"It's too hard to book at a B&B" (A PAII research project?)

[wendydk]

What will keep me from booking at a B&B is location, (not close enought to what I am going to see), or price - $150 is my max, ususally. I will search high and low all over the internet to find one that fits my needs. I rely heavily on association web sites first, then TA and then b&b directories.
I find it very curious that the B&B owners that were mentioned said that B&Bs were too hard to book, don't you? Maybe too hard to find at the last minute, but hard to book? Hmmm.

What will keep me from booking at a B&B is location, (not close enought to what I am going to see), or price - $150 is my max, ususally. I will search high and low all over the internet to find one that fits my needs. I rely heavily on association web sites first, then TA and then b&b directories.
I find it very curious that the B&B owners that were mentioned said that B&Bs were too hard to book, don't you? Maybe too hard to find at the last minute, but hard to book? Hmmm

Yes - hard to book. Half the BB's still don't have online bookings - so you have to call, or email, and wait. Then most only have reservation requests - and we've seen in our surveys that 1/4th of people refuse to do a request, and another 1/4 strongly dislike it. Then there is the issue of a booking engine being really confusing (i won't name competitors), or not having photos next to the descriptions of rooms, or when you get to the credit card pages, having no visible hacker protection or credit card security.
Think if you went to Amazon and you were going to buy an item, and you saw no picture, you couldn't see if it was in stock - you had to email and ask them... In order to request it you had to put your credit card info onto a page with no hacker or credit card seal? And to make matters worse, when you got to the final page, they asked you to hand enter your requested product in again...
That is the experience that most BB's are still giving to guests - there is no wonder why folks are wary of the final product.
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What will keep me from booking at a B&B is location, (not close enought to what I am going to see), or price - $150 is my max, ususally. I will search high and low all over the internet to find one that fits my needs. I rely heavily on association web sites first, then TA and then b&b directories.
I find it very curious that the B&B owners that were mentioned said that B&Bs were too hard to book, don't you? Maybe too hard to find at the last minute, but hard to book? Hmmm

Yes - hard to book. Half the BB's still don't have online bookings - so you have to call, or email, and wait. Then most only have reservation requests - and we've seen in our surveys that 1/4th of people refuse to do a request, and another 1/4 strongly dislike it. Then there is the issue of a booking engine being really confusing (i won't name competitors), or not having photos next to the descriptions of rooms, or when you get to the credit card pages, having no visible hacker protection or credit card security.
Think if you went to Amazon and you were going to buy an item, and you saw no picture, you couldn't see if it was in stock - you had to email and ask them... In order to request it you had to put your credit card info onto a page with no hacker or credit card seal? And to make matters worse, when you got to the final page, they asked you to hand enter your requested product in again...
That is the experience that most BB's are still giving to guests - there is no wonder why folks are wary of the final product.

I absolutely 100% agree with those comments. As mentioned I looked at booking a getaway two times in the past month or so and both times ended up pulling my hair out. I DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT WANT TO REQUEST first cvhoice second choice, I want to book the friggin' room I see is available and get my flights set and all the rest. THIS IS COSTLY FOR ME to sort out, I must have it done WHILE I am looking at it, not wait for an email or call back. I will not wait, I will not call, I want online reservations and a confirmation #. Why are you on the internet? For the pretty pictures? Will speaking to me weed out the good or bad guests? Will you say "Oh now that I have spoken to you, I have decided we do not have availability?" No.
Sorry, soapbox got out of hand there... This is what this thread is about, making it easy for guests to book. We have to think of our guests! This is all about them, not us. If I have to squint to see your photos and I have 20/20 vision, or have to click through pages of policies and useless information I will not book there. Me and so many others.
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I agree with Joe. I treat my webervations requests as a done deal, and feel that my guests do too. I answer all emails within 5 minutes of them coming in unless I'm away from the house or it's overnight. Confirmations go out within 10 minutes. Since most of my business is done online with no prior guest contact, I feel I have to be super responsive. My email screen is always up, and I can see it from anywhere in our private area.
Nothing aggravates me more than contacting another innkeeper about reservations and not hearing back from them for four days. I figure Innkeepers like that are losing and I am gaining.
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I agree with Joe. I treat my webervations requests as a done deal, and feel that my guests do too. I answer all emails within 5 minutes of them coming in unless I'm away from the house or it's overnight. Confirmations go out within 10 minutes. Since most of my business is done online with no prior guest contact, I feel I have to be super responsive. My email screen is always up, and I can see it from anywhere in our private area.
Nothing aggravates me more than contacting another innkeeper about reservations and not hearing back from them for four days. I figure Innkeepers like that are losing and I am gaining.

Yes I speak on behalf of myself as a guest and all the guests who tell me about all the BnB's they contacted and never heard a word back or were called or emailed days and days later. Apparently it is very common. I know this forum and its members, they are right on, they do not do this part time, they truly give it their all and then some.
A couple years ago I sent out an email requesting info from myself as a guest in my own state. I posted the stats on that way back, but of the 20 BnB's in a popular tourist area of our state I had these results (not exact here, as I don't have the figures right now but from memory):

• TWO had email blockers on the Inn email so I had to fill out a form before they could receive my email!
• Another handful replied abruptly with "go to our website and find the info" and it was not with a "we hope to meet you" or anything cordial.
• Approx FIVE never responded
• A handful bounced (I emailed from their posted website email address)
• A couple responded within an hour and were delightful and inviting
• One put my on a mailing list, to this day I receive promotions about their restaurant. I emailed about the BnB.

So the results were out of 20 inns only a couple of BnB's answered my question promptly and professionally. After all of that I never went to that area of the state and changed directions and went South instead, it really put me off.
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It's a great experiment to try locally if you have a lot of comp. See how they handle it and improve your response.
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It's a great experiment to try locally if you have a lot of comp. See how they handle it and improve your response.

Ummm.... sorry but I thought we all worked like 150 hours per week and have nary a bad word for any of our local colleagues?
A local colleague starts using me as some guinea pig to test my response time using a fictitious name and email address and they've gotten their last overflow referral from me.
If I find out who it is, they also better have every bit of licensing, insurance, code inspections up to date and not be illegally serving alcohol to any guests for happy hour.
This ain't fun time around here for us to have to spend valuable time trying to sort out the real inquiries from the fake ones being sent by so called colleagues.
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Of course you need to check out what is going on around you. Or at least most of us do, maybe you are as busy as you want to be and if so great.
Believe me ALL the hotels are doing it...they call, look online, anything and everything to see what the 'other guy' is doing and then see if they can improve their own place to one up. I know at least one of the managers of a local hotel even checks out the competitors parking lots each night as well so they can tell if their rate and packages are working better than his own.
There is NOTHING wrong with doing this. I will admit when I was new and first heard of all this I was shocked and appalled, thinking it was underhanded but this type of thing is done in every industry.
Stealing a package is wrong...creating a better package is not!
Standing at the entrance of a competitor to steal customers is wrong...having better rates or more amenities to entice them before booking is not.
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Copperhead is right. Some hotels are OCD with the checking and rechecking of the competition's website, specials, walkin rates, amenities, parking lot capacity, etc.
While we don't (for the most part) have the same demographic, I do check the availability calendars of the other B&B properties in the area just to get an idea of how my occupancy is compared to theirs. Likwise, my opentracker shows me when one of them is on my site, and because I have the code on my webervations page, it shows me when and how often they check my calendar too.
But then, because we have our own county association and a consolidated availablity, I try to always know who has what so I know where to refer people.

 

[NW BB]

I'm with Joe, don't make me have to search for the rates info. No phone calls. How close is the B&B to where I'm going.
But my main reason for not booking a B&B when I'm going to a PAII conference is that I don't want to talk about business on my off hours. The conferences are wonderful and I get so saturated with information and people, that I just want annonimity and privacy when I'm in my off hours..

How close is the B&B to where I'm going.

I am not being sarcastic here, but how does the B&B owner, when designing the website, know WHERE you want to go? As a fer instance, I DO state we are walking distance to what MOST people come here for. I state it on the home page, on the rooms page and elsewhere. It's still the number one question (other than price) when guests call...'How far is it to...?'
Other than having that be my headline on my website, I'm not sure how to make it clearer!
Then, there are folks who want to be doing something I never gave a second thought to. It might be 1/4 mile from here, but I never heard anyone say that's what they came here to do so I wouldn't mention it!
So, there's another question...how do you let guests know what you are near? Map? Lists?
Because many guests have NO idea where anything is (as in they did not look at ANY map while planning their trip) I sometimes have guests booking who really want to be 3 hours north but they don't realize how big this state is. I get this when they tell me they made reservations for dinner at some restaurant that's nowhere near here!
Or, the guests who had an anniversary party to go to and they said, 'We booked with you because we thought you'd be closer to where the dinner is. It's in the next town over.' So I ask where is the dinner? It's right next door to me. They were even happier, but it shows how little anyone pays attention to where they are going!
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Use a customized Google map and put it on your site. You can put different markers (including a big one that would be your inn) and people can visually see what's close and what's not. TA one in which they show different hotels, inns, etc. on a map.
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we use a customized Google map on our site also.