Making directory renewal decisions

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)

 

[springlady]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.
.

Okay, I just applied my logic to my target investment area and I get a lot of individual listings for bed and breakfasts. I happen to know that there are no full service B&B's in this town but a real tourist wouldn't. Results:
One is 30 miles outside of my target area but is a true B&B. Another is 20 miles away but offers a hot breakfast. The rest are cabin rentals.
The place I plan to purchase shows up #8 on Google under B&B's and it doesn't serve breakfast.
bbonline is the first name directory listed and it shows up on page 2, listing the place 30 miles away.
A better exercise was to put in "B&B Fredericksburg, TX" where every other house is a B&B. The first page had a lot of local B&B directories and the only big name directory to show up on page one was bedandbreakfast.com at lising #4.
When I booked my B&B stay in Fburg I did it through a local because my search then was "pet friendly B&B Fredericksburg, TX" and it pulled up a local B&B guide that provided a huge list of properties that would accept Barnabas.

 

[muirford]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.
.

That is me, too. You might look at a directory instead of a specific B&B website if you want to get an idea of how many choices you have. None of the directories do anything to certify or inspect the B&Bs that are listed, so you don't get any advantage there.
In my own specific case, having someone look at bandb.com gives me a distinct disadvantage. A platinum listing for a B&B in a town ten miles away is the first listing in mytown, mystate. That's not great. I still haven't made up my mind about renewing bandb.com but if I don't, it will be because of that situation and because I don't take the gift cards any longer. They are not the first directory that comes up in a google search for me, though.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.
.

Okay, I just applied my logic to my target investment area and I get a lot of individual listings for bed and breakfasts. I happen to know that there are no full service B&B's in this town but a real tourist wouldn't. Results:
One is 30 miles outside of my target area but is a true B&B. Another is 20 miles away but offers a hot breakfast. The rest are cabin rentals.
The place I plan to purchase shows up #8 on Google under B&B's and it doesn't serve breakfast.
bbonline is the first name directory listed and it shows up on page 2, listing the place 30 miles away.
A better exercise was to put in "B&B Fredericksburg, TX" where every other house is a B&B. The first page had a lot of local B&B directories and the only big name directory to show up on page one was bedandbreakfast.com at lising #4.
When I booked my B&B stay in Fburg I did it through a local because my search then was "pet friendly B&B Fredericksburg, TX" and it pulled up a local B&B guide that provided a huge list of properties that would accept Barnabas.
.

Okay, I just applied my logic to my target investment area and I get a lot of individual listings for bed and breakfasts. I happen to know that there are no full service B&B's in this town but a real tourist wouldn't. Results:
One is 30 miles outside of my target area but is a true B&B. Another is 20 miles away but offers a hot breakfast. The rest are cabin rentals.
The place I plan to purchase shows up #8 on Google under B&B's and it doesn't serve breakfast.
bbonline is the first name directory listed and it shows up on page 2, listing the place 30 miles away.
A better exercise was to put in "B&B Fredericksburg, TX" where every other house is a B&B. The first page had a lot of local B&B directories and the only big name directory to show up on page one was bedandbreakfast.com at lising #4.
When I booked my B&B stay in Fburg I did it through a local because my search then was "pet friendly B&B Fredericksburg, TX" and it pulled up a local B&B guide that provided a huge list of properties that would accept Barnabas.

BBONLINE has a search for pet friendly accomo's.
Well those indivi websites are doing pretty good to get in there above all the directories.

 

[Morticia]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

I always used to use bbonline because that's what my daughter used. Now I do a search on 'city, state, B&B' because I know not everyone pays to be in a directory. I get more traffic from keywords on Google than I get from directories. If that makes sense. An example of that would be 380 referrals from a Google search using 'my town, state, B&B' and only 42 referrals from any of the top 3 directory listings I have for the last month.

 

[Morticia]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)

Now the odd thing about that is that Lanier generally shows well in my area (3 or 4) but I don't get a lot of referrals from that site.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

I always used to use bbonline because that's what my daughter used. Now I do a search on 'city, state, B&B' because I know not everyone pays to be in a directory. I get more traffic from keywords on Google than I get from directories. If that makes sense. An example of that would be 380 referrals from a Google search using 'my town, state, B&B' and only 42 referrals from any of the top 3 directory listings I have for the last month.
.

I always used to use bbonline because that's what my daughter used. Now I do a search on 'city, state, B&B' because I know not everyone pays to be in a directory. I get more traffic from keywords on Google than I get from directories. If that makes sense. An example of that would be 380 referrals from a Google search using 'my town, state, B&B' and only 42 referrals from any of the top 3 directory listings I have for the last month.

Definately, people search and IF you have your SEO in place then they click on your website - which is what we want! But planning a whole trip can be laborious.
Guests who just left planned their entire USA visit this way - they got on google maps - clicked a route. Then they put in a stop here off the beaten track - googled to find lodging nearby, then a clicked the route over there at the next stop - clicked to find lodging nearby so on and so on.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)

Now the odd thing about that is that Lanier generally shows well in my area (3 or 4) but I don't get a lot of referrals from that site.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)

Now the odd thing about that is that Lanier generally shows well in my area (3 or 4) but I don't get a lot of referrals from that site.

I never got lanier bookings, I tried and tried and gave up.

 

[swirt]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.

Good point on the lower numbers - if I understand you correctly, you are saying there is some point low enough where the return may not be material, and there is a cost in time to deal with everyone = may not be worth it. Very important as you can run yourself in circles trying to find good advertising. I also think that conversion does drop off a bit with the quality of sites. Although it wouldn't surprise me if the 10% ratio was low for the main sites. It is pretty easy to wire this up to measure the true actual reservations and revenue from any site if the booking engine supports it (both Webervations has, and so has Rezo, as do sme others).
The $300 I was looking at was from a PAII study - it was something like $150/night, 2 nights per booking. I'm probably not getting it exact, but close. So I believe using your numbers that number would be $240 - as the typical action (email, res request, etc.) would generate an average 2 night stay.
Taking the logic a step further... this is often where the decision comes in whether to go with Silver, Gold, Platinum. No doubt the cost per click for this property would be lower for Gold or Silver - and it is telling that they are getting that much business from the lowest BBonline listing level...
So lets say they dropped to Silver at roughly half the cost of Platinum. There clicks will drop without question, but generally not by the same % of pricing. Which some might think that means silver is a better value. Indeed if you looked at CPC or CPA then a property would claim a victory - they dropped their effective CPC by 20%!!!! But if they looked in their wallet, they would find that they saved $375 or so on membership (approximating due to diff in yearly/monthly)... but LOST roughly $6000 in revenue... (at my $300 average rez cost for consistency). So they just "saved" themselves into losing a net $5600+ in annual revenue.
My point being that evaluating marketing spend needs to be both on the return on investment and on the marginal gain of investing that extra dollar. In the above example, an inn increased their ROI but at the expense of losing revenue and ultimately being much worse off at the end of the year.
This is the type of evaluation that I feel often gets ignored as the focus is on cost-cost-cost....
.

I think it comes down to people having a finite idea in mind about how much they want to spend on advertising.
The question of platinum vs gold vs silver traffic is an interesting one. And again I think it all comes down to homework being done. The averages are too broad to help much. A town with only 4 properties half at platinum and half at silver I bet would see a pretty even distribution of clickthroughs without platinum being favored too heavilly.
Contrast that against a town with 30 properties with 5 at Platinum and I bet you'd find a much bigger difference in traffic between the levels.
The city from my sample has 38 properties on your site, 14 of them are Platinum (that's two and a half screens of Platinum). I bet there is a large disparity just between upper Platinum and lower Platinum.
Of course the way other end of the spectrum are inns who are the only property in the town and they go for Gold or Platinum .... I bet they would see no difference. (I just shake my head and wonder what they are thinking.)
(by the way, I'm not thinking the Bookingwiz . com popup is a good idea.)

 

[muirford]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)

Now the odd thing about that is that Lanier generally shows well in my area (3 or 4) but I don't get a lot of referrals from that site.
.

Now the odd thing about that is that Lanier generally shows well in my area (3 or 4) but I don't get a lot of referrals from that site.

Same here - that is why I am not renewing. That directory comes up ahead of bandb.com in a google search.
This whole discussion gets very cluttered by the differences between the directories. The referrals from bandb.com probably don't come from a google search - they would hit a different directory first - but may come from all the extras that bandb.com has. Gift cards is the most obvious example. Someone holding a bandb.com gift card will go directly to that directory, of course. They might narrow it down by area, and they may even look at your listing and website, but ultimately they will only convert if you take the gift cards.

 

[Morticia]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

I always used to use bbonline because that's what my daughter used. Now I do a search on 'city, state, B&B' because I know not everyone pays to be in a directory. I get more traffic from keywords on Google than I get from directories. If that makes sense. An example of that would be 380 referrals from a Google search using 'my town, state, B&B' and only 42 referrals from any of the top 3 directory listings I have for the last month.
.

I always used to use bbonline because that's what my daughter used. Now I do a search on 'city, state, B&B' because I know not everyone pays to be in a directory. I get more traffic from keywords on Google than I get from directories. If that makes sense. An example of that would be 380 referrals from a Google search using 'my town, state, B&B' and only 42 referrals from any of the top 3 directory listings I have for the last month.

Definately, people search and IF you have your SEO in place then they click on your website - which is what we want! But planning a whole trip can be laborious.
Guests who just left planned their entire USA visit this way - they got on google maps - clicked a route. Then they put in a stop here off the beaten track - googled to find lodging nearby, then a clicked the route over there at the next stop - clicked to find lodging nearby so on and so on.
.

I always used to use bbonline because that's what my daughter used. Now I do a search on 'city, state, B&B' because I know not everyone pays to be in a directory. I get more traffic from keywords on Google than I get from directories. If that makes sense. An example of that would be 380 referrals from a Google search using 'my town, state, B&B' and only 42 referrals from any of the top 3 directory listings I have for the last month.

Definately, people search and IF you have your SEO in place then they click on your website - which is what we want! But planning a whole trip can be laborious.
Guests who just left planned their entire USA visit this way - they got on google maps - clicked a route. Then they put in a stop here off the beaten track - googled to find lodging nearby, then a clicked the route over there at the next stop - clicked to find lodging nearby so on and so on.

Now that is interesting info! And you can see why I'm panicked that I may drop off Google maps if anyone else around here ends up with double listings.

 

[swirt]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)

Now the odd thing about that is that Lanier generally shows well in my area (3 or 4) but I don't get a lot of referrals from that site.
.

Now the odd thing about that is that Lanier generally shows well in my area (3 or 4) but I don't get a lot of referrals from that site.

Same here - that is why I am not renewing. That directory comes up ahead of bandb.com in a google search.
This whole discussion gets very cluttered by the differences between the directories. The referrals from bandb.com probably don't come from a google search - they would hit a different directory first - but may come from all the extras that bandb.com has. Gift cards is the most obvious example. Someone holding a bandb.com gift card will go directly to that directory, of course. They might narrow it down by area, and they may even look at your listing and website, but ultimately they will only convert if you take the gift cards.
.

Good point about the gift cards. I also think bedandbreakfast.com (bnb.com , bandb.com) does have some "Type in" traffic that people just type in the address. Also there are a lot of people that are not all that saavy... so they type in "bed and breakfast" or "B&B" as their search and then narrow down from their once they hit the directory.

 

[swirt]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns?

I think the answer depends on the case by case basis for the inn. I've seen individual sites for B&Bs show up well in target google searches but get passed by because the titles are bad or descriptions are goofy so they don't attract many clicks even though they have good placement. In that case you find that their tracker shows they get most of their traffic from directories. (Lanier is a good example of this, they have good placement, but something causes them to not attract that many clicks).
On the other hand if you have good placement and attractive titles and descriptions then your tracker will show that most of your traffic comes from direct searches.
There are millions of people searching out there, and trust me they use all kinds of different methods to find what they are looking for .... you will attract whoever finds you the way you show up ... sounds like a stupid statement doesn't it, but it is the self-fulfilling truth.

 

[JBanczak]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

I don't want to take this discussion in a different direction but there is another element to conversion that I feel is missing here. Do we think that most people find a b&b by typing in mytown, mystate b&b or do we feel that they are found by going to a directory and then browsing the directory for possible towns? If it's the first, then dropping one specific directory may not result in the loss of all of those conversions.
The results for mytown, mystate b&b - once you get past the local results where I am listed first - are bbonline, my own website, bnbfinder, lanier, tripadvisor, bandb.com. I don't plan to renew my lanier listing which is due now - not enough clickthrus to make it worthwhile. I suspect that as long as you show up in some directories which come to the top of the organic search list, someone who looks at directories will still find you - just not through the one you dropped. It would be interesting to know if the conversions through bbonline went up after bandb.com was dropped for your client.
You will, of course, lose the conversions of people who start at the directories - like people looking to use bandb.com gift cards or a bnbfinder gift cert or the ILoveInns gift cert.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)
.

That would be me - I google "B&B town, state" or "B&B destination, state". Most of the time it pulls up a directory and I'll look at the listings but honestly, I don't discriminate between directories.
If it were me I'd google the name of my B&B and my town, area, or local tourist draw and see which directories comes up. That's probably where I'd spend my money.
Not very scientific but Google is my travel agent so what comes up on there is important to me.

YES! That is where you spend it. The top ten that come up well in your searches. Anythng on page 2 of google is not worth a penny. Most of us would focus on the top 5 in google (depending on the search and weeding out the bad ones that have nothing to do with your B&B or town or attraction)

Now the odd thing about that is that Lanier generally shows well in my area (3 or 4) but I don't get a lot of referrals from that site.
.

Now the odd thing about that is that Lanier generally shows well in my area (3 or 4) but I don't get a lot of referrals from that site.

Same here - that is why I am not renewing. That directory comes up ahead of bandb.com in a google search.
This whole discussion gets very cluttered by the differences between the directories. The referrals from bandb.com probably don't come from a google search - they would hit a different directory first - but may come from all the extras that bandb.com has. Gift cards is the most obvious example. Someone holding a bandb.com gift card will go directly to that directory, of course. They might narrow it down by area, and they may even look at your listing and website, but ultimately they will only convert if you take the gift cards.
.

Good point about the gift cards. I also think bedandbreakfast.com (bnb.com , bandb.com) does have some "Type in" traffic that people just type in the address. Also there are a lot of people that are not all that saavy... so they type in "bed and breakfast" or "B&B" as their search and then narrow down from their once they hit the directory.
.

Good point about the gift cards. I also think bedandbreakfast.com (bnb.com , bandb.com) does have some "Type in" traffic that people just type in the address. Also there are a lot of people that are not all that saavy... so they type in "bed and breakfast" or "B&B" as their search and then narrow down from their once they hit the directory.

Just to add some real numbers here, less than half of our traffic comes from Google results (according to Google Analytics). Out of that Google traffic, just looking at the top 50 keywords only, a full 25% of our total Google traffic either types our name into the google search box, or searches on a generic term (meaning they enter no geographic data). I'm sure if I looked farther down the keyword list there would be a lot more lesser-typed in generic words (other than bed and breakfast) fo instance. Google search traffic that enters in a destination of some kind amounts to only about 1/3 of our traffic.
The way we get traffic and build a brand in many instances has a lot in common with the way a B&B owner may do a search on Google, but a lot of what we do goes far beyond just being listed on geographic keywords. Our placement in Google overall is second to none, but that placement alone can't account for the massive difference in the amount of traffic we get vs. other directories. That is where all the PR, Gift Card promotions, partnerships, distribution, etc. comes in - we feel to run a successful web-based business you have to embrace more channels than just SEO.

 

[JBanczak]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.

Good point on the lower numbers - if I understand you correctly, you are saying there is some point low enough where the return may not be material, and there is a cost in time to deal with everyone = may not be worth it. Very important as you can run yourself in circles trying to find good advertising. I also think that conversion does drop off a bit with the quality of sites. Although it wouldn't surprise me if the 10% ratio was low for the main sites. It is pretty easy to wire this up to measure the true actual reservations and revenue from any site if the booking engine supports it (both Webervations has, and so has Rezo, as do sme others).
The $300 I was looking at was from a PAII study - it was something like $150/night, 2 nights per booking. I'm probably not getting it exact, but close. So I believe using your numbers that number would be $240 - as the typical action (email, res request, etc.) would generate an average 2 night stay.
Taking the logic a step further... this is often where the decision comes in whether to go with Silver, Gold, Platinum. No doubt the cost per click for this property would be lower for Gold or Silver - and it is telling that they are getting that much business from the lowest BBonline listing level...
So lets say they dropped to Silver at roughly half the cost of Platinum. There clicks will drop without question, but generally not by the same % of pricing. Which some might think that means silver is a better value. Indeed if you looked at CPC or CPA then a property would claim a victory - they dropped their effective CPC by 20%!!!! But if they looked in their wallet, they would find that they saved $375 or so on membership (approximating due to diff in yearly/monthly)... but LOST roughly $6000 in revenue... (at my $300 average rez cost for consistency). So they just "saved" themselves into losing a net $5600+ in annual revenue.
My point being that evaluating marketing spend needs to be both on the return on investment and on the marginal gain of investing that extra dollar. In the above example, an inn increased their ROI but at the expense of losing revenue and ultimately being much worse off at the end of the year.
This is the type of evaluation that I feel often gets ignored as the focus is on cost-cost-cost....
.

I think it comes down to people having a finite idea in mind about how much they want to spend on advertising.
The question of platinum vs gold vs silver traffic is an interesting one. And again I think it all comes down to homework being done. The averages are too broad to help much. A town with only 4 properties half at platinum and half at silver I bet would see a pretty even distribution of clickthroughs without platinum being favored too heavilly.
Contrast that against a town with 30 properties with 5 at Platinum and I bet you'd find a much bigger difference in traffic between the levels.
The city from my sample has 38 properties on your site, 14 of them are Platinum (that's two and a half screens of Platinum). I bet there is a large disparity just between upper Platinum and lower Platinum.
Of course the way other end of the spectrum are inns who are the only property in the town and they go for Gold or Platinum .... I bet they would see no difference. (I just shake my head and wonder what they are thinking.)
(by the way, I'm not thinking the Bookingwiz . com popup is a good idea.)
.

The city from my sample has 38 properties on your site, 14 of them are Platinum (that's two and a half screens of Platinum). I bet there is a large disparity just between upper Platinum and lower Platinum.

We currently rotate platinum every hour... so there is no upper or lower. A property goes up and down the list every day. We used to do it on every search up until last summer - but we got consistent consumer complaints that the order would change so often they couldn't remember who they were looking at when they did another search! This happens within every level.

Of course the way other end of the spectrum are inns who are the only property in the town and they go for Gold or Platinum .... I bet they would see no difference. (I just shake my head and wonder what they are thinking.)

In some instances this may be true, however it gets back to the marginal spending argument. For the extra few hundred dollars, if you are really evaluating your total dollar return on investment (not just your ROI %), then there is a strong argument that by presenting your property in the best light will reap benefits. With 20 photos, and all the bells and whistles of a Platinum membership, for only another $350-400 over a Silver - question is will you get at least 1-2 more bookings year? Presenting your property in the best light whenever possible may help you do that - and that is a profit maximizing decision.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

swirt wrote: The city from my sample has 38 properties on your site, 14 of them are Platinum (that's two and a half screens of Platinum). I bet there is a large disparity just between upper Platinum and lower Platinum.
That is why B&B.com sells FEATURED listings. The Upper Upper Platinum. If you have 38 B&B's in one town then you would be forced to do featured listings.
In my town I am it, to be platinum is silly, I am still it, to do featured listings, I am still it.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

Swirt: There are millions of people searching out there, and trust me they use all kinds of different methods to find what they are looking for ....
Oh great guru of the forum.

( I needed a guru or swami smiley to insert there)

 

[Morticia]

swirt wrote: The city from my sample has 38 properties on your site, 14 of them are Platinum (that's two and a half screens of Platinum). I bet there is a large disparity just between upper Platinum and lower Platinum.
That is why B&B.com sells FEATURED listings. The Upper Upper Platinum. If you have 38 B&B's in one town then you would be forced to do featured listings.
In my town I am it, to be platinum is silly, I am still it, to do featured listings, I am still it..

I've done the featured listing but have no idea if it brought any more or different biz. It would help if the clickthru showed it was from the regular listing or the featured listing.

 

[Morticia]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.

Good point on the lower numbers - if I understand you correctly, you are saying there is some point low enough where the return may not be material, and there is a cost in time to deal with everyone = may not be worth it. Very important as you can run yourself in circles trying to find good advertising. I also think that conversion does drop off a bit with the quality of sites. Although it wouldn't surprise me if the 10% ratio was low for the main sites. It is pretty easy to wire this up to measure the true actual reservations and revenue from any site if the booking engine supports it (both Webervations has, and so has Rezo, as do sme others).
The $300 I was looking at was from a PAII study - it was something like $150/night, 2 nights per booking. I'm probably not getting it exact, but close. So I believe using your numbers that number would be $240 - as the typical action (email, res request, etc.) would generate an average 2 night stay.
Taking the logic a step further... this is often where the decision comes in whether to go with Silver, Gold, Platinum. No doubt the cost per click for this property would be lower for Gold or Silver - and it is telling that they are getting that much business from the lowest BBonline listing level...
So lets say they dropped to Silver at roughly half the cost of Platinum. There clicks will drop without question, but generally not by the same % of pricing. Which some might think that means silver is a better value. Indeed if you looked at CPC or CPA then a property would claim a victory - they dropped their effective CPC by 20%!!!! But if they looked in their wallet, they would find that they saved $375 or so on membership (approximating due to diff in yearly/monthly)... but LOST roughly $6000 in revenue... (at my $300 average rez cost for consistency). So they just "saved" themselves into losing a net $5600+ in annual revenue.
My point being that evaluating marketing spend needs to be both on the return on investment and on the marginal gain of investing that extra dollar. In the above example, an inn increased their ROI but at the expense of losing revenue and ultimately being much worse off at the end of the year.
This is the type of evaluation that I feel often gets ignored as the focus is on cost-cost-cost....
.

I think it comes down to people having a finite idea in mind about how much they want to spend on advertising.
The question of platinum vs gold vs silver traffic is an interesting one. And again I think it all comes down to homework being done. The averages are too broad to help much. A town with only 4 properties half at platinum and half at silver I bet would see a pretty even distribution of clickthroughs without platinum being favored too heavilly.
Contrast that against a town with 30 properties with 5 at Platinum and I bet you'd find a much bigger difference in traffic between the levels.
The city from my sample has 38 properties on your site, 14 of them are Platinum (that's two and a half screens of Platinum). I bet there is a large disparity just between upper Platinum and lower Platinum.
Of course the way other end of the spectrum are inns who are the only property in the town and they go for Gold or Platinum .... I bet they would see no difference. (I just shake my head and wonder what they are thinking.)
(by the way, I'm not thinking the Bookingwiz . com popup is a good idea.)
.

The city from my sample has 38 properties on your site, 14 of them are Platinum (that's two and a half screens of Platinum). I bet there is a large disparity just between upper Platinum and lower Platinum.

We currently rotate platinum every hour... so there is no upper or lower. A property goes up and down the list every day. We used to do it on every search up until last summer - but we got consistent consumer complaints that the order would change so often they couldn't remember who they were looking at when they did another search! This happens within every level.

Of course the way other end of the spectrum are inns who are the only property in the town and they go for Gold or Platinum .... I bet they would see no difference. (I just shake my head and wonder what they are thinking.)

In some instances this may be true, however it gets back to the marginal spending argument. For the extra few hundred dollars, if you are really evaluating your total dollar return on investment (not just your ROI %), then there is a strong argument that by presenting your property in the best light will reap benefits. With 20 photos, and all the bells and whistles of a Platinum membership, for only another $350-400 over a Silver - question is will you get at least 1-2 more bookings year? Presenting your property in the best light whenever possible may help you do that - and that is a profit maximizing decision.
.

I think what Swirt meant, at least how I would view it is that the Platinum listing that is, at the presnt moment, on page 2 of the listings, isn't getting the hits of the one that is number one on page one. So, each inn is eventually in the lower platinum listing and the upper platinum listing. And it's a crap shoot where the listing is when I, the viewer, hit that site.

 

[JBanczak]

This data really indicates some of the points I've been trying to get across. For instance, if we applied even a 10% conversion rate to these figures (which is probably low since they already take into account an action but is good enough to illustrate), then there would have been roughly 143 reservations from all of these sites combined. At $300 average rez (which is roughly the PAII figure reported across the industry), then all of this in total represents $42,900 in revenue in the innkeepers pocket. Clearly these numbers are not going to be exact, but if applied across all the sites/traffic, they work for comparison sake.
Isolating this for just BedandBreakfast.com and BBonline, then the BedandBreakfast.com reservations were worth $19,500 (650 actions, 10% converting into rez, $300/rez), and BBonline worth $8700 (291 actions, 10% converting to rez, $300/rez). Taking out the costs, BedandBreakfast.com put a net $19.5K - $750, or $18,750, and BBonline put in a total of $8700 - $169, or $8531.
So last year the innkeeper had $42,900 in total revenue from all sites, and now by dropping BedandBreakfast.com because it is "too expensive", assuming nothing else changes, they will only have total revenue of $42,900 - $18,750 (the net revenue generated from bb.com) or $24,150. Had they kept BedandBreakfast.com, and dropped the cheaper per click site BBonline, they would have ended up with $42,900 - $8531 (net rev lost from dropping bbonline), or $34,369.
So their wallet would have been a lot fatter by keeping the "expensive" directory.... (It would have been fattest by keeping them both I might add - which is what we always tell innkeepers. If I had an inn - you can bet I'd be listing it on more sites than just BedandBreakfast.com).
I used to work at an airline back in the early 90's during the last recession. We would cut costs like crazy... and I'll never forget some of the advice I got from a Sr. VP there. There was a lot of it, but two things really stand out. When we were cutting our routes back - he commented "great - our planes are all sitting down now - we are going to save ourselves right into bankruptcy..." because even though we were saving money on a lot of items - we weren't making money on them. And this thought really strikes home when you look at an analysis like this..

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.
.

Your arguments are logical and make sense to me. The only problem is that the directory that cost $80 per year and resulted in 12 "actions"/goals and if as you approximate, 10% lead to 1 actual conversion could make a similar plea .... "Don't drop us, we brought you $300 for only an $80 investment." At some point you have to draw the line. So the question this innkeeper can now grapple with is do they want to draw the line at $20 per conversion or $3 per conversion or $0.51 per conversion.
It doesn't change anything about your argument but for clarification sake, the average advertised room rate is ~$120 per night for this particular B&B.

Good point on the lower numbers - if I understand you correctly, you are saying there is some point low enough where the return may not be material, and there is a cost in time to deal with everyone = may not be worth it. Very important as you can run yourself in circles trying to find good advertising. I also think that conversion does drop off a bit with the quality of sites. Although it wouldn't surprise me if the 10% ratio was low for the main sites. It is pretty easy to wire this up to measure the true actual reservations and revenue from any site if the booking engine supports it (both Webervations has, and so has Rezo, as do sme others).
The $300 I was looking at was from a PAII study - it was something like $150/night, 2 nights per booking. I'm probably not getting it exact, but close. So I believe using your numbers that number would be $240 - as the typical action (email, res request, etc.) would generate an average 2 night stay.
Taking the logic a step further... this is often where the decision comes in whether to go with Silver, Gold, Platinum. No doubt the cost per click for this property would be lower for Gold or Silver - and it is telling that they are getting that much business from the lowest BBonline listing level...
So lets say they dropped to Silver at roughly half the cost of Platinum. There clicks will drop without question, but generally not by the same % of pricing. Which some might think that means silver is a better value. Indeed if you looked at CPC or CPA then a property would claim a victory - they dropped their effective CPC by 20%!!!! But if they looked in their wallet, they would find that they saved $375 or so on membership (approximating due to diff in yearly/monthly)... but LOST roughly $6000 in revenue... (at my $300 average rez cost for consistency). So they just "saved" themselves into losing a net $5600+ in annual revenue.
My point being that evaluating marketing spend needs to be both on the return on investment and on the marginal gain of investing that extra dollar. In the above example, an inn increased their ROI but at the expense of losing revenue and ultimately being much worse off at the end of the year.
This is the type of evaluation that I feel often gets ignored as the focus is on cost-cost-cost....
.

I think it comes down to people having a finite idea in mind about how much they want to spend on advertising.
The question of platinum vs gold vs silver traffic is an interesting one. And again I think it all comes down to homework being done. The averages are too broad to help much. A town with only 4 properties half at platinum and half at silver I bet would see a pretty even distribution of clickthroughs without platinum being favored too heavilly.
Contrast that against a town with 30 properties with 5 at Platinum and I bet you'd find a much bigger difference in traffic between the levels.
The city from my sample has 38 properties on your site, 14 of them are Platinum (that's two and a half screens of Platinum). I bet there is a large disparity just between upper Platinum and lower Platinum.
Of course the way other end of the spectrum are inns who are the only property in the town and they go for Gold or Platinum .... I bet they would see no difference. (I just shake my head and wonder what they are thinking.)
(by the way, I'm not thinking the Bookingwiz . com popup is a good idea.)
.

The city from my sample has 38 properties on your site, 14 of them are Platinum (that's two and a half screens of Platinum). I bet there is a large disparity just between upper Platinum and lower Platinum.

We currently rotate platinum every hour... so there is no upper or lower. A property goes up and down the list every day. We used to do it on every search up until last summer - but we got consistent consumer complaints that the order would change so often they couldn't remember who they were looking at when they did another search! This happens within every level.

Of course the way other end of the spectrum are inns who are the only property in the town and they go for Gold or Platinum .... I bet they would see no difference. (I just shake my head and wonder what they are thinking.)

In some instances this may be true, however it gets back to the marginal spending argument. For the extra few hundred dollars, if you are really evaluating your total dollar return on investment (not just your ROI %), then there is a strong argument that by presenting your property in the best light will reap benefits. With 20 photos, and all the bells and whistles of a Platinum membership, for only another $350-400 over a Silver - question is will you get at least 1-2 more bookings year? Presenting your property in the best light whenever possible may help you do that - and that is a profit maximizing decision.
.

I think what Swirt meant, at least how I would view it is that the Platinum listing that is, at the presnt moment, on page 2 of the listings, isn't getting the hits of the one that is number one on page one. So, each inn is eventually in the lower platinum listing and the upper platinum listing. And it's a crap shoot where the listing is when I, the viewer, hit that site.
.

I think what Swirt meant, at least how I would view it is that the Platinum listing that is, at the presnt moment, on page 2 of the listings, isn't getting the hits of the one that is number one on page one. So, each inn is eventually in the lower platinum listing and the upper platinum listing. And it's a crap shoot where the listing is when I, the viewer, hit that site.

That is exactly what happens - but over the course of the year, with the millions and millions of various visitors coming, every platinum on average gets equal placement.