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  1. Bigbid

    I Am Not A Free Tourist Attraction!

    We have quite a different situation. We happily give 1 or 2 tours a day because we are located next to a Shakespeare festival so the people requesting tours usually come to the area every year for the festival. I guess about 25% of our tours book rooms for the next year before they leave. Who...
  2. Bigbid

    Log off people!

    Our guest computer (12 rooms) gets used several times a day. Wifi is available but guests do like the big screen when looking for various things. Has a printer attached and boarding passes are printed almost daily.
  3. Bigbid

    Rezovation vs. ResKey

    Use reskey and innpayment as the cc provider. If you do over 100,000.00 your rate will be 2.25% flat. no other fees at all. No per swipe, no refund fee, no gateway fee, nada. AE charges are more. Under $100,000.00 I thing is 2.5% but call and negotiate. Take your last months bill, get the...
  4. Bigbid

    AirBnb Innkeepers

    Airbnd does update reskey automatically through myallocator and works just fine except that airbnb only sends out updates about every 6 hours so if you are close to full you have a chance for a double booking. This auto setting takes away the ability to screen potential costumers because it...
  5. Bigbid

    Using booking, Expedia and Air

    I have 2 Inns. One has 12 rooms and the other 8. I decided to list all of them and in my off season it is the majority of my bookings. In my busy season, most of my rooms are already booked but they have filled in my straggling rooms quite nicely. I have noticed that most of these third...
  6. Bigbid

    Using booking, Expedia and Air

    I have not had issues with credit card or data info. I can run my one night deposit with booking but i cannot with expedia. Also, setting up a B&B on these sites is a little frustrating because you do not write your own text descriptions of rooms. You check boxes and the sites write the text...
  7. Bigbid

    Using booking, Expedia and Air

    I posted before that I would give an update on my Booking and Expedia experience. I started using booking.com around last October through the Reservationkey program. I was not set up on Expedia and Airbnb until about 4 months ago. That is part of the reason for the big difference in...
  8. Bigbid

    Article on Fake Reviews

    This is kind of a side note. A few months ago our lodging association had a media expert that specialized in reviews come and talk to us. He said to NEVER reply to a bad review with your side of the story. You need to bury the review and responding will only keep it alive. You need to reply...
  9. Bigbid

    After 4 months with Booking.com

    As you know, we show more hospitality to our guests than the average hotel does. I do see that my new reviews on Booking.com took me quickly to an "exceptional 9.5" rating very fast which has moved me up the page from #20 to #8 in 4 months. I think people using Booking.com are leaving more...
  10. Bigbid

    After 4 months with Booking.com

    Hello, I have no idea what the pay per click has to do with Booking.com. If they use it with my Inn, I do not get charged for it. It is a flat 15%. There are 18 hotels and 2 B&B's listed in my city of 25,000 people. I have had 1 return guest that could not remember my name and found me on...
  11. Bigbid

    After 4 months with Booking.com

    I thought I would post how my first 4 months using Booking.com have gone. I have never used them before because the commission structure seemed to high but now it is reasonable (15%). I use Reservation Key and the Booking.com reservations go through MyAllocator so they sync automatically...
  12. Bigbid

    3 years?!!

    Starting our 15th year. When we opened, i read several places that 7 years was the average.
  13. Bigbid

    Great idea -Bed side table power plug

    Every now and then I find something that really improves a problem at our Inns. Most of my power outlets are behind furniture so guests have a hard time plugging in their phone chargers. I just bought 8 of these clocks from Wal Mart. The alarm clock has 2 power outlets and a usb charging port...
  14. Bigbid

    Guests in the Kitchen

    We have a self locking push button pad and an automatic door hinge on our kitchen so no one goes in there. It use to be that if I left the kitchen for ten seconds to put something out, a guest would open the door to bus their own plates. Now I enter a code EVERY time I go through the door...
  15. Bigbid

    Insurance for our B&B

    I just paid mine today. $1817.00 a year for an 8000 sq ft, 12 room Inn. American Hallmark Insurance Company of Texas. I am in Utah.
  16. Bigbid

    Have Guests push "1" for reservations.

    Good suggestion to have a second option go nowhere. Thanks. Thinking about it, I could say any sales calls press 3 and then have a recording of Yoko Ono's greatest hits on a loop.
  17. Bigbid

    Have Guests push "1" for reservations.

    Because we own and operate several Inns, I have 3 different phone numbers that all forward to my cell phone. That means 3 times the credit card processors and others calling me every day. I take an average of 15 sales calls a day. My phone system will allow a quick screen that I would...
  18. Bigbid

    Sweet Breakfast Ideas

    I posted one called "waffle apple crisp" awhile ago in the recipe section. It would work for you.
  19. Bigbid

    How long does it take you to flip a room?

    This is a funny but true story. We are fairly close to Las Vegas and had a guest who is in charge of training the house help for the 5000 room hotels in Vegas. They use two training videos. One for right handed help and the other left handed. It shows them how to use both hands to do two...
  20. Bigbid

    Not living in your B and B

    We own and operate 2 B&B's that we do not live in. A 12 room one is just across the street from our home and another 8 rooms is 3 blocks away. I do breakfast at one and my wife at the other. We hire house help to clean rooms from around 10am to 3pm every day and we stay pretty busy. Our...
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