B&B.com review widget ideas

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swirt

Forum founder. Former Owner.
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I've been doing some work with adding the review widget to some websites and here are a couple of things I've noticed (with some suggestions embedded just for good measure).
  1. I really like the approach for the widget. It has lots of options that can be customized. Which makes it possible to make it look like part of the inn's website. Unlike TripAdvisors review widget, which doesn't give you that level of control and can look kind of "bolted on."
  2. I like that the BandB.com widget displays the actual star/bullet rating for each review. The TripAdvisor widget does not, so it forces people much more strongly to go read them on TripAdvsior in order to even figure out if it is a positive or negative review. (though I guess this makes an occaisional bad review not stick out like a sore thumb)
    bbwidget.gif

    tripadvisorwidget.gif
What I wish for
  1. As a web designer I wish I could generate the code for clients without them having to email it to me. With TripAdvisor, anyone can get the code. With BandB.com only the person with the login can get the code. I have had a few so far send me their bandb.com login info rather than just email me the code ...they want me to choose the colors that match their site. I don't really want them to send me their login info. I can actually figure out where to change the color portion of the code, the part that is a mystery is the property ID as it is a hash that does not match the actual property id number used on bandb.com.
  2. Opening up the tool so designers could access the data also means the widget could be used on other sites, say local travel guides or other collections of B&B's. This kind of use may seem a little scary to innkeepers at first, but it could have the result of sending more traffic to BandB.com.
 
Adding on to my own thoughts here ;) Having a review widget specifically for regional travel sites where all the reviews for a given town could be listed all at once (partitioned out by individual B&B of course). The local vistor/travel sites in one shot could list a collection of reviews .... which of course would drive A LOT of traffic to BandB.com
Just don't make it sort them from highest to lowest or anything like that, it would lead to a competitive bloodbath which are generally best avoided when you get down to the regional level.
 
Adding on to my own thoughts here ;) Having a review widget specifically for regional travel sites where all the reviews for a given town could be listed all at once (partitioned out by individual B&B of course). The local vistor/travel sites in one shot could list a collection of reviews .... which of course would drive A LOT of traffic to BandB.com
Just don't make it sort them from highest to lowest or anything like that, it would lead to a competitive bloodbath which are generally best avoided when you get down to the regional level..
swirt said:
Adding on to my own thoughts here ;) Having a review widget specifically for regional travel sites where all the reviews for a given town could be listed all at once (partitioned out by individual B&B of course). The local vistor/travel sites in one shot could list a collection of reviews .... which of course would drive A LOT of traffic to BandB.com
Just don't make it sort them from highest to lowest or anything like that, it would lead to a competitive bloodbath which are generally best avoided when you get down to the regional level.
Here's a novel idea, sort it alphabetically. Then all those with numeric B&B names get the top of the list - per usual and Bree gets the rear - or we get the rear if they include "THE" as our Inn name, which they ALMOST ALWAYS DO!!! UGH!
 
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!
 
I was able to post the widgets to our blog. Is there an alternative code for places like myspace who do not permit javascript widgets or widgets with ads? they said they allow feeds, would this be helpful?
 
Good one. I don't have enough reviews, but once I do I might add it into the blog like that.
 
John, you mean LIKE THIS? It is rampant on this state tourism website. Then they list us under the prefix "The" which took highwater to convince them not to. That is why I drop the "the" in most marketing now.
 
John, you mean LIKE THIS? It is rampant on this state tourism website. Then they list us under the prefix "The" which took highwater to convince them not to. That is why I drop the "the" in most marketing now..
JunieBJones (JBJ) said:
John, you mean LIKE THIS? It is rampant on this state tourism website. Then they list us under the prefix "The" which took highwater to convince them not to. That is why I drop the "the" in most marketing now.
Ha, ha, adding 'The' would move me UP the list. I abhor places that add 'A' to their names and will actually skip right over them to not validate their marketing ploy.
 
I was able to post the widgets to our blog. Is there an alternative code for places like myspace who do not permit javascript widgets or widgets with ads? they said they allow feeds, would this be helpful?.
Willowpondgj said:
I was able to post the widgets to our blog. Is there an alternative code for places like myspace who do not permit javascript widgets or widgets with ads? they said they allow feeds, would this be helpful?
Interesting, I hadn't thought about that. Let me do some checking!
 
John, you mean LIKE THIS? It is rampant on this state tourism website. Then they list us under the prefix "The" which took highwater to convince them not to. That is why I drop the "the" in most marketing now..
JunieBJones (JBJ) said:
John, you mean LIKE THIS? It is rampant on this state tourism website. Then they list us under the prefix "The" which took highwater to convince them not to. That is why I drop the "the" in most marketing now.
LOL - that has to be the best example I've seen!
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
May we use the widget on our BLOGS? AH HA! says this innkeeper. BLOG IDEA! A good place for one of the verticals...not sure if I can paste it in okay, I will attempt it... IT WORKED, with a couple changes - page width was one, I changed it to :
"width:350px;" instead of 600 as I believe BLOGGER is a preset width.
Since my vertical real estate is all taken and very valuable I added it as a blog post.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Code & Password, for sure. I posted on another thread about an innkeeper I knew in another state that was positive one of his competitors was responsible for several negative posts on tripadvisor and tripadvisor was not helpful at all. (several years ago) I think that B&B.com does it right. At least there is a plan in place and it is stated that reviews are subject to providing proof of stay. Very important I think.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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.
Yes, it takes you to the inn's listing.
 
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