If you’ve been reading our Intelligence for B&Bblog, you know that BedBreakfastTraveler.com believes in transparency, especially when it comes to pricing of services for your B&B.  Occasionally, we profile other services which compete with ours.  We don’t care so much that mentioning competing services basically amounts to free advertising for those services.  We’re more interested in transparency for you, our consumers and clients.  So, when selecting services for publishing, marketing, and booking your bed & breakfast, please remember to compare prices.  And, don’t overpay!

Rezovation offers services for property management and online reservations.  As a business manager, if price is important to you, please do compare.  According to the Rezovation.com website, the minimum cost for Rezovation GT Online is $50 per month.  But, that’s for just the smallest B&Bs of 1-4 rooms.  If you have at least 10 rooms, the price more than doubles to $110, and for large properties (50+ rooms), may be at least $300 per month, with an added setup fee of $999.00!  Yes, Rezovation GT is a great property management tool for those who want to lay out the cash, but there are many cheaper alternatives for small inn businesses.  Again, the prices quoted here are directly from the Rezovation website

BedBreakfastTraveler.com (by Instant World Booking) offers a premier online booking service, including credit card acceptance.  Booking engines for your website is a particular specialty of ours.  If you have the cash to pay for the competing Rezovation GT service, and want online bookings, there is an additional per-reservation fee up to 30%.  For more on the additional fees see our separate article at:

http://www.bedbreakfasttraveler.com/blog_bb/2009/12/bedandbreakfastcom-pricing/

Now, compare with BedBreakfastTraveler.com (by Instant World Booking).  If you want a fully integrated booking engine for your website, you can choose from many custom options starting at our lowest cost of just 1.9% of total reservation volume.  This is the absolute industry low for a booking engine on your website.

What about credit card processing?  Rezovation GT offers optional credit card processing for an additional monthly service fee and per-transaction fees.  Note that this is above and beyond the fees you are paying to maintain your own merchant account.  BedBreakfastTraveler.com on the other hand offers integrated credit card collection for your online bookings, and you do not even need your own merchant account.

Finally, if you want to connect to the Global Distribution System (GDS), Rezovation GT offers a premium option, allowing you to connect for just $649 + $15.50 per reservation + $250 / yr maintenance after first year.

For an unlimited budget, there are many services out there that can maximize your online exposure.  At BedBreakfastTraveler.com (Instant World Booking), we offer the maximum cost-effectiveness for online exposure.  Don’t pay the high prices unless you’ve tried Instant World Booking first.  If you don’t like your experience, you can always try the others and pay higher prices later.

BedBreakfastTraveler.com is pleased to announce that we now interface with BnB Manager.  A special discount  is being offered to Instant World Booking clients for trying the BNB Manager service (see details below).   BnBManager has created a feature-packed yet simple-to-use small accommodations management system.  Offering state of the art security, functionality, and usability, BnBManager makes managing your guest information and reservations simple, while also providing a wealth of features to help you manage your back-office operations. Please visit BNB Manager today for a full list of features … you will be amazed to see what is made possible by using their software:

http://www.bnbmanager.com

BedBreakfastTraveler’s integration with BNB Manager means that users can now upload their calendar of availability directly to BedBreakfastTraveler.com and the entire Instant World Booking network. 

A special discount is now offered to Instant World Booking (BedBreakfastTraveler.com) clients for tryin the BNB Manager service.  BNB Manager will offer 10% off the full first year cost to the first 50 IWB members who join and stay beyond the 90-day free trial period.  All you need to do is enter the Promotional Code “IWB123″ on the BnB Manager sign-up page.

For more information about Instant World Booking’s XML feed capabilities, please see:

http://www.instantworldbooking.com/blog_iw/category/xml-feeds/

At BedBreakfastTraveler.com, we frequently get asked how our pricing compares to BedandBreakfast.com.  We’re going to answer that question.  In this global economy, margins mean everything to B&Bs and inns, and BedBreakfastTraveler.com (operated by Instant World Booking) can really make a difference to your bottom line.

BedandBreakfast.com is a great service, and we would never recommend not using a competitor’s service.  However, if as a B&B manager, price is important to you, please do compare prices.

BedandBreakfast.com advertises 2 participation levels for their online reservation program.  This is a feature that basically allows booking of your bed and breakfast by guests directly on their website. 

Here are BedandBreakfast.com’s costs :

Preferred Participation - 25% Commission

Standard Participation - 30% Commission

These prices also include some limitations.  With the Preferred plan you must make available at least one room daily (properties with more than 15 rooms are required to offer two rooms daily) for an entire year.  With the Standard participation, you may offer any days of the year and it doesn’t need to be an entire year. They do ask you to maintain at least 180 days of inventory in a year.

If these prices seem high, then please compare to BedBreakfastTraveler.com, which can instantly start improving your bottom line.

Here are BedBreakfastTraveler.com’s costs:

Standard online booking -  8% Commission

Booking Engine with online bookings on YOUR website - 1.9% Commission

Booking Engine with deposit collection of at least 30% from guest - 5% Commission

These are just a few examples of our pricing, and we offer custom solutions to suit your custom needs.  But, the numbers basically tell the whole story.

At BedBreakfastTraveler.com, we offer Guaranteed Economics.  If you currently use another provider’s service, please contact BedBreakfastTraveler.com.  We guarantee that we can offer the same or improved service for better economics. All you need to do is contact us and ask.

We are not affiliated with BedandBreakfast.com, and always try to publish the most accurate information.  If any reader has more recent information about BedandBreakfast.com pricing, please feel free to post it or correct us.

How secure are online bookings these days? Everyone knows how online booking works. A small deposit is collected from the traveler at the time of booking. Our advice is that the optimal deposit amount to collect for a booking on your own website is 35%. Why 35%? Research shows that one-third of the booking amount is the best deposit level to secure bookings, ensure that bookings are not fraudulent, and ensure you do not have a loss if the guest changes their plans. Since one-third is 33.3%, and is an awkward amount to collect, our advice is that 35% is the most efficient amount. If you prefer a range, then our recommendation is 35% - 75%.

Before we get into the details about collecting deposits, let’s talk about some basics. First of all, don’t use services that require you to manually confirm bookings, contact your guests directly, and obtain deposit monies yourself. These services are still in the 20th Century. There are still quite a few of this type of reservation service that claims “instant booking”, but cannot deliver. Beyond this, if your online booking method involves a Paypal interface, know that this method still does not work for guests in many regions around the world. Also, for bed and breakfasts in North America or Europe, using a service like this is like putting a sign on your front porch saying “We’re Un-Professional Amateurs!” This is not exactly the reputation you want to develop for your website.

You certainly need a professional third party service that is able to collect more than just Visa and Mastercard. You need a service that is able to collect at least 4 major global card types. If you feature online booking on your own website, know that almost all major booking services are able to collect 5-10% deposit for your bookings. But is this enough? No. You should be collecting from 30% to 75% deposit for every booking taken on your own website. There are 2 reasons for this. One, guests who have found your website, and are interested in booking with you, are serious about staying with you. They know that if they’re paying on your website, they’re going to have some personal interaction with you, and their reputation is on the line. Fraud transactions on a hotel’s own website are infrequent. Second, since you know the guest is serious, you want to collect a reasonably high deposit to secure their booking, and eliminate any possibility of problems in the event of a cancellation or no-show. BedBreakfastTraveler.com (Instant World Booking) recommends collecting either 35% or 50% as the optimal deposit for most bed & breakfasts and small hotels.

Instant World Booking is one of the only services that enables you to collect more than 10% deposit at time of booking. In fact, they can enable collection of up to 100% of your bookings at reservation time, effectively enabling you to collect credit cards right online from your own website. Instant World Booking takes this service one step further, offering full no-show and cancellation protection. With this service, you are guaranteed to receive your deposits, even in the event that a guest cancels late or does not show up.

Check out more of our controversial topics and advice at our blog. We’ll lead you to the most effective and low-cost solutions for marketing your property.

I just read the comment that was posted to our previous Blog entry, suggesting that Instant Online Booking is not for everyone. While this is an important topic that will be addressed in future blog posts, I think it is useful to comment at this time.

Let me emphasize that Instant Online Booking IS for everybody. There are many arguments I’ve heard to not using instant booking — I only have a few rooms, I can’t check availability daily, I can better allocate my rooms otherwise, etc.

Know that Instant Online Booking can be used by everybody, and adapted to your own specific needs and circumstances. Unless you can say that you are willing to pass by over 80% of the online travelers who consider booking your property, either on your own website, or a service like BedBreakfastTraveler.com, then instant online booking is for you. For example, if you only have a few rooms to play with, putting one or two rooms in online availability is always better than not having any. If you don’t have time to monitor all your availability online every day, then only put a subset of your availability online. This will help avoid double-bookings.

This concept is so important, you need to understand it. The number one goal with online bed and breakfast or hotel marketing is to maximize the number of online guests considering your property. By not offering at least some instant availability for booking, the vast majority of guests who find you online will inevitably pass you by and book elsewhere.

This is Online Booking 101, and if you use it properly, online booking is for you. Don’t be fooled by the old way of working. We are entering a new world of online tourism technology, and the whole paradigm for online booking is evolving in exciting new ways.

Please look forward to our future blog posts on the important topic of Instant Online Booking.

I have visited many bed and breakfasts around the world, and have had the opportunity to speak with many innkeepers about their marketing efforts. Not that there’s any competition from one region to the next, but I’ve seen a definite advancement in Europe in the use of online marketing techniques over the U.S., or North America for that matter. Of course there are no favorites in the online marketing game, but I’m seeing is that innkeepers in Europe have been willing to embrace internet technology more openly than in North America.

For North America’s $3.5 billion bed and breakfast industry, there is a tremendous opportunity. True, the number of B&Bs in the U.S. has increased 20-fold in the last twenty years. But the opportunity for growth in marketing capability, especially on the internet, is overwhelming. European bed and breakfast owners have been more than willing to take risks, and embrace online marketing technology. While 95% of all U.S. B&Bs have their own website domain, only a small percentage take advantage of the latest online booking capabilities. In Europe, a much smaller percentage of B&B owners have their own domains. But, they have taken advantage of using regional and global online reservation services. They have begun to use marketing through subdomains offered from many ISPs like AOL, and they are in the lead with regard to offering online booking directly on their own websites (where they own their own domains).

European B&B’s are hungry to take part in the growth in travel and tourism that their countries have experienced in recent years, particularly in Eastern Europe. To share in this growth, they are most interested in exploring any and all ideas about enhancing their marketing strategies online. Let’s take for example the concept of online booking. In today’s online B&B marketing world, online booking means taking advantage of a service provider that offers online availability calendar capability and instant confirmed bookings 24/7.

However, let’s recall that a significant portion of online travel industry marketing still reverts to 1980’s style technology. This is why most bed and breakfasts in the U.S. that grew up since this period still use online booking services that do NOT offer instant confirmation or online availability checks. To be clear, online booking does not include any service that doesn’t offer the capability to maintain availability online, offer real-time availability checks to guests, and instant confirmed reservations 24/7. Some services pretend to offer real online booking, and are used by many B&Bs in the U.S. But what these services offer is really just a glorified form of request-service. Some offer the guise of instant confirmation, only to prompt the innkeeper to check their availability within 24 hours to provide a real confirmation. This is not real-time instant confirmation. This is just a step above email or telephone.

Bed and Breakfast owners in Europe have realized that travelers searching for reservations on the internet do so precisely because they can book in real-time. Online purchases are frequently quick and impulsive. Travelers booking online demand instant gratification. Because of this they have embraced much of the latest online technology offered for such purposes, including online credit card processing. It seems like we are now in the perfect environment for American innkeepers to play catch-up, and to embrace the latest online technology that can now lead to increased profits. Many innkeepers have convinced themselves that their guests don’t want them to delve into new technologies, and expect them to stay in the backward days of manual bookkeeping. This is a fallacy that some have repeated to themselves, only to sacrifice profits. Travelers are staying closer to home, gas prices are up, Euro currency rates are up. There is a big opportunity for B&Bs and small hotels and hostels of all kinds to gain a bigger slice of the tourism pie.

For the foreseeable future, I look forward to seeing how Europe’s bed and breakfasts continue to innovate and use the internet to advance their businesses. But, equally, I look to see how North American B&Bs can take advantage of the huge opportunity lying before them.