Statistics - please share

[Sunshine]

Thanks for sharing, so far.
As you can see we here in Virginnie, even with the sponsored links on google from BandB.com are going in reverse. Not forward. I might ask this again at the end of the year if you won't mind, to take in the full year..

Thanks for sharing, so far.
As you can see we here in Virginnie, even with the sponsored links on google from BandB.com are going in reverse. Not forward. I might ask this again at the end of the year if you won't mind, to take in the full year.

We are discussing this here as our local group is also falling behind on referrals thru their site to ours. Here's what I think is happening...guests are getting better at finding things online. Google local mapping shows a list of 10 (hopefully B&B's) when you do the query for 'town, state B&B'.
There's no reason to look any further when the name of the B&B, the location, the phone number, the website and a link to TA is RIGHT there. So, fewer guests are using the directories to aggregate the lodging options.
If the guest is doing a more generic search like 'state B&B' then the directories help them narrow down an area.
.

Thanks for sharing, so far.
As you can see we here in Virginnie, even with the sponsored links on google from BandB.com are going in reverse. Not forward. I might ask this again at the end of the year if you won't mind, to take in the full year.

We are discussing this here as our local group is also falling behind on referrals thru their site to ours. Here's what I think is happening...guests are getting better at finding things online. Google local mapping shows a list of 10 (hopefully B&B's) when you do the query for 'town, state B&B'.
There's no reason to look any further when the name of the B&B, the location, the phone number, the website and a link to TA is RIGHT there. So, fewer guests are using the directories to aggregate the lodging options.
If the guest is doing a more generic search like 'state B&B' then the directories help them narrow down an area.

Me has to disagree. My other listings are not dropping, In fact, how many, people - innkeepers I am askin' all a y'all - how many of you are having a surge in first time B&B goers? Seriousely, how many?
BandB.com is not on page 1 for most of my searches, I did that before starting this thread. Guess who is on page one for virginia bed breakfast in the 6th slot? Moi.
Anyway, the others are not falling off the planet, just that one. But I was told tough, leave if you don't like it. We never promised you a rose garden.
We have to keep an eye on them
I do not have many GC's coming in either. I won't have any, now.

.

I'm having lots of first timers too.

 

[Sunshine]

we are brand new, but so far this is what we have and we are not listed with B&B.com or anyone else. just our web page, and listed on the freebee sites (with just two rooms, and no budget you do what you have to). don't know if this helps. we had 17 reservations for this month. These are actual visits to my site. people who went to my site and viewed my pages.
[tr]Visits per Month
[/td][/tr][tr]Sep 2008
[/td]262
[/td][/tr][tr]Aug 2008
[/td]391
[/td][/tr][tr]Jul 2008
[/td]328
[/td][/tr][tr]Jun 2008
[/td]227
[/td][/tr][tr]May 2008
[/td]238
[/td][/tr][tr]Apr 2008
[/td]271
[/td][/tr][tr]Visits per Year
[/td]
[/td][/tr][tr]2008
[/td]1,717
[/td]
[/td]
[/td][/tr][/table]

 

[egoodell]

okay I'm late here and we joined just in July, but what I have for two rooms is
Show DETAILED listing impressions: Month to date = 156 Total, year-to-date = 495 Total, last year = 13
CLICK THRU to MEMBER'S HOME PAGE: Month to date = 128, Year-to-date = 326, Last Year = not a member
RIki

 

[JBanczak]

As you all may or may not know, RezOvation has thousands of customers – and enables full referral url revenue and conversion tracking through Google Analytics. We are not allowed to publish data from any one given customer, but we can aggregate this data to draw some meaningful conclusions. Since you are talking about website tracking and statistics, this could be useful.

1) We took a random sample of live properties using our system for the past few months. These properties had to have been live since at least May 1 (and we did not look at initial go-live date), and at least on BedandBreakfast.com (so we could make comparisons), with Google Analytics working at least for referral tracking.
2) I took their referral data for traffic between May 1 and September 24. Looked at Top 50 referrers, and recorded any of the following sites traffic and/or conversions if conversion tracking was setup:
a. BB.com
b. BBonline
c. BNBfinder
d. Lanierbb
e. Iloveinns
f. Theinnkeeper (my new favorite bb.com plagiariser)
3) It is difficult to analyze, because each property may or may not use everyone, requiring BedandBreakfast.com’s traffic to be compared separately each time against other sites to make it apples-to-apples rather than just looking at an aggregate number. Here are the percentage of properties using each of the following sites:
i. BBonline – 40%
ii. BNBfinder – 40%
iii. Lanierbb – 67%
iv. Iloveinns – 53%
v. Theinnkeeper – 27%
4) I then looked at the ratio of traffic, time on site, page views, bounce rate compared to BedandBreakfast.com for each of these sites. For clarification – I only counted a site’s numbers if the innkeeper was using them and BedandBreakfast.com – I didn’t just total up all the metrics for bb.com’s sites, then total the metrics from other sites – comparison was made only if an innkeeper was using both and only for the metrics that corresponded to that innkeepers site. I then aggregated the numbers together to give ratios of traffic sent and other metrics. Here are some highlights:
[/td]Amount of traffic BB.com sends to average innkeeper website vs a specific competitor:
[/td]How many more pages a BB.com customer visits vs. a competitors customer
[/td]How much more time does a BB.com customer spend on a site vs. competitors customers?
[/td][/tr]bbonline.com
[/td]4.90
[/td]Similar
[/td]64%
[/td][/tr]lanierbb.com
[/td]11.70
[/td]11%
[/td]26%
[/td][/tr]iloveinns.com
[/td]49.87
[/td]16%
[/td]236%
[/td][/tr]inns.com
[/td]42.99
[/td]4%
[/td]18%
[/td][/tr]theinnkeeper.com
[/td]38.44
[/td]Similar
[/td]349%
[/td][/tr]bnbfinder.com
[/td]5.07
[/td]Similar
[/td]Similar
[/td][/tr][/table]

The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias. What isn’t biased though is the amount of traffic that these properties are getting. When they are using other sites, BedandBreakfast.com is sending a lot more traffic… 5X as much as bbonline and bnbfinder, 12X as much as Lanier, and 50X as much as iloveinns. Also – time on the site for iloveinns and theinnkeeper were quite bad. Inns.com sends about the same amount of traffic that Lanierbb.com sends as well, far less than BedandBreakfast.com, but it is included now in the price of BedandBreakfast.com, and the time on site is far better than even the other directories.

I have conversion data as well, but this needs to be properties that use our Booking Engine, and have everything setup using Google Analytics – AND use the various directories. This is a smaller subset, but the numbers are still compelling. BB.com averages roughly 4X the conversion of BBonline on average. For the other sites – it is rare to see much conversion on traffic at all. Seriously – out of all the traffic I see, there are only a couple bookings TOTAL from all the other sites for May 1-September 24.

Anyway – since we are on this subject, thought that would be some fun data for you guys to mull over. I’m sure every B&B sees different results and it is clear that there are some innkeepers here unhappy with their traffic from us, but these numbers are not that far off from those posted on Innkeeping.org, and they are from a third party tracking system. I'm guessing a year from now, as we continue to get more innkeepers to adopt full referral revenue tracking, we will have even better data.

 

[YellowSocks]

As you all may or may not know, RezOvation has thousands of customers – and enables full referral url revenue and conversion tracking through Google Analytics. We are not allowed to publish data from any one given customer, but we can aggregate this data to draw some meaningful conclusions. Since you are talking about website tracking and statistics, this could be useful.

1) We took a random sample of live properties using our system for the past few months. These properties had to have been live since at least May 1 (and we did not look at initial go-live date), and at least on BedandBreakfast.com (so we could make comparisons), with Google Analytics working at least for referral tracking.
2) I took their referral data for traffic between May 1 and September 24. Looked at Top 50 referrers, and recorded any of the following sites traffic and/or conversions if conversion tracking was setup:
a. BB.com
b. BBonline
c. BNBfinder
d. Lanierbb
e. Iloveinns
f. Theinnkeeper (my new favorite bb.com plagiariser)
3) It is difficult to analyze, because each property may or may not use everyone, requiring BedandBreakfast.com’s traffic to be compared separately each time against other sites to make it apples-to-apples rather than just looking at an aggregate number. Here are the percentage of properties using each of the following sites:
i. BBonline – 40%
ii. BNBfinder – 40%
iii. Lanierbb – 67%
iv. Iloveinns – 53%
v. Theinnkeeper – 27%
4) I then looked at the ratio of traffic, time on site, page views, bounce rate compared to BedandBreakfast.com for each of these sites. For clarification – I only counted a site’s numbers if the innkeeper was using them and BedandBreakfast.com – I didn’t just total up all the metrics for bb.com’s sites, then total the metrics from other sites – comparison was made only if an innkeeper was using both and only for the metrics that corresponded to that innkeepers site. I then aggregated the numbers together to give ratios of traffic sent and other metrics. Here are some highlights:
[/td]Amount of traffic BB.com sends to average innkeeper website vs a specific competitor:
[/td]How many more pages a BB.com customer visits vs. a competitors customer
[/td]How much more time does a BB.com customer spend on a site vs. competitors customers?
[/td][/tr]bbonline.com
[/td]4.90
[/td]Similar
[/td]64%
[/td][/tr]lanierbb.com
[/td]11.70
[/td]11%
[/td]26%
[/td][/tr]iloveinns.com
[/td]49.87
[/td]16%
[/td]236%
[/td][/tr]inns.com
[/td]42.99
[/td]4%
[/td]18%
[/td][/tr]theinnkeeper.com
[/td]38.44
[/td]Similar
[/td]349%
[/td][/tr]bnbfinder.com
[/td]5.07
[/td]Similar
[/td]Similar
[/td][/tr][/table]

The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias. What isn’t biased though is the amount of traffic that these properties are getting. When they are using other sites, BedandBreakfast.com is sending a lot more traffic… 5X as much as bbonline and bnbfinder, 12X as much as Lanier, and 50X as much as iloveinns. Also – time on the site for iloveinns and theinnkeeper were quite bad. Inns.com sends about the same amount of traffic that Lanierbb.com sends as well, far less than BedandBreakfast.com, but it is included now in the price of BedandBreakfast.com, and the time on site is far better than even the other directories.

I have conversion data as well, but this needs to be properties that use our Booking Engine, and have everything setup using Google Analytics – AND use the various directories. This is a smaller subset, but the numbers are still compelling. BB.com averages roughly 4X the conversion of BBonline on average. For the other sites – it is rare to see much conversion on traffic at all. Seriously – out of all the traffic I see, there are only a couple bookings TOTAL from all the other sites for May 1-September 24.

Anyway – since we are on this subject, thought that would be some fun data for you guys to mull over. I’m sure every B&B sees different results and it is clear that there are some innkeepers here unhappy with their traffic from us, but these numbers are not that far off from those posted on Innkeeping.org, and they are from a third party tracking system. I'm guessing a year from now, as we continue to get more innkeepers to adopt full referral revenue tracking, we will have even better data..

The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias.

I can't comment on most of this, but I do know that bbonline has more listings because a small inn like me can more easily afford to list with them. If I can derive comparable results by listing with them for half the price of listing with you, then that's an easy decision.
But then, we've discussed the whole small-inns-aren't-worth-catering-to issue before.
=)
Kk.

 

[JBanczak]

As you all may or may not know, RezOvation has thousands of customers – and enables full referral url revenue and conversion tracking through Google Analytics. We are not allowed to publish data from any one given customer, but we can aggregate this data to draw some meaningful conclusions. Since you are talking about website tracking and statistics, this could be useful.

1) We took a random sample of live properties using our system for the past few months. These properties had to have been live since at least May 1 (and we did not look at initial go-live date), and at least on BedandBreakfast.com (so we could make comparisons), with Google Analytics working at least for referral tracking.
2) I took their referral data for traffic between May 1 and September 24. Looked at Top 50 referrers, and recorded any of the following sites traffic and/or conversions if conversion tracking was setup:
a. BB.com
b. BBonline
c. BNBfinder
d. Lanierbb
e. Iloveinns
f. Theinnkeeper (my new favorite bb.com plagiariser)
3) It is difficult to analyze, because each property may or may not use everyone, requiring BedandBreakfast.com’s traffic to be compared separately each time against other sites to make it apples-to-apples rather than just looking at an aggregate number. Here are the percentage of properties using each of the following sites:
i. BBonline – 40%
ii. BNBfinder – 40%
iii. Lanierbb – 67%
iv. Iloveinns – 53%
v. Theinnkeeper – 27%
4) I then looked at the ratio of traffic, time on site, page views, bounce rate compared to BedandBreakfast.com for each of these sites. For clarification – I only counted a site’s numbers if the innkeeper was using them and BedandBreakfast.com – I didn’t just total up all the metrics for bb.com’s sites, then total the metrics from other sites – comparison was made only if an innkeeper was using both and only for the metrics that corresponded to that innkeepers site. I then aggregated the numbers together to give ratios of traffic sent and other metrics. Here are some highlights:
[/td]Amount of traffic BB.com sends to average innkeeper website vs a specific competitor:
[/td]How many more pages a BB.com customer visits vs. a competitors customer
[/td]How much more time does a BB.com customer spend on a site vs. competitors customers?
[/td][/tr]bbonline.com
[/td]4.90
[/td]Similar
[/td]64%
[/td][/tr]lanierbb.com
[/td]11.70
[/td]11%
[/td]26%
[/td][/tr]iloveinns.com
[/td]49.87
[/td]16%
[/td]236%
[/td][/tr]inns.com
[/td]42.99
[/td]4%
[/td]18%
[/td][/tr]theinnkeeper.com
[/td]38.44
[/td]Similar
[/td]349%
[/td][/tr]bnbfinder.com
[/td]5.07
[/td]Similar
[/td]Similar
[/td][/tr][/table]

The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias. What isn’t biased though is the amount of traffic that these properties are getting. When they are using other sites, BedandBreakfast.com is sending a lot more traffic… 5X as much as bbonline and bnbfinder, 12X as much as Lanier, and 50X as much as iloveinns. Also – time on the site for iloveinns and theinnkeeper were quite bad. Inns.com sends about the same amount of traffic that Lanierbb.com sends as well, far less than BedandBreakfast.com, but it is included now in the price of BedandBreakfast.com, and the time on site is far better than even the other directories.

I have conversion data as well, but this needs to be properties that use our Booking Engine, and have everything setup using Google Analytics – AND use the various directories. This is a smaller subset, but the numbers are still compelling. BB.com averages roughly 4X the conversion of BBonline on average. For the other sites – it is rare to see much conversion on traffic at all. Seriously – out of all the traffic I see, there are only a couple bookings TOTAL from all the other sites for May 1-September 24.

Anyway – since we are on this subject, thought that would be some fun data for you guys to mull over. I’m sure every B&B sees different results and it is clear that there are some innkeepers here unhappy with their traffic from us, but these numbers are not that far off from those posted on Innkeeping.org, and they are from a third party tracking system. I'm guessing a year from now, as we continue to get more innkeepers to adopt full referral revenue tracking, we will have even better data..

The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias.

I can't comment on most of this, but I do know that bbonline has more listings because a small inn like me can more easily afford to list with them. If I can derive comparable results by listing with them for half the price of listing with you, then that's an easy decision.
But then, we've discussed the whole small-inns-aren't-worth-catering-to issue before.
=)
Kk.
.

BBonline reports on their homepage that they have 5,200 properties, and we are actually at 7,000 current members. Lanier reports over 50,000, although I do not believe that it means 50,000 paying members. Years ago we had almost 30,000 listings - and we had to drop anything non-paid because the data was so bad we were getting constant complaints from consumers about bad phone numbers, inns being closed, etc.
I'm not even going to go there about small inns - we'll have to agree to disagree!

 

[inncogneeto]

As you all may or may not know, RezOvation has thousands of customers – and enables full referral url revenue and conversion tracking through Google Analytics. We are not allowed to publish data from any one given customer, but we can aggregate this data to draw some meaningful conclusions. Since you are talking about website tracking and statistics, this could be useful.

1) We took a random sample of live properties using our system for the past few months. These properties had to have been live since at least May 1 (and we did not look at initial go-live date), and at least on BedandBreakfast.com (so we could make comparisons), with Google Analytics working at least for referral tracking.
2) I took their referral data for traffic between May 1 and September 24. Looked at Top 50 referrers, and recorded any of the following sites traffic and/or conversions if conversion tracking was setup:
a. BB.com
b. BBonline
c. BNBfinder
d. Lanierbb
e. Iloveinns
f. Theinnkeeper (my new favorite bb.com plagiariser)
3) It is difficult to analyze, because each property may or may not use everyone, requiring BedandBreakfast.com’s traffic to be compared separately each time against other sites to make it apples-to-apples rather than just looking at an aggregate number. Here are the percentage of properties using each of the following sites:
i. BBonline – 40%
ii. BNBfinder – 40%
iii. Lanierbb – 67%
iv. Iloveinns – 53%
v. Theinnkeeper – 27%
4) I then looked at the ratio of traffic, time on site, page views, bounce rate compared to BedandBreakfast.com for each of these sites. For clarification – I only counted a site’s numbers if the innkeeper was using them and BedandBreakfast.com – I didn’t just total up all the metrics for bb.com’s sites, then total the metrics from other sites – comparison was made only if an innkeeper was using both and only for the metrics that corresponded to that innkeepers site. I then aggregated the numbers together to give ratios of traffic sent and other metrics. Here are some highlights:
[/td]Amount of traffic BB.com sends to average innkeeper website vs a specific competitor:
[/td]How many more pages a BB.com customer visits vs. a competitors customer
[/td]How much more time does a BB.com customer spend on a site vs. competitors customers?
[/td][/tr]bbonline.com
[/td]4.90
[/td]Similar
[/td]64%
[/td][/tr]lanierbb.com
[/td]11.70
[/td]11%
[/td]26%
[/td][/tr]iloveinns.com
[/td]49.87
[/td]16%
[/td]236%
[/td][/tr]inns.com
[/td]42.99
[/td]4%
[/td]18%
[/td][/tr]theinnkeeper.com
[/td]38.44
[/td]Similar
[/td]349%
[/td][/tr]bnbfinder.com
[/td]5.07
[/td]Similar
[/td]Similar
[/td][/tr][/table]

The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias. What isn’t biased though is the amount of traffic that these properties are getting. When they are using other sites, BedandBreakfast.com is sending a lot more traffic… 5X as much as bbonline and bnbfinder, 12X as much as Lanier, and 50X as much as iloveinns. Also – time on the site for iloveinns and theinnkeeper were quite bad. Inns.com sends about the same amount of traffic that Lanierbb.com sends as well, far less than BedandBreakfast.com, but it is included now in the price of BedandBreakfast.com, and the time on site is far better than even the other directories.

I have conversion data as well, but this needs to be properties that use our Booking Engine, and have everything setup using Google Analytics – AND use the various directories. This is a smaller subset, but the numbers are still compelling. BB.com averages roughly 4X the conversion of BBonline on average. For the other sites – it is rare to see much conversion on traffic at all. Seriously – out of all the traffic I see, there are only a couple bookings TOTAL from all the other sites for May 1-September 24.

Anyway – since we are on this subject, thought that would be some fun data for you guys to mull over. I’m sure every B&B sees different results and it is clear that there are some innkeepers here unhappy with their traffic from us, but these numbers are not that far off from those posted on Innkeeping.org, and they are from a third party tracking system. I'm guessing a year from now, as we continue to get more innkeepers to adopt full referral revenue tracking, we will have even better data..

The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias.

I can't comment on most of this, but I do know that bbonline has more listings because a small inn like me can more easily afford to list with them. If I can derive comparable results by listing with them for half the price of listing with you, then that's an easy decision.
But then, we've discussed the whole small-inns-aren't-worth-catering-to issue before.
=)
Kk.
.

And at bbonline, I can do online rez thru webervations for a small annual fee and pay no commissions to do it, a true bargain!
People, the only other entity we pay 30% of our income to is the IRS.

 

[Morticia]

As you all may or may not know, RezOvation has thousands of customers – and enables full referral url revenue and conversion tracking through Google Analytics. We are not allowed to publish data from any one given customer, but we can aggregate this data to draw some meaningful conclusions. Since you are talking about website tracking and statistics, this could be useful.

1) We took a random sample of live properties using our system for the past few months. These properties had to have been live since at least May 1 (and we did not look at initial go-live date), and at least on BedandBreakfast.com (so we could make comparisons), with Google Analytics working at least for referral tracking.
2) I took their referral data for traffic between May 1 and September 24. Looked at Top 50 referrers, and recorded any of the following sites traffic and/or conversions if conversion tracking was setup:
a. BB.com
b. BBonline
c. BNBfinder
d. Lanierbb
e. Iloveinns
f. Theinnkeeper (my new favorite bb.com plagiariser)
3) It is difficult to analyze, because each property may or may not use everyone, requiring BedandBreakfast.com’s traffic to be compared separately each time against other sites to make it apples-to-apples rather than just looking at an aggregate number. Here are the percentage of properties using each of the following sites:
i. BBonline – 40%
ii. BNBfinder – 40%
iii. Lanierbb – 67%
iv. Iloveinns – 53%
v. Theinnkeeper – 27%
4) I then looked at the ratio of traffic, time on site, page views, bounce rate compared to BedandBreakfast.com for each of these sites. For clarification – I only counted a site’s numbers if the innkeeper was using them and BedandBreakfast.com – I didn’t just total up all the metrics for bb.com’s sites, then total the metrics from other sites – comparison was made only if an innkeeper was using both and only for the metrics that corresponded to that innkeepers site. I then aggregated the numbers together to give ratios of traffic sent and other metrics. Here are some highlights:
[/td]Amount of traffic BB.com sends to average innkeeper website vs a specific competitor:
[/td]How many more pages a BB.com customer visits vs. a competitors customer
[/td]How much more time does a BB.com customer spend on a site vs. competitors customers?
[/td][/tr]bbonline.com
[/td]4.90
[/td]Similar
[/td]64%
[/td][/tr]lanierbb.com
[/td]11.70
[/td]11%
[/td]26%
[/td][/tr]iloveinns.com
[/td]49.87
[/td]16%
[/td]236%
[/td][/tr]inns.com
[/td]42.99
[/td]4%
[/td]18%
[/td][/tr]theinnkeeper.com
[/td]38.44
[/td]Similar
[/td]349%
[/td][/tr]bnbfinder.com
[/td]5.07
[/td]Similar
[/td]Similar
[/td][/tr][/table]

The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias. What isn’t biased though is the amount of traffic that these properties are getting. When they are using other sites, BedandBreakfast.com is sending a lot more traffic… 5X as much as bbonline and bnbfinder, 12X as much as Lanier, and 50X as much as iloveinns. Also – time on the site for iloveinns and theinnkeeper were quite bad. Inns.com sends about the same amount of traffic that Lanierbb.com sends as well, far less than BedandBreakfast.com, but it is included now in the price of BedandBreakfast.com, and the time on site is far better than even the other directories.

I have conversion data as well, but this needs to be properties that use our Booking Engine, and have everything setup using Google Analytics – AND use the various directories. This is a smaller subset, but the numbers are still compelling. BB.com averages roughly 4X the conversion of BBonline on average. For the other sites – it is rare to see much conversion on traffic at all. Seriously – out of all the traffic I see, there are only a couple bookings TOTAL from all the other sites for May 1-September 24.

Anyway – since we are on this subject, thought that would be some fun data for you guys to mull over. I’m sure every B&B sees different results and it is clear that there are some innkeepers here unhappy with their traffic from us, but these numbers are not that far off from those posted on Innkeeping.org, and they are from a third party tracking system. I'm guessing a year from now, as we continue to get more innkeepers to adopt full referral revenue tracking, we will have even better data..

I just don't see these numbers using Google Analytics. I may or may not be in line with the other B&B's here.
This chart shows referrals since May 1, I think that was your start date. First column being the referring site, first numerical column is the number of visits, next is number of pages visited, next is time on site, then % new visitors, then bounce rate is last.
1.[/td]

local chamber site
[/td] 720 [/td] 3.84[/td] 00:03:38[/td] 75.14%[/td] 21.53%[/td] [/tr] [tr] 2.[/td]

visitmaine.com
[/td] 705[/td] 3.46[/td] 00:03:24[/td] 81.70%[/td] 26.24%[/td] [/tr] 3.[/td]

bedandbreakfast.com
[/td] 478[/td] 3.56[/td] 00:03:22[/td] 72.38%[/td] 23.64%[/td] [/tr] [tr] 4.[/td]

bbonline.com
[/td] 415[/td] 3.58[/td] 00:03:02[/td] 83.61%[/td] 16.87%[/td] [/tr] 5.[/td]

innspiring.com
[/td] 190[/td] 2.63[/td] 00:02:25[/td] 43.16%[/td] 51.05%[/td] [/tr] [tr] 6.[/td]

bnbfinder.com
[/td] 186[/td] 3.05[/td] 00:02:23[/td] 82.80%[/td] 29.57%[/td] [/tr] 7.[/td]

myblog.blogspot.com
[/td] 163[/td] 2.81[/td] 00:02:36[/td] 77.91%[/td] 50.31%[/td] [/tr] [tr] 8.[/td]

images.google.com
[/td] 150[/td] 1.45[/td] 00:00:20[/td] 100.00%[/td] 60.67%[/td] [/tr] 9.[/td]

maineguide.com
[/td] 106[/td] 3.59[/td] 00:02:30[/td] 87.74%[/td] 29.25%[/td] [/tr] [tr] 10.[/td]

maineinns.com
[/td] 92[/td] 3.16[/td] 00:02:15[/td] 78.26%[/td] 29.35%[/td][/tr][/table]This certainly doesn't show a 5x traffic referral from you over bbonline, altho bnbfinder is about 2x behind, it's not 5x. I'm not on Lanier. Altho iloveinns is waaaay far behind, it is not 50x behind. Your other site, inns.com is at position 21, with similar stats to iloveinns. The self-selected websites that guests state they are calling from after viewing follow pretty much the trend seen here with my local 'chamber' site a second to the state site in referrals. The others in the list, excepting this website (innspiring), maineguide and google images are pretty much in the order seen here for % of referrals.
Sorry, the chart formatting disappeared...

 

[JBanczak]

I don't expect every innkeeper to see the numbers I posted - it is just the averages we have from our BE customers. There was certainly a range as well, particularly with BBonline with one property showing similar ratios from what you are looking at. At a high level, quantcast stats give a decent picture.
Swirt - you know what would be interesting - is to have an area where innkeepers could post their quarterly referral numbers anonymously - then you could aggregate them so the information would still be private for the innkeepers protection, but everyone could see the actual stats. That would be pretty cool.

 

[swirt]

I don't expect every innkeeper to see the numbers I posted - it is just the averages we have from our BE customers. There was certainly a range as well, particularly with BBonline with one property showing similar ratios from what you are looking at. At a high level, quantcast stats give a decent picture.
Swirt - you know what would be interesting - is to have an area where innkeepers could post their quarterly referral numbers anonymously - then you could aggregate them so the information would still be private for the innkeepers protection, but everyone could see the actual stats. That would be pretty cool..

That would be interesting.....can I borrow one of your programmers for a few weeks

 

[Morticia]

I don't expect every innkeeper to see the numbers I posted - it is just the averages we have from our BE customers. There was certainly a range as well, particularly with BBonline with one property showing similar ratios from what you are looking at. At a high level, quantcast stats give a decent picture.
Swirt - you know what would be interesting - is to have an area where innkeepers could post their quarterly referral numbers anonymously - then you could aggregate them so the information would still be private for the innkeepers protection, but everyone could see the actual stats. That would be pretty cool..

I don't expect every innkeeper to see the numbers I posted - it is just the averages we have from our BE customers. There was certainly a range as well, particularly with BBonline with one property showing similar ratios from what you are looking at. At a high level, quantcast stats give a decent picture.
Swirt - you know what would be interesting - is to have an area where innkeepers could post their quarterly referral numbers anonymously - then you could aggregate them so the information would still be private for the innkeepers protection, but everyone could see the actual stats. That would be pretty cool.

BUT, this should give you a very good idea why SOME innkeepers complain. There are my stats. They don't come close to what you say you are seeing with high level aggregations. Do you wonder why I wonder if MY money is well-spent when I cannot get those results? If you presented those results at an innkeeping conference and 50 new B&B's signed up and did not get those numbers, but got closer to MY numbers, how happy would they be? They'd think the whole thing was made up.
Now if my numbers were better than 'advertised' or even close, I'd be happy and think you guys were doing a marvelous job. If I got the same % of reservations based on 5x more traffic to my site, I would shut up tomorrow. $349 would be a drop in the bucket. Heck, I wouldn't shut up but I'd be here saying how much traffic and referrals and bookings I get from you.
When you look at your numbers, based on whatever random inns you chose, you obviously cannot see what anyone could complain about. No wonder there's the attitude that we just like to grouse. You see your numbers, I see mine, and they're nowhere near the same numbers.

 

[JBanczak]

Hi Bree,
I only shared the statistics that I have readily available. I understand that some B&B's see less than this, some more - these numbers were averages and that is the nature of them. I tried to make clear in my post that I thought this sample size was biased as well based on the number of listings I saw in other directories. Ultimately it should be based on ROI as we've said. If you get more than $1 back for every dollar in, then that is a positive.
I'm curious though - do you have conversion numbers? If your booking engine supports it, you can setup Google Analytics to tell you exactly how many bookings and for how much money each is come from any referring website.That is ultimately more important than traffic.
What sticks out to me in your numbers is that we seem to be driving at least 6-10X more than iloveinns is driving, yet we are only 1.8X their least expensive listing with a link to your website, and Inns.com - which is driving as much traffic as iLoveinns is included in our price. This doesn't even take into account whether or not our traffic spends more time on the website or better converts into bookings - both of which we tend to see. How do you feel about their price-to-traffic ratio?
It seems innkeepers would be happy if all of the directories delivered a similar price-to-traffic ratio, or even better a similar price-to-bookings/revenue ratio, although with 7,000 inns so geographically dispersed, it would be hard to do. I do think that really does gloss over a lot of things though - like time on site, convversion to bookings, etc. - all very important things.
Each directory has different strategies and benefits for your membership dollars that may or may not lead to direct traffic, but may lead to exposure. Don't take this as promoting please, but your membership dollars on BedandBreakfast.com also includes participation in our contract with Google where we feed them every B&B including geo codes and url's so all of our B&B's show up in local. We've had this with them for three years now - it doesn't result in extra traffic through our directory, but it is a great benefit. We also do a recipe feed with them whereby we include ik recipes, and you all know we feed them consumer reviews. There are others as well - we feed every property now to Vast.com, ASU Travel, LA Times, and will soon be live on Away.com, Uptake, and Realtrips. So you as a property need do nothing more - we put your listing up on all of those sites. I believe this is something we do that differentiates us, and it takes quite a bit more effort.
Again, please don't take this as promoting our site - I am merely trying to demonstrate additional value beyond traffic stats you get for the $349 you are paying. If you are questioning the "why" it costs $349, then it would help to know the "what" comes along with it.

 

[Samster]

Hi Bree,
I only shared the statistics that I have readily available. I understand that some B&B's see less than this, some more - these numbers were averages and that is the nature of them. I tried to make clear in my post that I thought this sample size was biased as well based on the number of listings I saw in other directories. Ultimately it should be based on ROI as we've said. If you get more than $1 back for every dollar in, then that is a positive.
I'm curious though - do you have conversion numbers? If your booking engine supports it, you can setup Google Analytics to tell you exactly how many bookings and for how much money each is come from any referring website.That is ultimately more important than traffic.
What sticks out to me in your numbers is that we seem to be driving at least 6-10X more than iloveinns is driving, yet we are only 1.8X their least expensive listing with a link to your website, and Inns.com - which is driving as much traffic as iLoveinns is included in our price. This doesn't even take into account whether or not our traffic spends more time on the website or better converts into bookings - both of which we tend to see. How do you feel about their price-to-traffic ratio?
It seems innkeepers would be happy if all of the directories delivered a similar price-to-traffic ratio, or even better a similar price-to-bookings/revenue ratio, although with 7,000 inns so geographically dispersed, it would be hard to do. I do think that really does gloss over a lot of things though - like time on site, convversion to bookings, etc. - all very important things.
Each directory has different strategies and benefits for your membership dollars that may or may not lead to direct traffic, but may lead to exposure. Don't take this as promoting please, but your membership dollars on BedandBreakfast.com also includes participation in our contract with Google where we feed them every B&B including geo codes and url's so all of our B&B's show up in local. We've had this with them for three years now - it doesn't result in extra traffic through our directory, but it is a great benefit. We also do a recipe feed with them whereby we include ik recipes, and you all know we feed them consumer reviews. There are others as well - we feed every property now to Vast.com, ASU Travel, LA Times, and will soon be live on Away.com, Uptake, and Realtrips. So you as a property need do nothing more - we put your listing up on all of those sites. I believe this is something we do that differentiates us, and it takes quite a bit more effort.
Again, please don't take this as promoting our site - I am merely trying to demonstrate additional value beyond traffic stats you get for the $349 you are paying. If you are questioning the "why" it costs $349, then it would help to know the "what" comes along with it..

John, I appreciate you explaining this to me as a newbie. I knew some of how the "feeds" worked but this helps me enormously to understand the possible benefit of a listing with you, outside of just the directory listing. I still wish y'all had handled the notification on the increase better. (I just had to get that jab in there!)

 

[Morticia]

Hi Bree,
I only shared the statistics that I have readily available. I understand that some B&B's see less than this, some more - these numbers were averages and that is the nature of them. I tried to make clear in my post that I thought this sample size was biased as well based on the number of listings I saw in other directories. Ultimately it should be based on ROI as we've said. If you get more than $1 back for every dollar in, then that is a positive.
I'm curious though - do you have conversion numbers? If your booking engine supports it, you can setup Google Analytics to tell you exactly how many bookings and for how much money each is come from any referring website.That is ultimately more important than traffic.
What sticks out to me in your numbers is that we seem to be driving at least 6-10X more than iloveinns is driving, yet we are only 1.8X their least expensive listing with a link to your website, and Inns.com - which is driving as much traffic as iLoveinns is included in our price. This doesn't even take into account whether or not our traffic spends more time on the website or better converts into bookings - both of which we tend to see. How do you feel about their price-to-traffic ratio?
It seems innkeepers would be happy if all of the directories delivered a similar price-to-traffic ratio, or even better a similar price-to-bookings/revenue ratio, although with 7,000 inns so geographically dispersed, it would be hard to do. I do think that really does gloss over a lot of things though - like time on site, convversion to bookings, etc. - all very important things.
Each directory has different strategies and benefits for your membership dollars that may or may not lead to direct traffic, but may lead to exposure. Don't take this as promoting please, but your membership dollars on BedandBreakfast.com also includes participation in our contract with Google where we feed them every B&B including geo codes and url's so all of our B&B's show up in local. We've had this with them for three years now - it doesn't result in extra traffic through our directory, but it is a great benefit. We also do a recipe feed with them whereby we include ik recipes, and you all know we feed them consumer reviews. There are others as well - we feed every property now to Vast.com, ASU Travel, LA Times, and will soon be live on Away.com, Uptake, and Realtrips. So you as a property need do nothing more - we put your listing up on all of those sites. I believe this is something we do that differentiates us, and it takes quite a bit more effort.
Again, please don't take this as promoting our site - I am merely trying to demonstrate additional value beyond traffic stats you get for the $349 you are paying. If you are questioning the "why" it costs $349, then it would help to know the "what" comes along with it..

Getting back $1 for every $1 paid is not good business.
Yes, the traffic from iloveinns is much lower than the traffic from you and, yes, if I don't make that money back this year I will drop them (easy as that). The reason I kept them this year is that they did deliver the bookings even tho the traffic is low. They actually had a better booking % than you do even if the traffic is low. It seems the traffic was 'better'. ie- they sent, say, 10 visitors to the site and of those 10 visitors, 2 booked 5 room nights each. Whereas I get more referrals from you but they book fewer room nights. (Last year's numbers, which I based my renewal on.) This is also the reason I dropped Lanier...the referrals were poor. Running something like 60% bounce rate when i decided not to renew. Obviously the clientele using her site were looking for something I am not, whatever that is.
You send good referrals. I get a decent return on the number of lookers to the number of bookers. Around 6%. Only the local site and the state site beat that. The local site is 4x your price and they are on the chopping block this year because they are not returning the investment 10 fold. It's tough to cut them, tho, because it supports the local economy. The state site is free. Can't beat that.
But, the real comparison is not iloveinns but with bbonline and bnbfinder which you did not comment on at all. Each of them are returning at least the 10:1 ratio I am now fixated on. From bnbfinder perhaps not so much in referrals from the website but in referrals from the radio show and other marketing they do that I have been featured on.
I have not set up goals on Google as the majority of my bookings are still via phone or email. Or a combo of the 2 with guests calling me and then booking online at my website later on or repeat guests who just call because they like to talk to us. Many guests who call do not even know I have a website. Still need to nail down where they get the phone number. (I'm guessing Google Local at this time. BTW, if you are responsible for some of my competition being listed 2x on Google maps, maybe it's time to review how the addresses are pushed thru to Google.

)
But, I obviously do need to set some sort of goal tracking on there to get a feel for what the real numbers are as everyone knows guests look at so many sites they usually just quote the one they remember or are looking at at the time, even tho the site that caused them to call is long forgotten.
The reason I think the numbers are 'close' and I think they are valid is that they follow a general trend in the ratio of site referrals.

 

[happyjacks]

John, the problem with using averages to make a business argument (or a business decision, for that matter) is general averages are meaningless, particularly when pulled from wide-ranging data.
For example, the average annual temperature in the US is about 54.5 F. Based on this average, you could pack a light jacket and a pair of keds for a trip to Minnesota in February. It's the average temp, it must be right.
Likewise, if you try to apply your averages and stats to a 3-room B&B with a room rate of $120/night and annual occupancy of 35%, you'll see they don't work. We can not all change our size, our rates, our occupancy, our location, our target market segment etc to fit your model. If we all did, it would kill one of the best things about B&Bs--our many variations.

 

[egoodell]

John, the problem with using averages to make a business argument (or a business decision, for that matter) is general averages are meaningless, particularly when pulled from wide-ranging data.
For example, the average annual temperature in the US is about 54.5 F. Based on this average, you could pack a light jacket and a pair of keds for a trip to Minnesota in February. It's the average temp, it must be right.
Likewise, if you try to apply your averages and stats to a 3-room B&B with a room rate of $120/night and annual occupancy of 35%, you'll see they don't work. We can not all change our size, our rates, our occupancy, our location, our target market segment etc to fit your model. If we all did, it would kill one of the best things about B&Bs--our many variations..

Yes we would really mess up an average if you took our income. The main reason is that over 75% of our guests book the room AND our wine tour. The wine tour per couple brings in the same amount of money that a one night stay does. So our guest are in essence paying three nights and staying two.
Riki

 

[JBanczak]

Hi Bree,
I only shared the statistics that I have readily available. I understand that some B&B's see less than this, some more - these numbers were averages and that is the nature of them. I tried to make clear in my post that I thought this sample size was biased as well based on the number of listings I saw in other directories. Ultimately it should be based on ROI as we've said. If you get more than $1 back for every dollar in, then that is a positive.
I'm curious though - do you have conversion numbers? If your booking engine supports it, you can setup Google Analytics to tell you exactly how many bookings and for how much money each is come from any referring website.That is ultimately more important than traffic.
What sticks out to me in your numbers is that we seem to be driving at least 6-10X more than iloveinns is driving, yet we are only 1.8X their least expensive listing with a link to your website, and Inns.com - which is driving as much traffic as iLoveinns is included in our price. This doesn't even take into account whether or not our traffic spends more time on the website or better converts into bookings - both of which we tend to see. How do you feel about their price-to-traffic ratio?
It seems innkeepers would be happy if all of the directories delivered a similar price-to-traffic ratio, or even better a similar price-to-bookings/revenue ratio, although with 7,000 inns so geographically dispersed, it would be hard to do. I do think that really does gloss over a lot of things though - like time on site, convversion to bookings, etc. - all very important things.
Each directory has different strategies and benefits for your membership dollars that may or may not lead to direct traffic, but may lead to exposure. Don't take this as promoting please, but your membership dollars on BedandBreakfast.com also includes participation in our contract with Google where we feed them every B&B including geo codes and url's so all of our B&B's show up in local. We've had this with them for three years now - it doesn't result in extra traffic through our directory, but it is a great benefit. We also do a recipe feed with them whereby we include ik recipes, and you all know we feed them consumer reviews. There are others as well - we feed every property now to Vast.com, ASU Travel, LA Times, and will soon be live on Away.com, Uptake, and Realtrips. So you as a property need do nothing more - we put your listing up on all of those sites. I believe this is something we do that differentiates us, and it takes quite a bit more effort.
Again, please don't take this as promoting our site - I am merely trying to demonstrate additional value beyond traffic stats you get for the $349 you are paying. If you are questioning the "why" it costs $349, then it would help to know the "what" comes along with it..

John, I appreciate you explaining this to me as a newbie. I knew some of how the "feeds" worked but this helps me enormously to understand the possible benefit of a listing with you, outside of just the directory listing. I still wish y'all had handled the notification on the increase better. (I just had to get that jab in there!)

.

Understand, and I'm not going to argue with you on that one....

 

[JBanczak]

Hi Bree,
I only shared the statistics that I have readily available. I understand that some B&B's see less than this, some more - these numbers were averages and that is the nature of them. I tried to make clear in my post that I thought this sample size was biased as well based on the number of listings I saw in other directories. Ultimately it should be based on ROI as we've said. If you get more than $1 back for every dollar in, then that is a positive.
I'm curious though - do you have conversion numbers? If your booking engine supports it, you can setup Google Analytics to tell you exactly how many bookings and for how much money each is come from any referring website.That is ultimately more important than traffic.
What sticks out to me in your numbers is that we seem to be driving at least 6-10X more than iloveinns is driving, yet we are only 1.8X their least expensive listing with a link to your website, and Inns.com - which is driving as much traffic as iLoveinns is included in our price. This doesn't even take into account whether or not our traffic spends more time on the website or better converts into bookings - both of which we tend to see. How do you feel about their price-to-traffic ratio?
It seems innkeepers would be happy if all of the directories delivered a similar price-to-traffic ratio, or even better a similar price-to-bookings/revenue ratio, although with 7,000 inns so geographically dispersed, it would be hard to do. I do think that really does gloss over a lot of things though - like time on site, convversion to bookings, etc. - all very important things.
Each directory has different strategies and benefits for your membership dollars that may or may not lead to direct traffic, but may lead to exposure. Don't take this as promoting please, but your membership dollars on BedandBreakfast.com also includes participation in our contract with Google where we feed them every B&B including geo codes and url's so all of our B&B's show up in local. We've had this with them for three years now - it doesn't result in extra traffic through our directory, but it is a great benefit. We also do a recipe feed with them whereby we include ik recipes, and you all know we feed them consumer reviews. There are others as well - we feed every property now to Vast.com, ASU Travel, LA Times, and will soon be live on Away.com, Uptake, and Realtrips. So you as a property need do nothing more - we put your listing up on all of those sites. I believe this is something we do that differentiates us, and it takes quite a bit more effort.
Again, please don't take this as promoting our site - I am merely trying to demonstrate additional value beyond traffic stats you get for the $349 you are paying. If you are questioning the "why" it costs $349, then it would help to know the "what" comes along with it..

Getting back $1 for every $1 paid is not good business.
Yes, the traffic from iloveinns is much lower than the traffic from you and, yes, if I don't make that money back this year I will drop them (easy as that). The reason I kept them this year is that they did deliver the bookings even tho the traffic is low. They actually had a better booking % than you do even if the traffic is low. It seems the traffic was 'better'. ie- they sent, say, 10 visitors to the site and of those 10 visitors, 2 booked 5 room nights each. Whereas I get more referrals from you but they book fewer room nights. (Last year's numbers, which I based my renewal on.) This is also the reason I dropped Lanier...the referrals were poor. Running something like 60% bounce rate when i decided not to renew. Obviously the clientele using her site were looking for something I am not, whatever that is.
You send good referrals. I get a decent return on the number of lookers to the number of bookers. Around 6%. Only the local site and the state site beat that. The local site is 4x your price and they are on the chopping block this year because they are not returning the investment 10 fold. It's tough to cut them, tho, because it supports the local economy. The state site is free. Can't beat that.
But, the real comparison is not iloveinns but with bbonline and bnbfinder which you did not comment on at all. Each of them are returning at least the 10:1 ratio I am now fixated on. From bnbfinder perhaps not so much in referrals from the website but in referrals from the radio show and other marketing they do that I have been featured on.
I have not set up goals on Google as the majority of my bookings are still via phone or email. Or a combo of the 2 with guests calling me and then booking online at my website later on or repeat guests who just call because they like to talk to us. Many guests who call do not even know I have a website. Still need to nail down where they get the phone number. (I'm guessing Google Local at this time. BTW, if you are responsible for some of my competition being listed 2x on Google maps, maybe it's time to review how the addresses are pushed thru to Google.

)
But, I obviously do need to set some sort of goal tracking on there to get a feel for what the real numbers are as everyone knows guests look at so many sites they usually just quote the one they remember or are looking at at the time, even tho the site that caused them to call is long forgotten.
The reason I think the numbers are 'close' and I think they are valid is that they follow a general trend in the ratio of site referrals.
.

You're right - "getting $1 back" is a catch-all phrase that we often use. I handle the online marketing spend for BB.com so I am always evaluating things like Google Adwords, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and all of the partnerships - we always ask ourselves this question. In reality it is "am I getting $1 + some amount back for every dollar I spend." That some amount is debatable, and there are about a million ways to calculate it. My degree is in marketing and the calculations I've used in the past range anywhere from immediate purchase value to lifetime value of a customer, to impression-based branding to anywhere in between.
I do think you have the right handle on it, but you sure get your online booking provider to wire up analytics all the way to purchase - I think you'd be amazed what a difference it makes.

 

[JBanczak]

John, the problem with using averages to make a business argument (or a business decision, for that matter) is general averages are meaningless, particularly when pulled from wide-ranging data.
For example, the average annual temperature in the US is about 54.5 F. Based on this average, you could pack a light jacket and a pair of keds for a trip to Minnesota in February. It's the average temp, it must be right.
Likewise, if you try to apply your averages and stats to a 3-room B&B with a room rate of $120/night and annual occupancy of 35%, you'll see they don't work. We can not all change our size, our rates, our occupancy, our location, our target market segment etc to fit your model. If we all did, it would kill one of the best things about B&Bs--our many variations..

You are absolutely correct. All we have is averages, but you will always hear us tell every innkeeper to get a good analytics program to track exactly where there dollars come from. I've always said if your particular inn does not get a good return on your investment with us - I will be the first one to tell you not to renew. I think there is more to it than that, like the distribution partnerships we've been putting together - but we are HUGE advocates of getting revenue tracking in place to see if your dollars are paying off.

 

[Copperhead]

As you all may or may not know, RezOvation has thousands of customers – and enables full referral url revenue and conversion tracking through Google Analytics. We are not allowed to publish data from any one given customer, but we can aggregate this data to draw some meaningful conclusions. Since you are talking about website tracking and statistics, this could be useful.

1) We took a random sample of live properties using our system for the past few months. These properties had to have been live since at least May 1 (and we did not look at initial go-live date), and at least on BedandBreakfast.com (so we could make comparisons), with Google Analytics working at least for referral tracking.
2) I took their referral data for traffic between May 1 and September 24. Looked at Top 50 referrers, and recorded any of the following sites traffic and/or conversions if conversion tracking was setup:
a. BB.com
b. BBonline
c. BNBfinder
d. Lanierbb
e. Iloveinns
f. Theinnkeeper (my new favorite bb.com plagiariser)
3) It is difficult to analyze, because each property may or may not use everyone, requiring BedandBreakfast.com’s traffic to be compared separately each time against other sites to make it apples-to-apples rather than just looking at an aggregate number. Here are the percentage of properties using each of the following sites:
i. BBonline – 40%
ii. BNBfinder – 40%
iii. Lanierbb – 67%
iv. Iloveinns – 53%
v. Theinnkeeper – 27%
4) I then looked at the ratio of traffic, time on site, page views, bounce rate compared to BedandBreakfast.com for each of these sites. For clarification – I only counted a site’s numbers if the innkeeper was using them and BedandBreakfast.com – I didn’t just total up all the metrics for bb.com’s sites, then total the metrics from other sites – comparison was made only if an innkeeper was using both and only for the metrics that corresponded to that innkeepers site. I then aggregated the numbers together to give ratios of traffic sent and other metrics. Here are some highlights:
[/td]Amount of traffic BB.com sends to average innkeeper website vs a specific competitor:
[/td]How many more pages a BB.com customer visits vs. a competitors customer
[/td]How much more time does a BB.com customer spend on a site vs. competitors customers?
[/td][/tr]bbonline.com
[/td]4.90
[/td]Similar
[/td]64%
[/td][/tr]lanierbb.com
[/td]11.70
[/td]11%
[/td]26%
[/td][/tr]iloveinns.com
[/td]49.87
[/td]16%
[/td]236%
[/td][/tr]inns.com
[/td]42.99
[/td]4%
[/td]18%
[/td][/tr]theinnkeeper.com
[/td]38.44
[/td]Similar
[/td]349%
[/td][/tr]bnbfinder.com
[/td]5.07
[/td]Similar
[/td]Similar
[/td][/tr][/table]

The takeaway from this sample size is that on average, BedandBreakfast.com has more inns (which we know to be the case) and they are getting more traffic on average from BedandBreakfast.com than anyone else. It should be noted that our sample is probably not indicative of the entire market – it is clear in the % using others sites. We know that BBonline has more listings than most other directories – yet we didn’t see that in our numbers – which tells you that there must be some amount of bias. What isn’t biased though is the amount of traffic that these properties are getting. When they are using other sites, BedandBreakfast.com is sending a lot more traffic… 5X as much as bbonline and bnbfinder, 12X as much as Lanier, and 50X as much as iloveinns. Also – time on the site for iloveinns and theinnkeeper were quite bad. Inns.com sends about the same amount of traffic that Lanierbb.com sends as well, far less than BedandBreakfast.com, but it is included now in the price of BedandBreakfast.com, and the time on site is far better than even the other directories.

I have conversion data as well, but this needs to be properties that use our Booking Engine, and have everything setup using Google Analytics – AND use the various directories. This is a smaller subset, but the numbers are still compelling. BB.com averages roughly 4X the conversion of BBonline on average. For the other sites – it is rare to see much conversion on traffic at all. Seriously – out of all the traffic I see, there are only a couple bookings TOTAL from all the other sites for May 1-September 24.

Anyway – since we are on this subject, thought that would be some fun data for you guys to mull over. I’m sure every B&B sees different results and it is clear that there are some innkeepers here unhappy with their traffic from us, but these numbers are not that far off from those posted on Innkeeping.org, and they are from a third party tracking system. I'm guessing a year from now, as we continue to get more innkeepers to adopt full referral revenue tracking, we will have even better data..

John, Please review and provide me how this is possible. I have just received a stats email for my listing...
Recent detailed listing traffic statistics for My B&B:
2 visitors in August 2008
1 visitors in September 2008
31 visitors to date in 2008
Recent click through statistics to MY B&B's website :
0 clicks to your website in August 2008
0 clicks to your website in September 2008
4 clicks to your website to date in 2008
Interestingly, I have only recently rejoined B&B.com, last membership year was 2001 or 02. I joined on Sept. 29, listing not activated until 10/2. I know that the above numbers are not outrageously high but since I was not listed, how could I have 31 visitors in 2008?
The only reasoning I could come up with is that it would include the times I logged in to update my listing prior to being active but since most are before August, that doesn't seem to hold water. The other thought would be those from B&B.com who were looking at my listing. But NEITHER of these should count in the stats. And as for the click through to my site - I am completely baffled.