After 27 years promoting bed and breakfasts in the United States and helping to convert millions of hotel people into bed & breakfast people through our Web site and books, we are more excited than ever about this way of travel. And converting is soooo easy because once guests are in the care of a good American innkeeper, they are fans for life. We love our part of pointing the way to bed and breakfast vacations of a lifetime.
Part of our mission, besides getting the guest to an inn, is to research and find ways for innkeepers to tap into new markets and to highlight the best marketing practices that are actually working now. We forward these to our member inns to help keep their properties viable in a global economy that seems to require that we all keep five plates spinning at the end of a stick at the same time.
In this column, we will share B&B specific marketing approaches that have worked for inns throughout this country. Our topics in this piece are European Travelers, Business Travelers, Web sites and Getting Great Reviews, all to increase occupancy, equity and revenue.
No-Dollar Ways to Get the Euros Coming
Innkeepers Victor and Lynn at Hotel Charlotte Inn in Groveland, California vigorously go after the European tourist market and after five years in the business, 50% of their guests are European. While they are challenged by the limited size of their historic rooms and can’t change them, they make European travelers (who are generally traveling for 2-3 weeks) feel very comfortable by having a large community area with everything from games to a piano and a computer corner.
The many advantages to attracting Europeans to your B&B include the exchange rate. As an example, a room that currently sells for $125/night is to someone with Euros in their pocket, only 83 Euros. Europeans have up to six weeks vacation time and they stay longer: In fact, European travel habits are quite different than ours. They prefer to concentrate on a region and get to know it thoroughly and leisurely. Michael Dickinson at JUST Travel in Munich, Germany, notes that “The concept of 17 countries in 21 days doesn’t exist in the European mind, except to make fun of the way Americans travel .”
Here are some tips to attract this market:
1. Respond to trip advisor's foreign language forums about your area if you are fluent in a foreign language. By participating in these free forums, Hotel Charlotte consistently gets the name and location of their bed and breakfast in front of perspective European travelers.
2. Offer a translation tool on every page of your Web site for guests to be able to quickly get a translation in French, German, Russian, Italian and Spanish. This is a free tool available from Google. Look at the Captain Lord Mansion home page on their Web site.
3. Add a currency converter on your rates and reservation pages. Europeans can instantly see how very low the prices are when they do this quick and easy conversion. (Another FREE tool available online.)
4. Get your local visitor’s bureau involved. Members of Hotel Charlotte's bureau take a marketing trip to Europe twice a year for trade shows focusing on visitors from Germany & UK.
5. Create European keywords on special pages on your Web site* see example below. Ask your current European guests to give you the words they searched to find you.
6. Market yourself as a regional expert with much more current information than a guide book. Demonstrate online, in printed matter and on the phone, how knowledgeable you are about the region with dates of events, activities, etc. Keep local maps and lists of restaurants, and more info than available from a hotel concierge.
7. Make 10-day itineraries part of your Web site.
*Here are a few German keywords for Philadelphia B&Bs to give you an idea of what to put onto your pages to attract Europeans.
* Philadelphia Unterkunft inklusiv Fruehstueck
* Philadelphia Pension
* Billig Unterkunft Philadelphia
* Guenstig Pensionen Philadelphia
* Kleines Hotel
You would use your city or region in place of Philadelphia, or use your state name such as Texas in place of Philadelphia. Your state or city (such as Philadelphia above) is spelled in English, no translation needed.
Innkeeper Rich Litchfield of Captain Lord Mansion in Kennebunkport, Maine notes that they are seeing significant increases in guests from Europe this season. These guests are amazed at the value, attention to detail and all the extras they receive that would rarely be seen in Europe and Britain at even much higher rates. Bed and breakfasts are a veritable bargain for Europeans and they will spread the word when they talk with their traveling peers back home.
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This week's blog was contributed by Deborah Sakach, president and founder of American Historic Inn, Inc. and website www.iLoveInns.com, has authored seven books on B&Bs with 60 custom editions of one title, Bed & Breakfast and Country Inns. More than 2.5 million B&B books have been sold. The Official Guide to American Historic Inns was a Book of the Month Club selection for several years.
She was an instructor for several years in the California university system with classes on starting and operating bed and breakfast inns. Most uniquely, Deborah created national affiliations with large consumer goods companies to provide co-promotions with B&Bs. An example is the American Historic Inns Buy-One-Night-Get-One-Night Free program. Most recently, the program was run by Wells Fargo Bank in a custom book.
With books, internet and breakfast promotions with Amtrak, American Express, Nestle, Nabisco, Hallmark and many others, her company has introduced millions to America’s historic inns.
Deborah grew up in Northern Ohio, holds a BS in Business and an MA in Counseling Psychology. She worked in PR for the Pasadena Rose Parade, and in direct mail for a large ad agency specializing in non-profits such as Habitat, World Vision, and Unicef before launching American Historic Inns. Deborah is passionate about small inns B&Bs and has enjoyed exploring such inns in diverse settings such as the Masa Mara, Kyoto, Ireland and the U. S. Deborah has four children and lives in Dana Point, California.
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Claude & Mariette Gagne
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