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:-




(Click on the images to enlarge them)
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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