B&B.com review widget ideas

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Thanks for all the feedback guys. I would also like to offer more color choices for the balloons themselves. I guess opening the tool up so that you didn't need a login could make sense. It scares me a little bit - only because I'd rather leave it up to the innkeeper to choose who gets to do it.
You can put the widget anywhere you want - blog, or wherever you like!
We have an xml review feed for larger sites. Regional sites would be a perfect example of those that could use it, but it takes a little more tech know-how. The data is just that - data. They can sort in any way. We don't charge for it, only require attribution or see more from bb.com type of thing. I guess with the widget opened up like Trip Advisor's, then a regional site could just help themselves to the information.
I suppose we could do a widget for regional sites that is nice and neat with all the properties in it - what I've found though is that so often either the site has its own limited list (association where not everyone is a member) or their regions are different than ours, or they have multiple cities. If a regional site could just add the code for each member, then they could list them any way they like and it would be on a property basis.
In terms of displaying/not displaying the balloons for every review - we could probably create a horizontal and vertical option or two that didn't do that if folks thought they would use it? Clearly want to keep it simple enough, but a few more options wouldn't hurt.
On the sort thing... funny story. Lanier used to sort her site based on alpha-sort. Not sure if she still does. What happened was that all sorts of Inns changed their name on the site. So the Victorian Inn become "A Victorian Inn," and then later the "742 Victorian Inn" (using address number) quite quickly... since any number was sorted above all of the letters! Made for an interesting list of B&B names!.
JBanczak said:
We have an xml review feed for larger sites. Regional sites would be a perfect example of those that could use it, but it takes a little more tech know-how. The data is just that - data. They can sort in any way. We don't charge for it, only require attribution or see more from bb.com type of thing. I guess with the widget opened up like Trip Advisor's, then a regional site could just help themselves to the information.
I guess I am not thinking of the regional B&B site, I am thinking more in terms of a regional blog or small regional sites where people don't have any specific affiliation or skills to parse out a feed by their own devices.
.
swirt said:
JBanczak said:
We have an xml review feed for larger sites. Regional sites would be a perfect example of those that could use it, but it takes a little more tech know-how. The data is just that - data. They can sort in any way. We don't charge for it, only require attribution or see more from bb.com type of thing. I guess with the widget opened up like Trip Advisor's, then a regional site could just help themselves to the information.
I guess I am not thinking of the regional B&B site, I am thinking more in terms of a regional blog or small regional sites where people don't have any specific affiliation or skills to parse out a feed by their own devices.
What does everybody else think? Would you all prefer if we made this review widget public like Trip Advisor does so anyone could post reviews on your property? (certainly helped me they were public... good for our testing!)
Or would you prefer to have the code for it behind your password where you need to give permission to use it?
.
JBanczak said:
swirt said:
JBanczak said:
We have an xml review feed for larger sites. Regional sites would be a perfect example of those that could use it, but it takes a little more tech know-how. The data is just that - data. They can sort in any way. We don't charge for it, only require attribution or see more from bb.com type of thing. I guess with the widget opened up like Trip Advisor's, then a regional site could just help themselves to the information.
I guess I am not thinking of the regional B&B site, I am thinking more in terms of a regional blog or small regional sites where people don't have any specific affiliation or skills to parse out a feed by their own devices.
What does everybody else think? Would you all prefer if we made this review widget public like Trip Advisor does so anyone could post reviews on your property? (certainly helped me they were public... good for our testing!)
Or would you prefer to have the code for it behind your password where you need to give permission to use it?
CODE PASSWORD AND PERMISSION only.
.
CODE PASSWORD AND PERMISSION only.
What are you afraid of happening other than free advertising of your B&B? You don't have that control now over the TripAdvisor widget AND on that one you can't turn off reviews you don't like.
.
swirt said:
CODE PASSWORD AND PERMISSION only.
What are you afraid of happening other than free advertising of your B&B? You don't have that control now over the TripAdvisor widget AND on that one you can't turn off reviews you don't like.
I guess the many websites who just take my information. We pay to be on BandB.com and not on TA that is the diff, so I want control over the listing I pay for. Not that it would stop anyone from taking whatever they wanted, as they do anyway.
Edited to add - those other websites put our information out there and then when you click on make a booking it says NO ROOMS AVAILABLE.
.
I guess the many websites who just take my information.
I think you may thinking too Web 1.0 on this.
wink_smile.gif
This would just be an information feed, same as you using feedburner, atom or rss on your blog. The advantage would be that you'd still have control over the feed source. As opposed to someone just copying and pasting a bunch of reviews.. that after a while would become outdated.
Imagine if back 5 years ago when all the little worthless directories took the "easy way out" and went out and lifted your contact info and rates that still sit on some of those crappy little directories today..what if they had been provided with a feed from your B&B that had all your contact info and rates....you update the info and zap...it is updated on all of those sites. Not only would some of those crappy little directories not be so crappy today, but also your info would always be accurate. It is a little late now for B&B.com to become the broker of the basic contact info and rates feed, but the review portion of it is not quite established yet.
Think of all the regional blogs out there that are not run by innkeepers ... some run by restaurant fans, some by wine fans, some by architecture fans or history fans... What if, in only a few clicks they could post a BandB.com review widget on their site that listed all the B&B's in their area with with reviews. In a year you could have a bunch of sites in your region all sending more and more traffic to you and the other B&B's in the area. Individual B&B's don't have the ability to create this kind of unified feed on their own and at the moment, no other directory has the ability to pull it off. The exposure and the traffic, could be significant.
It's only a matter of time before TripAdvisor does this but when they do it, it will include hotels, rentals.... and it will give emphasis to the players in the TripAdvisor network, not usually us little B&B's. BandB.com doing it, and doing it FIRST, might be the only shot to make B&B's THE feature. The power of these widgets is that they are very targeted advertising AND people publish them because they are free high quality content AND site visitors use them because they provide both info and service.
So the question is, do we lock it away because we are afraid of somebody using them for our benefit without our control (remember B&B.com controls how it is displayed and the inn controls what reviews show), or do we embrace it and say Whooo hooo go use this to to send more people to the site for our benefit?
.
I think you are correct in your thinking on this, swirt. This is one way that bandb.com could get reviews of B&Bs out there, ahead of the curve of the TA machine.
It would be great if bandb.com could allow the B&B owner to set a switch - yes I will allow a feed of my 'chosen' reviews or no I will not allow a feed - for public use. I hope the reviews contain a link back to the B&B page on the bandb.com site, not to the general page. I haven't investigated the widget yet for my own purposes.
.
muirford said:
I think you are correct in your thinking on this, swirt. This is one way that bandb.com could get reviews of B&Bs out there, ahead of the curve of the TA machine.
It would be great if bandb.com could allow the B&B owner to set a switch - yes I will allow a feed of my 'chosen' reviews or no I will not allow a feed - for public use. I hope the reviews contain a link back to the B&B page on the bandb.com site, not to the general page. I haven't investigated the widget yet for my own purposes.
There we go - I like that solution.
 
Thanks for all the feedback guys. I would also like to offer more color choices for the balloons themselves. I guess opening the tool up so that you didn't need a login could make sense. It scares me a little bit - only because I'd rather leave it up to the innkeeper to choose who gets to do it.
You can put the widget anywhere you want - blog, or wherever you like!
We have an xml review feed for larger sites. Regional sites would be a perfect example of those that could use it, but it takes a little more tech know-how. The data is just that - data. They can sort in any way. We don't charge for it, only require attribution or see more from bb.com type of thing. I guess with the widget opened up like Trip Advisor's, then a regional site could just help themselves to the information.
I suppose we could do a widget for regional sites that is nice and neat with all the properties in it - what I've found though is that so often either the site has its own limited list (association where not everyone is a member) or their regions are different than ours, or they have multiple cities. If a regional site could just add the code for each member, then they could list them any way they like and it would be on a property basis.
In terms of displaying/not displaying the balloons for every review - we could probably create a horizontal and vertical option or two that didn't do that if folks thought they would use it? Clearly want to keep it simple enough, but a few more options wouldn't hurt.
On the sort thing... funny story. Lanier used to sort her site based on alpha-sort. Not sure if she still does. What happened was that all sorts of Inns changed their name on the site. So the Victorian Inn become "A Victorian Inn," and then later the "742 Victorian Inn" (using address number) quite quickly... since any number was sorted above all of the letters! Made for an interesting list of B&B names!.
JBanczak said:
We have an xml review feed for larger sites. Regional sites would be a perfect example of those that could use it, but it takes a little more tech know-how. The data is just that - data. They can sort in any way. We don't charge for it, only require attribution or see more from bb.com type of thing. I guess with the widget opened up like Trip Advisor's, then a regional site could just help themselves to the information.
I guess I am not thinking of the regional B&B site, I am thinking more in terms of a regional blog or small regional sites where people don't have any specific affiliation or skills to parse out a feed by their own devices.
.
swirt said:
JBanczak said:
We have an xml review feed for larger sites. Regional sites would be a perfect example of those that could use it, but it takes a little more tech know-how. The data is just that - data. They can sort in any way. We don't charge for it, only require attribution or see more from bb.com type of thing. I guess with the widget opened up like Trip Advisor's, then a regional site could just help themselves to the information.
I guess I am not thinking of the regional B&B site, I am thinking more in terms of a regional blog or small regional sites where people don't have any specific affiliation or skills to parse out a feed by their own devices.
What does everybody else think? Would you all prefer if we made this review widget public like Trip Advisor does so anyone could post reviews on your property? (certainly helped me they were public... good for our testing!)
Or would you prefer to have the code for it behind your password where you need to give permission to use it?
.
JBanczak said:
swirt said:
JBanczak said:
We have an xml review feed for larger sites. Regional sites would be a perfect example of those that could use it, but it takes a little more tech know-how. The data is just that - data. They can sort in any way. We don't charge for it, only require attribution or see more from bb.com type of thing. I guess with the widget opened up like Trip Advisor's, then a regional site could just help themselves to the information.
I guess I am not thinking of the regional B&B site, I am thinking more in terms of a regional blog or small regional sites where people don't have any specific affiliation or skills to parse out a feed by their own devices.
What does everybody else think? Would you all prefer if we made this review widget public like Trip Advisor does so anyone could post reviews on your property? (certainly helped me they were public... good for our testing!)
Or would you prefer to have the code for it behind your password where you need to give permission to use it?
CODE PASSWORD AND PERMISSION only.
.
CODE PASSWORD AND PERMISSION only.
What are you afraid of happening other than free advertising of your B&B? You don't have that control now over the TripAdvisor widget AND on that one you can't turn off reviews you don't like.
.
swirt said:
CODE PASSWORD AND PERMISSION only.
What are you afraid of happening other than free advertising of your B&B? You don't have that control now over the TripAdvisor widget AND on that one you can't turn off reviews you don't like.
I guess the many websites who just take my information. We pay to be on BandB.com and not on TA that is the diff, so I want control over the listing I pay for. Not that it would stop anyone from taking whatever they wanted, as they do anyway.
Edited to add - those other websites put our information out there and then when you click on make a booking it says NO ROOMS AVAILABLE.
.
I guess the many websites who just take my information.
I think you may thinking too Web 1.0 on this.
wink_smile.gif
This would just be an information feed, same as you using feedburner, atom or rss on your blog. The advantage would be that you'd still have control over the feed source. As opposed to someone just copying and pasting a bunch of reviews.. that after a while would become outdated.
Imagine if back 5 years ago when all the little worthless directories took the "easy way out" and went out and lifted your contact info and rates that still sit on some of those crappy little directories today..what if they had been provided with a feed from your B&B that had all your contact info and rates....you update the info and zap...it is updated on all of those sites. Not only would some of those crappy little directories not be so crappy today, but also your info would always be accurate. It is a little late now for B&B.com to become the broker of the basic contact info and rates feed, but the review portion of it is not quite established yet.
Think of all the regional blogs out there that are not run by innkeepers ... some run by restaurant fans, some by wine fans, some by architecture fans or history fans... What if, in only a few clicks they could post a BandB.com review widget on their site that listed all the B&B's in their area with with reviews. In a year you could have a bunch of sites in your region all sending more and more traffic to you and the other B&B's in the area. Individual B&B's don't have the ability to create this kind of unified feed on their own and at the moment, no other directory has the ability to pull it off. The exposure and the traffic, could be significant.
It's only a matter of time before TripAdvisor does this but when they do it, it will include hotels, rentals.... and it will give emphasis to the players in the TripAdvisor network, not usually us little B&B's. BandB.com doing it, and doing it FIRST, might be the only shot to make B&B's THE feature. The power of these widgets is that they are very targeted advertising AND people publish them because they are free high quality content AND site visitors use them because they provide both info and service.
So the question is, do we lock it away because we are afraid of somebody using them for our benefit without our control (remember B&B.com controls how it is displayed and the inn controls what reviews show), or do we embrace it and say Whooo hooo go use this to to send more people to the site for our benefit?
.
I think you are correct in your thinking on this, swirt. This is one way that bandb.com could get reviews of B&Bs out there, ahead of the curve of the TA machine.
It would be great if bandb.com could allow the B&B owner to set a switch - yes I will allow a feed of my 'chosen' reviews or no I will not allow a feed - for public use. I hope the reviews contain a link back to the B&B page on the bandb.com site, not to the general page. I haven't investigated the widget yet for my own purposes.
.
muirford said:
I think you are correct in your thinking on this, swirt. This is one way that bandb.com could get reviews of B&Bs out there, ahead of the curve of the TA machine.
It would be great if bandb.com could allow the B&B owner to set a switch - yes I will allow a feed of my 'chosen' reviews or no I will not allow a feed - for public use. I hope the reviews contain a link back to the B&B page on the bandb.com site, not to the general page. I haven't investigated the widget yet for my own purposes.
There we go - I like that solution.
.
I think it would be quite important to spell out what turning this "off" would mean. If it is just something that said "allow others to use my feed" you'd get a fear response of people turning it off. You'd have to say something more along the lines of, "if you want to not be listed in regional feeds or allow other sites to advertise for you using your feed...
I think there would be a lot of fear over this without their being much of a reason to fear. The worst case scenerio I can think of is that some nudie bar in town puts up an accommodations page on their website and lists all the B&B's for the region ... that wouldn't be bad advertising but it may attract a clientelle innkeepers wouldn't want. And in a case like that BandB.com could block the entire feed from being used by that url (a block list would be a good idea if you don't already have one set up).
 
Drat!!! TA is already offering a similar widget
You can build your own local widget ...notice how it does not emphasise B&B's. Fortunately, what it provides is not as usuable as it could be. You should get something different every time the page loads.
 
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