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
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:
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).
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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