexus bills itself as the most popular and most used all-in-one reservation system for US bed and breakfasts and inns. With all due respect, data from a sister company (only), and excluding data from much larger directories, makes that conclusion just a little suspicious. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that ResNexus is one of the top reservation systems, both in popularity and in features.

Book At Onceprovides a powerful and innovative approach to their software for managing bed and breakfasts and other small lodging properties. For many, their power and innovation will be very attractive – especially in the free version. For others, it just may not be their cup of tea. Overview Book at Once is a German booking system, reaching out to become a worldwide provider, and particularly to reach the American, market.

A few months ago we wrote about the importance of tracking the sources of reservations, and mentioned that we would be testing the Intell-A-Keeper software available from Acorn Internet Services. While the high season bookings will get busier in the coming weeks, we thought it was time for an update on that process. The results are both interesting and enlightening We have been using Intell-A-Keeper (IAK) since January, and find that the results are both interesting and enlightening.

This post describes a Facebook app that uses FBML, which is no longer permitted for new apps on Facebook. The updated post, using static iframes, is located here (posting June 5, 2012). Some innkeepers frequently question the value of social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, as being too time-consuming, all entertainment, annoying, or simply not producing any return on the time invested. We recently came across an idea from a large hotel chain that many bed and breakfasts can put to work immediately.

After attending the PAII conference in Austin, Texas in early March, we’ve been on a long road trip to see family and take care of some personal issues. In the course of those travels an interesting lesson arose for all of us. We were driving down the Interstate, with an approximate idea of our destination, and wanted to find a bed and breakfast for the night. However, our actual destination was a local attraction, with the area B&B’s scattered among a number of nearby small towns.

This week we attended the PAII Innkeeping Conference in Austin, Texas. Our first presentation was “How to Select Guest Management Software” on Tuesday afternoon (changed from its original time on Wednesday afternoon). Since it seemed that many were not aware of the schedule change, we wanted to make the slides available for viewing here. During the presentation we also gave access to a Google Documents spreadsheet to help in comparing different Property Management Systems, and evaluating them according to your own priorities.

In our previous posts on this topic we discussed a basic approach to selecting guest management software and online booking software, and considerations affecting the choice of web-based systems versus locally installed systems. As promised, we’ll discuss some of the features you may want to consider, and ways of evaluating them. Deciding what features you need We’ll list a variety of features, grouped by category, but you should make your own list.

In our previous article on selecting guest management software we talked about selecting online booking software, and how that choice can help to resolve questions about the property management software. This installment will talk more about the considerations in selecting the property management system, itself. Since it is also possible that your consideration of online booking solutions has not narrowed the field for property managment software (perhaps because you are considering systems that “play nicely” with several online booking platforms), we will consider property management software regardless of the type of online booking software it supports.

Assuming you have decided to find a new Guest Management System, let’s look at the process of choosing from among the many products available. The first step may not be the expected one, but looking at it first may save headaches later. Determine whether or not you will be using a third-party system for online bookings. That is, (a) will you accept online bookings, and (b) if so, (1) will you require that your Guest Management System provide built-in online booking capability, or do you want a third party online booking system, and then, (2) if appropriate, which third party system will you select.