Anyone still using Bedandbreakfast.com?

[Country Girl]

We just received our bill from Bed and breakfast.com. They've gone up 40% over last year's rate. I'm not sure how many bookings (if any) we get from them. They are the number 3 source from google analytics, but way below the first two (direct and google) at just 5%. I've gone off every other site (BB Online, etc.) so I'm a bit reluctant to give this one up, but if it's not helping then I'm just wasting my advertising dollars. They offered to keep me at last year's rate if I allow direct booking through them, where they would take 10%, so they'll get their increase either way. Not sure I want to do that.
Where would my advertising money be better spent?

 

[Flower]

Being in Can. It was no value to us. We had some lookers but no bites a few years back. Gave them up, 2 years ago. Not a market for Canadians.

 

[Morticia]

Google ads? I haven't gotten my bill yet but it's probably the same increase.

 

[Highlands John]

It actually has been very good for us in the past couple of years, particularly with Europeans.
My biggest problem with them is they want you to use their booking system and I don't want to, I just want to feed my availability through to them which they can't do. the result is that in busy months I get up to 10 email enquiries a day from them most of which I can't accommodate.
We'll see what their renewal is though, ours is in February.

 

[Morticia]

It actually has been very good for us in the past couple of years, particularly with Europeans.
My biggest problem with them is they want you to use their booking system and I don't want to, I just want to feed my availability through to them which they can't do. the result is that in busy months I get up to 10 email enquiries a day from them most of which I can't accommodate.
We'll see what their renewal is though, ours is in February..

I think you used to be able to pay extra to have a link to your booking page. But why only get $25/month when you can get thousands? So that went away.

 

[gillumhouse]

I told them goodbye many years ago. I DO keep one "shotgun" as I call it - the Directory out there for whoever is looking. I stay with Bnbfinder because I have everything listed - including my website address - for $199 per year AND they have a great PR Department which I make use of.
I sent a pitch off the other day - looking for tourism hot spots for summer. My pitch was I am NOT a hot spot so no crowds to get in the way of your enjoyment. I do get visits to my website from them and they are not constantly hounding me to buy this service or that extra. The price has not gone up since 2010 when I signed on. It replaced b&b.com and bbonline - both of which had been bought out by conglomerates for a fraction of the cost.

 

[EmptyNest]

You are paying for their week of sponsorship Wheel of Fortune. Don't you have a check box on
your res form to see how they found you? If they are so low in just referrals I would get rid of them

 

[Copperhead]

Here are the new rates: Bronze - Gold $408, $576, $780, $1164
Silver is up ~$40 from last year (about the same amount of an increase as the year before according to my memory)
Looks like they have started to increase their % for booking on their site again. When they first started their partnership with Expedia they started to allow those not using their booking programs (Weberv, etc) to also include a 'book it' button on the listing page with a commission rate about 14% or so (??) then reduced it to 8% in the last year or two.

 

[Copperhead]

While we are on the subject, a few weeks ago (3 to be exact) a couple of their emps came to the big city near us. They told us of several enhancements, changes for the better etc that were planned to be released at the end of this year or beginning of the next. (Webers upgrades was one FYI for anyone still using)

They promised us an email with all the info they were sharing so we didn't need to take notes. I am still waiting for that!

I also decided to use the face to face meeting to show them how poorly their site is working for me.
I brought with me 3 months of stats. I told them that I had called and talked to a CS rep and asked for some incite as to ways to improve my city blerp to attract more city viewers to click to my listing (since I am the only one on the city page, more should be clicking - right?). The CS rep only used my call to tell me I should upgrade.

The 2 emps at the meeting took my stats and promised to get back with me in the next day or so with some ideas. They both agreed that my listing was under preforming in moving city views to listing views and at that point an upgrade would not help at all given I am the only listing.

So week 3 now and no info, this is also after I sent them a 4th month of stats reminding them of our discussion.

I think I am going to move on this coming year. I do need link love so will be hitting another directory or two.