Yearn for all the fun of running a B&B but don't have the time or the money to do it full time? B&BInnterchange can help!

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An aspect of B&BInnterchange that I have not yet covered is a service we are working on for people with just one or two guest-ready bedrooms who need help getting into the business.

There's no doubt that some professional innkeepers struggling to keep their occupancy levels up and the bill collectors at bay will be horrified at the prospect of competition from mere amateurs, but we do not believe that our idea is a threat to them.

Again, it's all about marketing.

Let's imagine a couple whose comfortable home in a nice neighborhood seems to them a lonely, large and (perhaps worst of all) wasted space with the kids all grown up and gone and the extra bedrooms used for just a handful of nights each year.

Renting out those extra rooms to full time tenants might be one way to go, but John and Jane Doe are nervous about surrendering their privacy to long term roommates however welcome the extra income might be.

A B&B is another option, and since John and Jane both love to visit family-run inns when they are on vacation, the idea has a lot of appeal.

What's not so appealing is the prospect of taking on all the added responsibilities and expense of establishing a bed and breakfast operation: everything from business licenses to getting the word out via local and national marketing through a dedicated website, then being constantly available to answer guests' phone or e-mail inquiries and process reservations.

John and Jane also cherish their regular trips away from home to visit family and friends, and reason that starting a new business will drastically clip their wings, tying them year-round to a house they love but enjoy escaping from whenever they feel like it.

They live in an area that attracts thousands of visitors from elsewhere each year, eager to enjoy local parks and museums, shopping and restaurants, and they are confident that if they were to open a B&B, it would prosper without in any way harming other nearby properties already in business.

The Does had kept the idea on hold for years, resigned to letting it remain a mere dream, until they caught sight of the following in their local newspaper:

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They were surprised to discover that they could list their home as a "Neighborhood B&B" with just one nationwide marketing service, avoiding all of the hassles of setting themselves up as an independent business.

They could pick and choose the dates on which they were happy to hang a B&B sign outside their door, and they were guaranteed a minimum of $100 per room per night, in return for their promise that they would provide their guests with top quality service, comfort and cleanliness and great food...an easy bargain because that's what John and Jane always look for when they travel.

B&BInnterchange would handle all the trouble and expense of getting the word out about John and Jane's beautiful home, including reservations and all the associated paperwork, and would cover its costs by taking a small commission on every night sold.

What the deal came down to was a very simple business equation: No sales = zero operating overhead.

John and Jane Doe already had a beautifully appointed and tastefully furnished home to offer their guests, mostly bought and paid for years before.

Extra groceries and supplies would only be needed when guest reservations were confirmed, and the proceeds of room-nights sold were guaranteed to be transferred to their bank account within one business day of its receipt by B&BInnterchange.

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No cheery little bumps in this weeks CA B&B numbers, but at least we're doing better than Wall Street!

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According to our random grab-bag of California B&Bs (well, almost random, since we chose to put all three of the South Pasadena properties in there), business is off just a tad overall compared to last week's numbers.

Only three of the 16 inns are doing better than the Feb 23 count, and even the champ so far, the East Brother Light Station in Richmond, is down a little while still being so far ahead of the rest of the pack that its occupancy percentages seem near miraculous.

It's worth mentioning at this point that it is impossible for us to distinguish between head$ in bed$ and close-outs for maintenance or whatever. Our source is what's freely published on property websites, so we are not giving away anyone's business secrets or compromising their privacy!

As a matter of fact, we have always made it a point to keep a close watch on competitors' numbers. If they are stacked to the rafters and you have a half-empty house even on weekends, it is safe to assume that either they are rubbing a magic lantern to conjure up guests, or you are doing something wrong (I generally discount dear old Rueben's God is our booking agent business plan).

Here's the current chart. Please click on it to enlarge it.



Let's all just keep in mind that B&B guests are mostly loyal by nature, and even those who desert us temporarily for a Motel 6 or a Hilton will soon tire of all that dreary sameness and return to the fold.

In the meantime, we have to try a little harder to catch their eye.

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"When you're down as low as you can go, there's no place to go but up."

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We read in political blogs and hear on TV that the pressure is mounting on our new President to start sounding more optimistic about the nation's economic prospects.

He's in a bind there, because if he accepts Bill Clinton's advice and switches to an upbeat tempo, his critics will accuse him of being either naive or totally incompetent. And a "don't worry, be happy" message isn't likely to play too well among the millions who have lost their jobs, their homes, or (if they've managed to hang on to those) a huge chunk of their savings.

Which brings us back to those website traffic reports that I keep revisiting because they, at least, offer an occasional little ray of sunshine to back up the weekly California B&B roundup we started earlier this month.

We've had our knuckles rapped for mistaking a standard seasonal "bump" for good news, but the way we see it, given the cliff a lot of us saw business jump off late last fall, there was reason to doubt even a seasonal rebound.

Here are more numbers from Quantcast.


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Obviously, Priceline casts a net far beyond the B&B biz (as does TripAdvisor), but what's good for travel and tourism in general is good for all of us who depend on people in motion to help us pay our bills.


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According to this source, bedandbreakfast.com is just 8% away from hitting its best traffic numbers for all of 2008, which is saying something, given the fact that the busy travel season (assuming we get one of those in 2009) is still months away.

It's already at a new high internationally, and since the United States attracts large numbers of tourists from Europe, and many of those have the good taste to seek out bed and breakfast inns (hence their visits to BBDC) let's risk at least one toot on our party flutes...


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Sure, we'd like to see even better numbers. But something's up, and up is good!

Well worth mentioning is news from our favorite of all B&Bs, the Arroyo Vista Inn in South Pasadena, Calif.

Times got seriously tough down there, because the Pasadena Rose Parade was a damp squib this year (relatively speaking) instead of doing its historical duty and filling every hotel and B&B for miles around at double standard rates.

A new report shows the AVI running at 58% occupancy in terms of reservations processed in the first couple of weeks of this month. Long may it continue!

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Checking out the competition: "Traffic" numbers for some high-priced B&B listings services are a big disappointment.

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Since Jen and I started out in the B&B business, a regular feature in our lives has been phone calls from online listing services pitching the notion that theirs is the only one worth a percentage of our precious marketing budget.

The calls didn't excite us much because we never actually had a marketing budget. We read somewhere long ago that at least 10% of cash flow should be set aside for advertising (including website maintenance, brochures, business cards and so on) but for reasons outside our control, it never happened that way.

After a year or so we came to the conclusion that unsold inventory was the best resource we had to help get the word out, and so we became a lot more generous with donations to high-profile local charities in need of classy prizes for fundraisers.

We would enclose at least a half dozen brochures with every gift certificate sent out for a charity auction, requesting that they be prominently displayed at the event. We hoped that donors whose bids did not make the cut would want to know what they had missed out on, and would be blown away by what we had to offer.

It worked pretty well for us; certainly better than ads costing $500 plus in print publications that no one seems to read any more! More than once, a guest cashing in a "freebie" chose to add a second night at our regular rates.

Listing services have an important role to play in GTWO, though, because however effective your property's website might be, a would-be guest who queries one of the big search engines with "B&B, town, state" will almost always be pointed first at one of the big online reservations outfits.

When it launches, B&BInnterchange will fall into the listing services category, and it will be a while before it starts overtaking the less stellar performers.

Our business plan proposes a steady buildup up of regular visitors, and after a year or so, less than 20% of them will be B&B professionals (the majority will be vacationers looking for the getaway bargains that are promised by a slew of "discount" listings but are right now all but impossible to nail down).

Our experience tells us that a discount of less than 30% is unlikely to catch anyone's eye, especially in the current downturn, so we want to make that our minimum guarantee.

If we spread enough money around the major search engines and pick our keywords with consummate care ("B&Bs 30% off!" is a candidate phrase!) we should be able to make some headway.

The plan is that what we're offering will not bring in guests who think well ahead and prefer a reservation that's locked in at full price to savings that they might find if they wait until the last minute and take their chances.

What we want to do is help participating B&Bs to boost their bottom line by selling room nights that would otherwise be passed by. The last thing they need is to see top dollar travelers being replaced by bargain hunters paying 30% less!

That's why getaway planners referred to B&BInnterchange will be repeatedly reminded that all of the terrific deals they see before them are "subject to availability and at the discretion of the host" or words to that effect, and none of them will be a done deal until the reservation is accepted.

The logistics will be a little complicated, but certainly not insurmountable.

I went to Quantcast for a ballpark summary of monthly listings traffic, figuring that if bedandbreakfast.com trusts its evaluation methods, we can too.

During my brief encounter with CAIK, one member recommended an alternate service that he said was far superior, without mentioning that he owned a big piece of it. That's what I call good business!

Anyway, here are some numbers. Quantcast says TripAdvisor leads the "blanket" services with an enviable 7 million visitors a month, and that's encouraging because in spite of the ease with which people can post negative reviews, overall TA does a great job, in our opinion.

Of the B&B-specific options, bedandbreakfast.com is the champ, and the chart below helps explain why BBDC swallowed up Webervations last year (their own Rezovation service apparently pulls in much lower numbers, according to Quantcast).

The big surprise for us was the data Quantcast reports for Karen Brown, and the BBDC sibling, inns.com. Pamela Lanier's B&B listing does ten times KB's business, it seems, and bbonline.com does 3x better still.


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I know bedandbreakfast.com is not going to challenge Quantcast's numbers because they carry them on a page pitched at B&B owners who need to be persuaded to fork out those huge fees!

The data are offered here simply as a guideline, with the caveat that they were generated by Quantcast and are in many cases described by that service as "a rough estimate."
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Is there an Internet-specific term that means tangent? Surfing doesn't describe what happens when your click finger loses control...

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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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Good news for the B&B "grab bag": More ups than downs.

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This week's informal survey of a mixed bag of 16 B&Bs in California shows business picking up appreciably from last time.

We work a week ahead of ourselves with this, so the latest data set covers reservations from next Monday, Feb 23, for two weeks through March 8.


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The East Brother Light Station in Richmond remains the clear "champ" although of course, this is not meant to be any kind of contest. It's just a non-scientific but hopefully useful means of seeing the extent to which the current business slump affects different properties in different ways.

This time, 10 of the 16 properties in our list are up on last week's numbers, and seven of those are showing their best heads-in-beds percentages since we started this little survey.

That's good news, and we all need that.

Before I was summarily bounced out of CAIK, I read that the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay was reduced to a ghost hotel with barely 10% occupancy. Our B&Bs are collectively doing a whole lot better than that, with the median occupancy at 49%, a hefty jump from last week's 35%.

B&Bs really should be doing better than over-priced hotels, which is not to say that high-end Inns face tougher times than their budget cousins (Avalon's Inn on Mount Ada is at 70% this week!).

As we've said before, the plain truth is that B&Bs offer better value for money and a more memorable and enjoyable experience than even the ritziest hotels. If they don't, they are doing something wrong.

You have to wonder why different properties in similar locations are able to attract more guests than their competitors (as with the three B&Bs in South Pasadena, Calif., for example). Room rates figure into the equation to some extent, for sure, but it has to be more than that.

In our experience, accessibility is the key. B&B aficionados are suckers for the personal touch, for the most part, and if they can't reach a warm body on the phone or get a quick response to an e-mail inquiry, their fingers will walk right on by you!


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Moving ahead with B&BInnterchange and hoping for feedback from innkeepers everywhere.

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The driving force behind B&BInnterchange is confidence that it is comprehensively addressing a need that is currently unfulfilled, and the only way to be sure of that is to check out the competition.

We all (innkeepers and guests) know by now that there is a wide choice of B&B listing services out there, some of them free to the properties advertised and the rest costing from $25 to $900 a year.

Most of them do little more than providing a link to the selected B&B, but some do not even manage that. An address and/or a phone number is the best they offer.

Review opportunities, set up presumably to give website visitors useful "been there, done that" guidance, are increasing in number, but TripAdvisor rules in that sector and may actually be more helpful to the B&B industry than dedicated listings such as bedandbreakfast.com and its competitors.

The big problem, of course, is that some unscrupulous guests try to use them to bully their targets into giving them special treatment. Jen and I had an encounter with a woman in Glendale, Calif., who had written a scathing denunciation of the Artists Inn, claiming that she had been bitten all over by bedbugs. Her visit predated our arrival by more than a year, but I did not much like having the review out there for future guests to see and was surprised the management team that preceded us had not responded to it.

I tracked the lady down (without TripAdvisor's help, of course) and asked her to tell me more. What it came down to was that she would be willing to delete the itchy, scratchy bedbugs post if we would give her a free weekend for her and her family (presumably, they planned to sleep in Saranwrap). I refused, and the damaging review stands to this day.


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(It's interesting to note that the "victim" in question has relocated to Colorado since 2003; they say fleas and bedbugs don't like high altitudes, but I doubt that's the reason!).

I have revisited this topic for two reasons, one being that the PAII blog just added some very useful information about damaging B&B reviews, including a 20-minute interview with a legal adviser. The other is that just last month, I came across a suspiciously nasty review about another Pasadena area B&B and contacted the owner to commiserate. It turned out that the guest responsible had warned her of dire consequences if the innkeeper did not, in effect, pay her to be nice, not nasty.

There is no way to know for sure how much potential guests are turned off by negative reviews, but my best guess is that they hurt, and that the injury is greater still if a calm and reasoned "management response" is not posted under them ASAP.

PAII's president agrees that bad reviews, however mean-spirited and unfair, should never be ignored.

All of which is a major digression from the topic of B&BInnterchange!

We've begun work on a website for the new service, which for now is limited to an online place-holder but can be accessed by anyone who is interested (there will be revisions almost daily even after the starting gun is fired!).

We are hoping that the service will pay for itself, of course, but making great piles of profit per some of the B&B empires on line is not the objective.

It's more about community and marketing and giving innkeepers everywhere the biggest possible bang without hitting them up for any bucks.

The business model calls for guests to help us pay the bills, not inn owners (and even Getaway buyers will not be out of pocket because they will have access to deals that will not be available anywhere else).

Bargain offers will be "searchable" in all manner of ways, from price range to region, county and nearest town, and subscribers (all of them potential guests for every participating inn) will be able to sign up for regular e-mail updates on what's on offer in locations that they specify.

At first, we saw this solely as a means for innkeepers taking part to swap room-nights with each other, track them online, and get cash back for any exchanged nights that they could not hope to use themselves.

The reason most innkeepers don't embrace room swaps is that they could never take enough time off (or travel far enough) to enjoy them, and because of that, they limit their policy, if they have one, to "courtesy discounts." That's fine, as far is it goes, but the burden falls especially heavily on properties in the most desirable destinations.

As the idea began to evolve, Jenny and I realised that B&BInnterchange had the potential to become a powerful (again, the magic word free!) marketing resource for participating inns, and perhaps restricting it to unused room swaps would limit its appeal to reservation-hunting visitors to the website.

So why not boost the inventory, aka the variety of choices for guests, by allowing innkeepers to post their own special deals whenever they feel like it?

It would mean that entries for a given property might include some that were "owned" by other innkeepers who had provided exchange hospitality for the listed nights, and others would bring revenue direct to the destination inn.

But that is not a problem, because B&BInnterchange treats each individual listed night much like a can of beans on a supermarket shelf, with a tracking number that separates and distinguishes it from every other entry without preventing it from being bundled with others if that is how the owner wants it sold.

We all love Costco, right? Think of nights on offer like items at your local Costco, sometimes sold in 2- or 3-packs, sometimes singly, but always at a better price than you will find almost anywhere else.

Inns listed on B&BInnterchange will always have complete control over the Getaway or Marketplace entries for their property, regardless of who owns the room-night described. They can hide any entries they do not want to honor for whatever reason, but they can only delete nights they have listed themselves as special discount or special package offers (think of B&Bdotcom's "Hot Deals" promo without those 30% commissions!).

And, of course, listed nights that are in effect IOUs in exchange for hospitality enjoyed at other participating inns, must always be sold before an innkeeper can generate his own entries as a marketing tool.

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Hello and goodbye! Ian gets his CAIKwalking papers...

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I believe it was Groucho Marx who said he wouldn't want to join a club with the bad taste to accept him as a member, and I wish I could say the same about CAIK.

It seems I transgressed horrendously by quoting a few innocent (but funny) words from someone's post, flouting a major rule that says the contents of all posts must be treated as confidential. Doesn't matter that it was just a couple of words, used without attribution, apparently.

And then there's the fact that for the time being, Jen and I are not running an Inn, and would be in any case ineligible for CAIK unless we owned it (if it was the Caucus of American Inn Owners the acronym would be CAIO, which would be singularly appropriate in this context!).

Oh well. Groucho Marx was just putting on a brave face, and I guess I should do the same.

The irony is that I suspect the plug was pulled after a protest by a member who doesn't own an Inn. But I guess that's life. And politics.

Not a totally terrible day. B&BInnterchange now has the beginnings of a website all its own, along with a graphic identity:



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To CAIK (the Caucus of American Inn Keepers): Hello and thanks for having us!

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We signed up for CAIK participation a few days ago and have not yet played by the rules and posted much information about ourselves, beyond the fact that we are relatively new to the B&B business and hope to learn a lot from more experienced hands.

Jenny and I suspect that B&Bs have been in our blood forever (something to do with our English heritage, perhaps!) but raising kids and other fun and games prevented us from diving into it for quite a while.

Now, we can't wait to get back in the game. It's just a matter of finding the perfect opportunity. We figure that all the experiences we have had so far, even the negative ones, were positive because they taught us valuable lessons.

There's not much that can beat a business where the "commute" is a few steps from your bed or your favorite armchair, and everyone you meet is determined to enjoy themselves.

But even the most upbeat innkeeper needs a break now and then, and CAIK provides a great place to learn, laugh or let off a little steam. Thanks for that!

NPR did a nice little piece about us a while back, and it can be found at http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2004/10/15/ditwl_inn_keeper/.

We also have a blog at http://bbbizblog.blogspot.com/.



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The above, from quantcast.com, tracks recent traffic for some major B&B marketing websites. We're by no means fans of bedandbreakfast.com, which charges an arm and a leg for membership, then another limb (30%!) if a guest makes a reservation through the site. Ouch! But traffic to all these sites is an inndicator (sorry, it's a disease) of how the B&B business is doing, and it's good to see that the annual "bump" that usually follows the holidays has been unaffected by the sour economy.

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Good news at last? It's about time (although not every B&B is hurting).

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My B&B occupancy survey has turned up good news for some and not for others, so I was happy to trip over a website-monitoring service that does not require an expensive subscription before supplying useful information.

I owe thanks to bedandbreakfast.com, because although I have never been a huge fan of a service that charges a minimum of $240 a year and then takes 30% from every reservation it processes, their website gave me a clue about where to look for useful data. (Click on the Quantcom link after using the above URL).

Strangely, in all the time we spent at the Artists Inn and in Long Beach, we never received a single reservation via bandb.com and the only one I have ever encountered (while I was filling in at the Arroyo Vista Inn early last summer) was the cause of an embarrassing screwup. A lovely young couple from San Francisco arrived expecting to check in to the best room in the house, and I had to tell them that I had no record of their reservation.

Worse than that, I couldn't give them the room they wanted because it had been booked for two nights by a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary. I searched every nook and cranny on the office computer and found no record of an incoming confirmation from bedandbreakfast.com.

The upshot of it all was that I gave the "lost" guests a super deal on an alternate room, plus profuse apologies, only to discover that B&B.com had charged them for the original reservation (the one we never received). So we had to refund the newer charges, as usual incurring nick$ and ding$, then give up the 30% discount!

Here's the good news I mentioned, self-explanatory, I hope:-




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It's true that most B&Bs suffer a slump after New Year's and take a while before numbers start to rise again, but given the current economic depression (sorry, but recession doesn't describe it accurately!), I was starting to wonder if things would ever improve.

I'm going to take this as a positive sign, and will be posting more traffic reports as time goes by.

UPDATE: I'm not sure what this means, but when I posted the above chart on CAIK yesterday (Feb 12), there was no reaction at all! It's not that I expected dancing in the streets or even polite applause, but I admit stony silence was a surprise. Since I joined the group, the posts have tended to be on deep topics like the best euphemisms for the elderly, "old fart" apparently being deemed preferable by far to "senior citizen." As a spring chicken (62), I can relate to that, and certainly there's no reason for an innkeepers' group to be constantly obsessed with plugged-up toilets or fluctuating occupancy percentages or any of the fun things in between. Everyone deserves a break from the mundane, and perhaps CAIK functions best as a pressure valve. Jen and I have not yet introduced ourselves to the group or invited members to sample this blog. That's because I am a regular chicken as well as a spring one! I'm pretty sure that some inn owners will be offended by my comments about people we have worked for, and all I can say to that is that the bottom line vindicated the stand we took in both cases where we clashed with business philosophies that we found unworkable and unacceptable. Also, B&BInnterchange is still a work in progress, and we're not quite ready to roll it out into the "inndustry" firing line!

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Putting a sometimes wasted resource to work is a great way to boo$t ca$h flow.

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Jenny and I have only once come across an innkeeper who was afraid that "too many guests" might prove bad for her business, and it's no surprise that her B&B closed its doors years ago!

For most of us, empty rooms are a worry because we see them as money that cannot be earned once the sun has gone down without at least one head in every bed.

Giving rooms away can help cut the cost of advertising and marketing so it's a smart business policy.

But obviously, "freebies" do nothing to materially boost the bottom line.

B&BInnterchange can help improve cash flow in a number of ways.

The service evolved as a means for innkeepers all over the country to work together to help each other and themselves -- who doesn't like the idea of an affordable vacation and a chance to meet people who might be able to help you enjoy your own business a little more when you get home?

Essentially, B&BInnterchange is a barter service, and as such it is subject to all the rules and regulations that govern income or revenue that is not received in the form of cold, hard cash.

Make no mistake, the IRS will be watching us and everyone who participates in this unique spin on an idea that has probably been around in one form or another since the days of the cavemen.

Most of the room nights listed in the B&BInnterchange Marketplace are there because an innkeeper who accepted an "innsider exchange" that he or she could not personally use did not want it to go to waste.

But there is nothing to prevent an innkeeper from maintaining week-by-week exposure in the Marketplace by listing room nights that have nothing to do with reciprocal exchanges.

The Marketplace is, after all, a high-profile promotional outlet than can function in just the same way as Expedia, Orbitz or other listing services...but without commissions.

Barters can extend outside the B&B industry to suppliers of goods and services who can then post room nights they have received -- with the approval of the "host" inn, of course -- and realize cash value for them.

Innkeepers can also use unsold inventory for staff bonuses, with the same approval proviso applied: a B&BInnterchange participant must sign off on any connected listing before it can be posted in the area of the website listing room-nights for sale.

As a result, a single B&B may have multiple listings at different prices subject to varying terms and conditions, unless that participant chooses to list sales one by one in chronological order, with a sold reservation being automatically replaced by the next in line.

Our aim is to see to it that B&BInnterchange meets everyone's needs effectively, and that requires flexibility and a quick response to input from participants in the program.

Every transaction has a tracking number that clearly identifies all parties involved, making duplicates, repeat bookings and other complications or misunderstandings impossible.

Ben and Barbara, our traveling innkeepers from earlier posts, took a 3-night "IOU" with them which they handed over to their host when they checked in. All the details were recorded in the B&BInnterchange database, along with any applicable conditions (limiting the three nights to sale as a block, or allowing disposal one night at a time, for example).

Revenue from a Marketplace sale or sales related to the Ben and Barbara deal will be credited to the owner of the IOU, immediately via a PayPal or similar account, or by check within a specified period. Property managers or staff, vendors or other room-night beneficiaries must be authorized by established participants in order to receive direct payments from any sales.

Every participant has one-click access to a unique transaction statement that only he or she can see, and updates will be e-mailed according to a schedule that can be quickly customized.

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A unique marketing opportunity, affordable vacations for innkeepers, great prices for guests.

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As we said before, our aim is to create a win-win-win situation (good for innkeepers, for their guests, and for us).

For the vacationing innkeeper, it's a way to get access to top-quality accommodations for very little cash ($75 for three nights in our Ben and Barbara scenario), with his or her own unsold room-nights inventory covering most of the cost.

For the host innkeeper, exchanges with other people in the B&B business are no longer a losing proposition. He or she can hang on to the room-swap paperwork and use it on a future trip, with the $25 overhead charge applying in reverse, or the reciprocation can be sold to the public in the B&BInnterchange Marketplace and turned into "folding green."

For the subscribing B&B guest, at least a 30% savings on every purchased room-night is guaranteed, promising a room rated at $300 a night for $180, with the understanding that the host Inn can turn down the reservation for any reason (with no payment due until it is accepted, naturally).

B&BInnterchange charges subscribers an annual fee equal to about $20 a month for access to the B&B bargains, but with savings of $80 to $120 for each night purchased, the membership dues can be very quickly recovered and for the rest of the year, it's discounts all the way.

All B&B properties participating in B&BInnterchange are fully described and illustrated in the Marketplace pages, with links that include a custom-designed page of their own on the B&BI website. They are also featured in regular promo and marketing bulletins sent out to subscribers, providing them with effective access to potential guests who might not otherwise discover them.

Their participation also brings them inclusion in the exchange's GPS section, short not just for Global Positioning Satellite(s) but for our very own Getaway Planning Service, a high-tech vacation-enhancing tool that makes it impossible for B&B travelers to lose their way anywhere on the road.

Site visitors click on the GPS option, then use it to select one or more listed B&Bs that they would like to visit. Each B&B home page within the B&BInnterchange website includes local places of interest, restaurants, galleries, parks and so on, along with their GPS coordinates or "Geocode" (ours is N38°57.07176, W119°50.42256).

A customer selects a starting point, an ending point (if it's different) and a midpoint, and the Getaway Planning Service does the rest. Another click will download a file suitable for transfer to the selected model/brand of GPS device.

It's all about convenience and peace of mind, the certainty that no valuable vacation time will be wasted on wrestling with maps and struggling to get back on the right road!

B&BInnterchange subscribers who do not own a portable GPS unit will be offered the option to either buy or borrow one, which will come preloaded with their vacation itinery. "Loaners" will be billed to the credit card on file, with the purchase price refunded (less an affordable rental and handling fee) when it is returned to us. And our price for all units will be competitive with other Internet retailers.

B&Bs that link up with BBI will also be encouraged to buy or lease a GPS unit of their own, preloaded with all their local information, for use by guests who are nervous about getting lost in an unfamiliar part of the country. It's up to the innkeeper to choose whether to boost guest relations by making the unit a complimentary service bonus, or to charge a nominal rental fee for it!

B&BInnterchange is unlike any other service available to innkeepers or their potential guests.

Its biggest plus for hospitality industry participants is that unlike most other Internet marketing opportunities, it is free of charge, and even better than that, it offers cooperation with other professionals that will turn unsold inventory into added revenue.

Existing B&B marketing websites either charge a whopping commission on reservations generated (30% at BedandBreakfast.com, for example) or hundreds of dollars a year for listings that cannot be effectively evaluated.

Keep in mind that participating innkeepers can refuse a reservation for any reason, so there is no risk of discounted room-nights displacing guests who are ready to pay top dollar.

Non-industry subscribers to B&BInnterchange are encouraged to make last-minute choices whenever possible, because those are the ones most likely to be readily accepted.

Remember also that in most cases, each room night posted in the B&BInnterchange Marketplace is there because the owner or manager of the listed B&B has already received full value for it in the form of a bargain-priced stay at another Inn!

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A B&B exchange adds up to the best possible deal for everyone (meet innkeepers Ben and Barbara)

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In a typical scenario, Ben and Barbara Smith decide they could use a change of scene, and turn to the B&BInnterchange website for inspiration, discovering a perfect location just a half day's drive away from their own place.

The Smiths have done this several times before, always looking for vacation spots relatively close to home, and now their own inn boasts an eye-catching "Recommended Inns" folder filled with brochures from B&Bs they have visited, and available to guests who also like to travel.

In turn, their brochures are scattered liberally around other inns within a 200-mile radius, and several guests have confirmed that they made their reservation thanks to a recommendation from another innkeeper whose judgment and good taste they trusted.

This time, Ben and Barbara choose an inn they have never visited before, so they click on a members-only link and send a quick e-mail introducing themselves and requesting a room for three nights two weeks away.

Back comes a cheerful confirmation, and once again the ball is rolling. The Smiths' B&B is a 12-room operation with regular rates ranging from $150 to $300 a night, pretty much matching the B&B they have chosen for their getaway.

Every participating B&BInnterchange property has up to three tiers of room rates ($150-$195, $200-$250, $275-$350, for example) and can choose to place a limit on the value of exchanges. Ben and Barbara prefer to select the rooms they visit on the basis of how they look rather than their pricetag, and they are always happy to put exchange guests in the best room in the house when it is available.

When they check in at their destination, Ben and Barbara will take with them a B&BInnterchange form that will confirm their readiness to reciprocate with a three-night stay at their B&B. They will also happily pay a $25-a-night overhead fee to their host so that their visit does not put anyone out of pocket.

The Smiths' B&B is an urban area surrounded by a wealth of museums, galleries, gardens and theme parks, and they are a magnet for far more B&B exchanges than they could never hope to find the time to use.

Before they signed up with B&BInnterchange, they were reluctant to consider exchanges for just that reason -- after all, theirs is a business that depends on their personal attention for its success and there's a limit to how long they can be away from it!

Getting away for a while is so much simpler now.

They get to meet and become friends with other B&B innkeepers from all over the country, and exchanges that are with B&Bs that are too far away for them to hope to visit themselves are simply posted in the B&BInnterchange Marketplace. Non-industry members (discerning guests who prefer family-owned inns with great food and good company to so-so hotel chains with neither) can then snap up those unused "room nights" at discount prices.

No one loses with B&BInnterchange!

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More about B&BInnterchange. First question: "What's it for?"

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And it's a good question, the first of many.

Since we started in the inndustry (sorry again!) in 2003 -- hardly a lifetime ago, but time enough to learn quite a few useful lessons -- we have found that too many B&Bs tend to operate in something of a vacuum, isolated not just from each other, but from potentially symbiotic businesses within a mile or two of their front door.

The focus is always on guests: Bringing them in, keeping them in, hoping they will come back. And that makes sense, as long as interaction with guests is not a blinkered process that neglects other important aspects of the business.

Business is a word that keeps coming up, because however much we might like to talk about fun, and pleasure and job satisfaction and the joys of having strangers become friends, the purpose of it all is to make a little money along the way.

Like anyone else (and given their long hours and limited vacation opportunities, perhaps even more than almost anyone else) innkeepers need a break now and then.

For some, the idea of visiting another B&B during a well-earned spell of down time is anathema, like a lifeguard trying to relax at a swimming pool. But for many others, the prospect of getting up in the morning without having to worry about making the bed, and then being waited on at the breakfast table, is sheer heaven.

A bed and breakfast is, after all, intended to be a haven, an oasis, a sanctuary...all of those things. The one where you live and work may not be that for you, because there are always things to fix, fret over or fiddle with. Someone else's place should be another story!

Visiting other B&Bs is also a nifty way of discovering how other people handle the job you do seven days a week, week in and week out, and quite possibly learning a thing or two. It is, after all, a career you enjoy that holds your interest and keeps you from complaining too much about those long hours.

B&BInnterchange is not just about room swaps, not by any means, but providing a means by which innkeepers all over the country can exchange hospitality and get to know each other better is the engine that keeps all the other aspects of the service in forward motion, too.

Participation in the service is free to owner-innkeepers or to managers whose membership has their boss's blessing, and to non-industry visitors to the website, it serves as a unique source of information about some of the best B&Bs in the USA...along with an array of unbeatable bargains.

Industry outsiders -- potential guests -- have to pay an annual subscription fee to qualify for those special deals, but it is an attractive proposition because they can recover their dues in the form of dramatic savings within their first two or three weekend getaways. They are guaranteed at least a 30% savings over the regular room rate with every reservation they make.

B&BInnterchange is about creating the best possible deal for all concerned: Innkeepers, B&B connoisseurs, and lastly, the creators of this unique new vacation service and their staff.

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Why some B&Bs prosper while others stagnate: It's a question worth a lot more than $64,000!

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My travels around the Internet doing research for the B&BInnterchange concept have turned up some operations that seem unscathed by the economic downturn that has been almost gratefully accepted by some owners as the reason their rooms stay empty night after night.

Today, I added a couple more B&Bs to the California occupancy comparison spreadsheet and did the rounds to enter data for the two-week period from Feb 16 through March 1.


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The big stand-out (or stand-up, since this is a bar chart!) is the East Brother Light Station in Richmond, which makes almost everyone else look they have shut down for the winter. I was beginning to feel a little suspicious about their numbers -- could they be padded? Are there close-outs for maintenance? -- until I came across the Inn at Manchester in Vermont.

The Manchester B&B has 18 rooms, which to a would-be innkeeper might seem like a nightmare but is in fact only a few more than what Jenny and I learned was the perfect number to be profitable without seeming like just another hotel.

We figured that 10-12 rooms was the minimum, because you can then offer a range of rates that will appeal to a wider spectrum of potential guests. You don't want to compete with a Motel 6 or a TravelLodge, but it is a good idea to have at least a couple of rooms with rates low enough not to intimidate young couples who are perhaps exploring B&Bs for the first time.

I confess we also got a huge kick out of having the flexibility to upgrade guests who had a special occasion to celebrate but genuinely could not afford the top of the line prices in our range. Our thinking was that a free upgrade might just convince them that the extra luxury was worth a few bucks more, so that next time (and we always hoped there would be a next time) the intimidation factor would be less of a problem.

The calendar for the Inn at Manchester very impressively matches the 65% occupancy that became the norm for us at the Artists Inn!


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Green with envy? Hell yes!

I showed Jen the Manchester website, and we agreed the tone and content was pretty much perfect, which is also the way the Inn itself seems to be. The rates are high but there's wiggle room, with $155 being about as close as they get to an entry-level option.

One thing I would bet on is that no one ever arrives without being greeted and shown to their room and that breakfast is the real deal, not microwaved bacon or some lard-laden, overcooked muck from a package that has festered in the freezer for months!

Jen's policy at the Artists Inn was to offer three breakfast times a half hour apart, and gently tell guests that because their food was prepared fresh, it would be much appreciated if they would stick to their chosen time or let us know early if they wanted to make a change.

Excessive rules and regimentation are a horrible idea, so it's important when describing any house policy to make it clear that it is in place for the guests' benefit, not ours.

Breakfast has to be as memorable as you can make it, and I cringed when I heard or read complaints about the coffee at the Artists Inn (after we left, naturally!) being either "undrinkable" or "mediocre."

At the AI, I'd sometimes have a guest ask me where the nearest Starbucks was, and I would happily provide directions along with the promise, "You won't need it!"

Very few guests bothered to make the trip after tasting our "house special" and there was no magic recipe for that: Just fresh-ground, top quality beans and plenty of coffee in the pot!

And of course, if I did see a Starbucks cup in someone's hand, I never took it personally. The guest is always right, after all...

Jenny was often embarrassed at the effusive compliments she would get as guests were leaving, but we came to understand that fresh-cooked food and service with a smile was not the norm at every B&B. That takes me back to a small hotel in Cork, Ireland, where I ordered oatmeal for breakfast and was told after a 10-minute wait, "I'm sorry, but we've lost the porage, Sir, would cornflakes be all right?"

I have to add that everything else about that little hotel, including the cooked breakfast, was perfect. It was actually in a tiny little fishing village called Kinsale where the biggest surprise was an outdoor stand offering "Michael's All-American Hamburgers" (the surprise being that the burgers were excellent!).

An Irish response to a breakfast guest requesting "coffee, no cream": "Sorry, it will have to be no milk, for all the cream has gone, sad to say."

Making a success of a bed and breakfast isn't easy and a welcoming smile, beautiful rooms and surroundings and food "to die for" won't cut it if you fail to bring guests in at a rate that will pay the bills plus a well-deserved profit.

It's great to hear visitors saying they'll be back, but the most important moment is when it's decision time and you are talking on the phone to someone who's not yet certain that your B&B is what they are looking for.

Begging and whining is not an option, but a friendly, enthusiastic and interested attitude makes all the difference. Sue in Genoa said she hated "people who make up their minds on the telephone -- they should decide before they call so you don't have to wait on hold while they're thinking."

In my experience, an undecided guest is far preferable to the in-a-hurry speed dialer who won't make a reservation no matter how helpful you try to be.

Jen laughs at me when I jump up and do a little dance after making a sale to a guest who needed a little friendly persuasion, but I say in this business you have to take your fun wherever you can find it!

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Keeping it fun is important, and learning something new every day is a big help!

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If you're lucky, you learn something new every day! Today my big discovery ended my frustration with survey B&Bs that don't allow instant access to their availability calendar (the Bissell House in South Pasadena being the most disappointing, because their occupancy is especially relevant to my current project!).

Turns out that if you request a 14-day reservation, the Webervations system will usually tell you that the dates you have selected won't work, then offers the 14-day calendar to enable you to pick alternate dates if possible.

That being so, I can't imagine why all B&Bs don't make calendar access the default. I reset the Artists Inn default from the start because I could not see the appeal of the alternative, which tends to limit a potential guest's choices and eliminates the image of the Inn as a bustling, popular enterprise.

The good news is that I will no longer have to invade Pat's privacy by logging on to her Webervations settings panel. I always felt a little guilty about doing that, but persuaded myself that I was doing it with the very best of intentions (and, of course, I still believe that, even if Pat does not!).

Things are actually picking up at the AVI, which is great news. Pat's 10-day reservations stand at 42rn, which is a very healthy 42% even if a big chunk of those nights (16/42 = 38%) are provided by the Kraft couple who man (or woman) the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile and pay $65 a night. I assume Pat hasn't told any of her other business regulars that she is charging the privileged pair about half the special deal she gives everyone else ($125 to $150) and, gasp, even less than the $69 minimum rack rate at the fleabag Alhambra Inn Motel!!! (One review of the AIM suggests that guests would do better with a bedroll under a local freeway bridge).

I have spent some time reading through other B&B blogs, notably by PAII's Jay Karen and Quantum Hospitality Group, and find them illuminating even if I don't agree with everything they say. Mr. Karen suggests cozying up to what he describes as "GLBTs" and I do not see it as good business or even remotely necessary to advertise a B&B as "gay friendly" (why would it be gay UNfriendly, I wonder?). I used to tell the occasional guest who made a point of probing for potential homophobia that Jen and I were "people friendly."

The Quantum couple shares Janet's view that deep discounts are a terrible idea, and given the big improvement we achieved for the bottom line at the Artists Inn by reversing that policy, I think I'll ignore their advice, thank you!

The contradiction for B&B owners or managers is that an Inn should appear to be an intensely personal experience but should not ignore basic business tenets.

Jenny and I are horrified that the Bissell House has lately introduced "self-serve breakfasts" on weekday mornings and that Pat offers a very unfriendly "self check-in" arrangement so that she doesn't have to be on the premises herself from 3-6pm every day.

Both inns are in essence breaking away from what a B&B is all about--a warm and friendly host presence that contrasts with the cold, clinical cookie-cutter ethos of big-name hotel and motel chains. What comes next, I wonder - "Make your own bed!" or "Cook your own breakfast and clean up afterwards!"

I have said before that guests do not expect and would probably be turned off by a toadying, ubiquitous innkeeper, and Jen and I did not feel bad about leaving an envelope containing keys and directions to a room for guests arriving after 8pm.

But requiring guests to do without a personal greeting when they arrive, plus a rundown on good places for dinner and other local info, is just plain rude, in our view.

We shrank the check-in window from 3-6 to 4-6 at the Artists Inn specifically so that we could always be sure of being there (Costco shopping trips were a twice-weekly reality and getting home by 3pm was invariably a wasted scramble because hardly anyone ever wanted to show up on the doorstep before 4).

Perhaps in the end the question that counts for every innkeeper, whether an owner or a manager, is Why are you doing this? If it's just about the money, there are ways to make more and work shorter hours, and if you feel that guests are a nuisance and should be avoided as much as possible (per the infamous Brassers of Long Beach!) then you really should be doing something else for a living.

The sad news is that both Pat at the Arroyo Vista Inn and Juli at the Bissell House are trying to run their B&Bs pretty much alone, at least when it comes to frontline contact with guests, and perhaps that does make the job less enjoyable than it should be.

In Long Beach and South Pasadena, I checked guests in and answered all their questions and Jen was the primary contact at breakfast next morning. As a result, Jenny could breathe easy in the afternoons, and if I didn't want to be around first thing in the morning, I didn't have to be.

Our arrangement spread the load pretty equitably, and nothing was etched in stone.

What mattered most to us was that we were not both forced to be "on parade" from the crack of dawn to bedtime every day, but at least one of us was always around to make guests feel welcome and at home.

Little tricks like call-forwarding make life easier, too--at the Artists Inn, we could take time off for a leisurely lunch when we felt like it, and I would have the cell and my notebook handy so that inquiries could be promptly and cheerfully dealt with.

The way we see it, guests are doing us a favor by bringing us their business, and deserve to be treated accordingly. They don't expect 24-hour room service and a round-the-clock office presence, and in many cases would consider such excesses out of place. The majority of guests like to feel that they are visiting a family home that happens to make strangers welcome, and they respect the concept of downtime and privacy for the owners/innkeepers.

There are always exceptions -- guests who think that $200 a night buys them whatever takes their fancy -- but they are rare birds indeed. Dennis loved to tell a tale about a woman who booked more than a week at their summer B&B in Maine and quickly became a major pain in the neck, loud and complaining at breakfast every morning, nosy and intrusive with other guests. After a couple of days, Dennis put a refund check on a plate and delivered it along with her blueberry pancakes and news that there was no longer a room for her at the inn.

It must have felt good, but what makes Jen and I happiest is that we have never had to deal with a guest that awful.

I had to play a stern grandpa at 6:30 one morning when I heard three bratty kids jumping on their beds, and the tongue-lashing I delivered was directed at the parents, not the little ones.

Yesterday I saw a line in one inn's management policies that echoed exactly what we would say to inquiring guests: "Children are welcome as long as they bring well-behaved parents." Translation: We are not babysitters or schoolteachers!

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I may be a cracked record, but according to this expert, I'm not a wrong record!

...

From PAII's innkeeping blog:-

Email from Scott Bushnell:
A couple of weeks ago I sent out a note suggesting your attendance at the Mid-Atlantic Innkeepers Conference and Trade Show in Virginia. I would like to pass on the BIGGEST LEARNING I picked up at the conference. The conference was packed with workshops and ideas on how to deal with the business of innkeeping, especially in this time of economic challenges.

Jay Karen, president of PAII, held a Town Hall Meeting and discussed the latest trends in the travel industry. But it was the results of the latest PAII business activity survey, summarizing the industry's performance from September through November that really caught my attention.

Of the 218 innkeepers reporting their fall business levels, 30.3% reported stronger business than the same period the prior year and 19.3% reported about the same level. Half of the inns reported business as not as good as last year. But the REAL LEARNING came with the reasons why they feel their business was either up or down:

Those inns reporting IMPROVED business credit the growth to:
- Website revamping
- New photos on their websites
- Packages they have compiled with local attractions and businesses
- Directories they have included in their marketing plans

Those inns reporting DECREASED business blame the downturn on:
- The weather
- The economy
- Gas prices
- Decreased visitors to their regions

What do you notice about these two lists? The first list attibutes improvement due to ACTIONS TAKEN by the innkeepers. The second list blames UNCONTROLLABLE conditions.

If you are sitting in the inn with your arms folded thinking you will just wait out the conditions over which you have no control, you will be losing market share to those inns taking action. If, however, you take an objective view of your marketing plan (including your website) and make pro-active revisions to realize REAL benefit, and if you RECONSIDER and CHALLENGE the long-held premises upon which you built your business model, you, too, can realize growth even in these tougher times. For example, do you make children really feel welcome? Pets? Do you have an industry website hosting service doing your Search Engine Optimization? Do you have videos on your site to show the full beauty of your inn? Is your newsletter aimed at NEW (potential) guests as well as your past guest list? Are your rooms priced properly based on the value you offer? Is your database s egregated into segments (business travelers, reunion guests, college travelers, etc.) so that your newsletter can be tailored to different marketing targets? These are just a few of the ideas shared at the conference.

Now is the time for action. This was the biggest learning to me. The rest of the workshops and the trade show were great at giving the ideas and how-to's of ACTION.

I just wanted to pass on these insights to you. I welcome your comments and questions. From your humble (and friendly!) inspector.

Scott
Bushnell & Bushnell Services

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"Headless beds" have a bottom line potential that most B&Bs fail to recognize and exploit.

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So let's suppose that you run a B&B in a popular location -- South Pasadena in Los Angeles County comes to mind for some reason! -- and you're constantly getting calls from other B&B "innsiders" (there seems to be no end to inn-puns) who want to do room-swaps with you.

You work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, taking every fourth or fifth week off, so you don't hate the idea of being able to get outta town once in a while.

Trouble is, there are always more innkeepers looking to barter with you than you're ever likely to match with days/nights off any time in the future. And while you hate to say No to nice people who are in the same business as you are, you wonder about the sense of cutting deals for strangers out of professional courtesy.

Then you discover that there's a new website that enables you to offer swapped room-nights that you will never use to bargain-hunting B&B guests ready to pay cash for them.

Suddenly, "professional courtesy" becomes a much less expensive proposition!

Jump the fence for a moment and think of where you stand if you are a B&B professional and you have happily done a "room swap" with another innkeeper 50 miles away. You spent a wonderful long weekend in, say, Avalon, and you are more than happy to return the favor when your hosts from afar choose to cash in their IOU and spend an equal number of nights at your place.

The deal has been done, and you owe x nights and x breakfasts. Do you really care if the people who show up at your door with reservations in hand are your Avalon hosts or a couple you have never seen before?

Jenny and I see B&BInnterchange as a service that is free to industry professionals, but subject to a membership fee for travelers looking for bargains at inns all over the country. Every smart B&B operator in the USA has long since recognized the need for discounts and packages, especially in an economic slump that has seen occupancy percentages drop by double digits everywhere.

Owners or managers who reject the whole concept of discounts have their heads upside down and their ears full of sand! It's a fair bet that every one of them looks for the best deals they can find when they are out shopping or planning a vacation, but somehow they see their own "product" as being immune from the flexibility they expect when it's their money that is being spent.

We decided within a few days of getting our feet wet in this business that $125 in the bank was better for business than $195 that wasn't earned because a room stayed empty last night.

There's a middle ground here, of course: When your standards are high and your product is immaculate, you should not discount its value so low that you are matching the Motel 6 up the street; On the other hand, holding firm on prices that guests are clearly unwilling to pay hurts you a whole lot more than it hurts them.

I came across one B&B website recently that offered 5-10% discounts for guests willing to make reservations at the last minute and risk losing their room to customers with fatter wallets. That's crazy. If it's noon on a Friday and you have a handful of $250 rooms still empty, the very least you should do is accept 40% less than the "rack rate" from last-minute guests. Who's going to be impressed by a 10% discount?

Jen and I have heard B&B owners say that they feel they are being cheated or disrespected if they take less than a certain amount for their rooms.

Our feeling is that a buyer at a less than maximum price is more respectful and more practical in business terms than no buyer at all. Empty rooms have their charm -- they don't have to be cleaned and turned around, for one thing! -- but they do nothing to help get the bills paid.

Way back in our greenest days at the Wild Rose Inn, I had a guy turn up on the doorstep offering "$50 for any room you have empty because you're sure not going to fill it this late in the day." I turned him down flat, because there are limits, darn it.

If he had offered $75 (about the cost of a "chain" room in the neighborhood at the time) and had been a little less smug, I might have taken his money...

All of which comes back to the simple truth that unsold inventory is an asset that most B&Bs fail to meaningfully utilize. It can be parlayed into advertising and marketing, vacations, even staff costs to some extent, but not without a mechanism than can turn those "headless beds" into something that helps the bottom line.

The mechanism we propose is B&BInnterchange, naturally.

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The idea for B&BInnterchange began when we first made friendly contact with other innkeepers!

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We just signed up as members of a Yahoo group (as distinct from a group of yahoos) called the Caucus of American Inn Keepers, or CAIK. The acronym isn't exactly evocative -- PANCAIK, while more breakfast-y, would have been a stretch! -- but there seem to be more than 150 members who are also B&B owners, so the connection will hopefully prove to be mutually beneficial.

Members responding to our request to join seemed concerned that we don't have an inn-related URL, although at least one was intrigued by our reason for applying, which I worded as follows: My wife Jenny and I have been in the B&B business since 2003 and are planning to set up a new innkeeper exchange service that will also be accessible to potential guests.

What is an innkeeper exchange service? was a fair question asked within hours of our sign-up, so I guess I should get cracking on providing an answer.

B&BInnterchange started to form inside my fevered brain when we were running the Artists Inn and had regular calls from other B&B owners or managers wanting to know if we participated in exchanges. One was from Hawaii, I remember, and that was the only inquiry that really sounded promising, the downside being that we would have to dig deep for a couple of airfares and the added cost of the trip would pretty much offset any advantage enjoyed from free room(s)!

Other calls were from Maine, Arizona, Oregon and various parts of California, and in every case I agreed to discounts as "a professional courtesy" although I doubted that we would ever have the time or the inclination to take up offers of reciprocation.

It seemed like a waste of a potentially useful resource, and the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that B&B operators would benefit from having access to a service that made room-night exchanges more attractive and practical.

There are plenty of state and local innkeeper associations, but their focus is always (and quite sensibly) on marketing and reservations, and I started to think about other needs that people in the B&B biz might like to see covered.

While we were in South Pasadena, we ventured out to only two other B&Bs, both of them in Southern California. One was the breathtakingly gorgeous (and mind-poppingly expensive!) Inn on Mount Ada in Avalon on Catalina Island, and the other was in San Juan Capistrano (the Mission Inn, a onetime motel upgraded into an oddly charming B&B).

The most we could afford at the Inn on Mount Ada was lunch at $25 apiece, and that was not a bad deal. The burgers were good and the supply of Anchor Steam beer bottomless -- and the view from on high out over Avalon Harbor was mind-blowing.


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We got chatting to the ladies who own and operate the place (it's actually the former Wrigley Mansion, leased from, I think, USC) and they were friendly and happy to give us a tour.

The folks in "SJC" as it's locally known (as with SLO up north, the full name is much prettier!) turned out to be former employees of Janet's and were happy to give us two nights for free...a hell of a deal.

In both B&Bs, I noticed a sad lack of information about other bed and breakfasts in L.A. County, and wondered if I was wrong in seeing an obvious advantage to some kind of mutually helpful cross-marketing arrangement whereby at the very least, every B&B carries a selection of brochures for every other B&B within a radius of, say, 100 miles.

By then, Jenny and I had been in the B&B biz long enough to know that guests are only very rarely B&B first-timers. The vast majority are people who travel regularly and prefer B&Bs to hotels, even if choosing a family-owned business over a chain "store" ends up costing them a little more money. We even had a handful of guests who knew us from Long Beach (and were, I should add, delighted to see us again!).

It might not make a whole lot of sense for a B&B to in effect direct guests to nearby competition (as in South Pasadena, where there are now three Inns barely a mile apart) but another B&B 20 miles or more down the road could hardly be considered the enemy! Jenny and I got a great deal out of our rather limited contact with other B&B operators, and if we had had the time, would have explored many more connections with a potential for mutual benefit.

One of the many things B&B regulars enjoy is access to reliable local knowledge, and while that is mostly limited to nearby restaurants and sights worth seeing, directions, tips and so on, there is no reason why it could not extend to places to stay. The key word here is reliable, since discerning guests (like anyone else) hate to be given bad advice.

And so the idea of B&BInnterchange began to evolve...

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Guest complaints can't always be avoided, but they don't need to end up on TripAdvisor...

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I discovered today that Google blogs like this one are "crawled" by the search engine much more efficiently than regular sites. That's both good news and bad...worth knowing from a business standpoint so that we can use the advantage for our next B&B, but potentially embarrassing if someone I have mentioned in less than flattering light trips over an entry that hurts their feelings!

I thought about disguising names and locations, then rejected the idea, because the experiences Jen and I have had are real and relevant to our abilities as B&B innkeepers, and everything I have written has been (and always will be) the fair and honest truth as I see it.

One of my aims is to establish our credentials so that when B&BInnterchange is up and running, potential subscribers and participants can see that we know what we're talking about (the service will be free to innkeepers/owners but guests seeking special overnight stay discounts will have to subscribe to qualify). Too many people get into the B&B business without knowing what they are in for, and we don't want to be lumped in with disgruntled innkeepers whose frustrations, failures and disappointments hamper their ability to treat guests as they deserve to be treated.

The only B&B people we have encountered who were deliberately mean-spirited and, frankly, mad, were our first full time employers, in Long Beach, and if they ever respond to the blog with a contradictory point of view, I'll happily publish it!

Sue in Genoa and Pat in South Pasadena are nice people who happen to be in a business that doesn't really suit them and to which they are unable to devote the proper amount of time and commitment. Nothing good is ever likely to come from being in a situation that does not match your expectations, and people who choose to stay at B&Bs because they expect a more personal, friendly atmosphere are likely to be extra sensitive to what used to be known as bad vibrations.

Janet at the Artists Inn has what seems to be a cynical disregard for guests, but Jen and I both decided after a few months of dealing with her and listening to her take on the business that she lives on another planet and only rarely comes down to earth. Planet Janet, we called it (of course!) and because very few of her business directives were applicable to reality, as a general rule we simply ignored them. Her husband Len was an occasional ally, if accidentally, because he at least was tethered to reason and common sense.

Yesterday I came across an Artists Inn review that perfectly illustrates the problem Jen and I had with the relief innsitters Janet finally insisted that we use. They're not named, but we recognized them instantly. You don't need an MBA to figure out that when you are running a bed and breakfast, you had better get at least two things right...the bed and the breakfast! Not so at the Artists Inn - not any more, anyway!




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Any B&B, however well run and however quality-conscious the management, is sure to suffer an occasional bad review, although I have to say that the only one I ever had to deal with pre-dated our time at the Artists Inn and turned out to be a scam by a guest hoping to negotiate a free weekend in return for removing her unkind words from TripAdvisor!

I'll go further and say that the whole TA "review" process tends to attract comments that have an ulterior motive, and I wish I could suggest a better way of running it, but that's a topic for another time (and one that B&BInnterchange might be able to address!).

My belief (based on our experience) is that guests who feel welcome and get a quick and honest response to any concerns they may have are unlikely to bear a grudge long enough to write a negative review when they get home. On the other hand, those who are fobbed off will stay bent out of shape indefinitely, and certainly won't come back again.

In Long Beach, we had one guest, a young man who was trying to provide his new wife with a romantic weekend, who was indignant that the room they had booked in one of the annexed cottages was small, dark and shabby with a bathroom that was falling apart. He was absolutely right to complain - we'd told the Brassers many times about plumbing problems, peeling paint and other issues - and he came at me before breakfast on his first morning mad as hell and spoiling for a fight. He was hard to deal with, but I think he soon recognized that I was not arguing with him, and without consulting the Brassers I moved him and his missus into the best room in the house. After that, the once disappointed guests were our very best friends, and certainly no negative review ever saw the light of day (much as the appalling conditions round the corner deserved it!).

The trick, if it is a trick, is not to be defensive and to remember the old adage about the customer always being right, even when he or she is wrong. I don't recall ever hearing an undeserved complaint, but I daresay they happen. The surest path to failure in a B&B is a bad attitude, a lack of pride in the property and an "us and them" view of guests. There is a line that guests should not be permitted to cross, but there is no need to tell them about it ahead of time - most people know how to behave, and as long as they are treated with courtesy and respect (toadying is not expected!) they will give as good as they get.

I just read a quote, reportedly from Plato: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

A tad dramatic, perhaps, but I guess true enough. A B&B should be a sanctuary, an escape from stress, so problems must be smartly eliminated before guests can trip over them. Janet would always say, "People don't notice..." but of course they do (and they especially notice when they are being treated as if they're fools!).


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Don't be shy! Tell prospective guests why yours is the best deal in the whole darn county!

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I keep chipping away at poor old Pat because I think there's huge potential for a formal business relationship between her and Russ and Jenny and me, and even if that does not work out, the plight of the AVI could make a great book for future B&B owners!

Pat doesn't respond to any of my messages these days, and last year when she actually asked for suggestions, she did not have any comment about them. I find myself wishing that she would at least get on the phone and tell me to go away and mind my own business.

During my brief honeymoon stint there in May 2008 (the honeymoon was for Pat and Russ in Paris, not me at the AVI!), I told Pat that her website needed to let guests know that there is no room tax in South Pasadena, and that there's free secure off-street parking as well as a fantastic home-cooked real (as opposed to "continental") breakfast each morning. She agreed, sort of, to the extent that she commits to anything, but what with one thing and another, I never got around to implementing the change.

I kept monitoring the Arroyo Vista Inn's guest levels through the summer, and discovered that while the AVI was getting 15-20 website hits every day, very few of those first looks were translating into reservations. Not good.

I e-mailed and phoned Pat several times hoping to talk to her about it, and as usual got no reply. I came to the conclusion long ago (hopefully not just for the sake of my bruised ego) that Pat's silence had more to do with her inertia than a deliberate rejection of me and my ideas for her business.

At the end of July, I took what the Bush White House might have described as "unilateral pre-emptive action" and made the changes to the website reservations page myself.

BEFORE



AFTER


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Lo and behold, more clicks turned into room reservations.

At the Artists Inn, Janet's explanation for the dramatic increase in revenue that became apparent soon after Jenny and I took over was always "people are traveling more" or "things are getting better because President Bush was re-elected" and she summarily dismissed any notion that her new innkeepers could have had anything to do with it.

Pat's response, when I finally confessed to my technically unauthorized edit, was less than enthusiastic. Like Janet, she said that business was up just because business was up.

The reality confirmed by the numbers I recorded was a contradiction of Pat's assessment, but there is not a whole lot you can do with someone who genuinely believes that neither dedicated innkeepers not aggressive marketing can have a substantive effect on the bottom line.

It might not seem like it, but I actually do accept Pat's right to do as she pleases with her own business, even if it means drowning her bottom line in red ink. But the ideas I have laid out for her are not outrageous or expensive, but simply commonsense proposals supported by experience and past success.

Pat's magnificent B&B should by now be enjoying a consistent occupancy rate of not less than 35% in spite of the nation's economic doldrums, and when I visited the AVI over Christmas, I again tried to persuade her that a flat market is not a cue to "hunker down and wait for things to get better," as she believes.

Just yesterday, I launched a new weekly project, monitoring occupancy levels at a mixed bag of a dozen California B&Bs, including the Artists Inn and the AVI in South Pasadena.

Sure enough, their median occupancy proved to be 40% or very close to what I predicted when Pat and I discussed the overall market (as opposed to her own business woes) almost two months ago.

Here's yesterday's chart:


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And there it is, plain as day: just one of the 12 B&Bs in the survey is doing worse than Pat's place, and that's in a location that sees very little guest traffic in wintertime. South Pasadena, in contrast, does better when the weather's cool than at the height of summer.

To illustrate that point, here are numbers from our Artists Inn days. (The top summary covers average revenue from 2002, and the bottom one singles out revenue during the time Jen and I were running the Inn - note that there's just one "red" month where we did less than average...bold numbers indicate that we beat the STLY bottom line).


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I should explain that these numbers have been freely circulated to support the high asking price for the Artists Inn (still north of $2 million in 2009 despite the deeply depressed market!).

Jenny and I also have a right to defend ourselves against Janet's mind-blowing claim to some disappointed guests that we were let go because we were neglecting her business!

The bottom line never lies. Wouldn't it be nice if the same could be said of people?

I have admitted to Pat that often I feel like a cracked record with the needle stuck in the same old groove (a simile that I realize will make no sense at all to younger readers brought up on iPods and CDs!). But the right message bears repeating as often as it takes to get it heard, in my opinion.

I have low hopes that Pat will get the message, because in a few days it will be a year since I first got in touch with her and she is in a deeper hole today than she was back then, so I have a back-up plan.

The project I am working on is the creation of a whole new B&B marketing and networking entity that I am planning to call "The B&B Innterchange." More about that another day...


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