When you're surfing you may wobble a little and slalom from side to side, but your momentum is mostly forward. Not so with links that can take you round and around until you are in danger of a digital dizzy spell.
We're not complaining, mind you. Today, we discovered that the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild has initiated something called an "Innkeepers' Getaway Program" set up to encourage B&B people to get to know each other by visiting each other's properties and swapping room nights.
What a good idea!
That bit of news came to us via a blog recently started by Heather Tyreman at the Bronze Antler Bed and Breakfast in Portland.
Heather's place looks wonderful, and its four rooms seem to be doing very well indeed in spite of the one-two punch of a slow time of the year and scary economic conditions.
Oregon has always been one of our favorite spots in the west and one of these days we hope to get back there.
No time yet to find out more about the OBBG Getaway program, but we're very much encouraged by the fact that the core idea behind B&BInnterchange has been found by at least one group of innkeepers to be a good one.
OBBG has a fee structure much like CABBI's in California and their down-loadable brochure is outstanding (well worth a look).
In Heather's blog, she describes a recent visit to another B&B, and the whole experience seems to match what we had in mind back in 2004 when we first started "noodling" the notion of an online room-night exchange for innkeepers everywhere.
Somehow the hospitality exchange arrangement in Oregon helps raise money for special projects and promos to benefit the B&B community as a whole, and in essence that's the aim of B&BInnterchange, too.
As important as it is to meet or exceed guests' expectations, you can't knock their socks off until you have brought them to the door and welcomed them inside, and Jenny and I have met a surprising number of innkeepers who seem ready to forget that!
Maybe one day an Oregon B&B pro will log on to this blog and contribute more information about the state's Innkeepers' Getaway program. I'll say it again: What a great idea!!!
UPDATE: "Surfing" has become such a ubiquitous term for clicking here and there on the Internet that it will probably never be supplanted. Jenny and I have been scratching our heads for some catchy alternatives, and so far the best we have been able to come up with is "web-drifting" and "web-rambling" (aka "web-roaming"). Any suggestions?
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1 comment:
Hello Ian: Concerning the Oregon Bed & Breakfast Guild (OBBG)Innkeepers Getaway Progam (IGP), it is a program developed by OBBG for use by its membership. Innkeepers desiring to make their properties available for getaways list them on a page in the members only area of the OBBG website. Innkeepers are free to place whatever restrictions they want (such as weeknights only, last minute only, call first, etc.)
Traveling innkeepers can log onto the OBBG website, review the list, and contact the offering innkeeper for availability.
Fees involved are small--a portion going to the IGP innkeeper to offset their costs of housekeeping and providing breakfast. Another portion goes to OBBG to help sponsor this and other membership programs.
In essence, it is a closed system as it is open to the members of the Oregon Bed & Breakfast Guild.
We use the program on occasion and have had wonderful stays with various innkeepers as you've already noted. We've also hosted innkeepers on their getaway. It's fun to talk shop with innkeepers from other areas. It also helps put a face to a location when a paying guest asks for a recommendation of where to stay in other parts of Oregon.
Good luck with your program!
Heather
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