Bringing in Business in the Winter

[Morticia]

Morticia has the scoop: Advanced Deposits. We take deposits for all of our year advanced bookings in January. We enjoy the break in January, so we're not marketing for anything that month.
In February, we put on our own workshops, concerts and dances to attract people. We've had a crafters' weekend, Valentine's weekend with dinner, Ukulele Workshop, and some other things to draw people in. Each event is affordable as we give rate discounts.
Even if you don't have a separate banquet hall, you can get someone to have a paint workshop, crafting weekend, scrapbooking, music workshop, or something easy in your dining room. Our first year, we didn't have the banquet hall, so we had our classes in our dining room. Everyone enjoyed it very much..

It's interesting you get people in for events you put on. Are they local? IE - within a half hour to an hour away?
We've never been able to figure out how to get people in for an event. How to get the critical mass needed to make everyone feel like they came to the right place, so to speak.
I talked with a shop owner here in town who has a second location about 45 minutes away in a medium-size town. When she hosts an event in the other town, she has a waiting list. Here she doesn't get anyone signing up at all.
This is a person who markets the heck out of her shops. She chats up everyone. Her take on it was people don't come here to 'do crafts.' (We do have one big craft-making weekend, but that was already a critical mass when we got them to move the weekend here.)

 

[ChrisandShelley]

Morticia has the scoop: Advanced Deposits. We take deposits for all of our year advanced bookings in January. We enjoy the break in January, so we're not marketing for anything that month.
In February, we put on our own workshops, concerts and dances to attract people. We've had a crafters' weekend, Valentine's weekend with dinner, Ukulele Workshop, and some other things to draw people in. Each event is affordable as we give rate discounts.
Even if you don't have a separate banquet hall, you can get someone to have a paint workshop, crafting weekend, scrapbooking, music workshop, or something easy in your dining room. Our first year, we didn't have the banquet hall, so we had our classes in our dining room. Everyone enjoyed it very much..

It's interesting you get people in for events you put on. Are they local? IE - within a half hour to an hour away?
We've never been able to figure out how to get people in for an event. How to get the critical mass needed to make everyone feel like they came to the right place, so to speak.
I talked with a shop owner here in town who has a second location about 45 minutes away in a medium-size town. When she hosts an event in the other town, she has a waiting list. Here she doesn't get anyone signing up at all.
This is a person who markets the heck out of her shops. She chats up everyone. Her take on it was people don't come here to 'do crafts.' (We do have one big craft-making weekend, but that was already a critical mass when we got them to move the weekend here.)
.

We get a few local folks, but we extend a discount to out-of-towners who stay with us, both on the rate and the workshop fees. We do get an occasional guest who lives in a short range. Our music workshops will have the class during the day, then a jam or concert at night. So even if they are local, they will want to stay overnight to get the most of our their experience. Even our crafter's weekend, we will usually have something planned in the evening.
A big thing that we do is our email marketing. We use Mail Chimp and put everyone's email addresses in there that stay with us. So everyone gets a newsletter at some point. We don't send out a whole lot, but I want to change that next year. At least monthly, but preferably every other week. It seems that email marketing is making a come back. We've been relatively successful with our email marketing. I just need to do it more. That's the best way to get people who have already had a great experience at our BnB to come back for something interesting in our off season.