Missing in action

[Arks]

Next year's AIHP meeting will be held on The Queen Mary docked in Long Beach California! Jan. 31 and first couple of days of February 2017..

Did you have a good time?
.

Did you have a good time?

so far so good. 2 more days to go.

 

[Breakfast Diva]

Next year's AIHP meeting will be held on The Queen Mary docked in Long Beach California! Jan. 31 and first couple of days of February 2017..

Next year's AIHP meeting will be held on The Queen Mary docked in Long Beach California! Jan. 31 and first couple of days of February 2017.

Thanks for the info, that sounds great! Long Beach is my old stomping ground and the timing is much better for us being late Jan, early Feb.

 

[Lee2014]

Next year's AIHP meeting will be held on The Queen Mary docked in Long Beach California! Jan. 31 and first couple of days of February 2017..

Did you have a good time?
.

Did you have a good time?

so far so good. 2 more days to go.
.

This is your time to make new friends and innkeepers, not reading innspiring! We know you miss us all so much!

 

[Arks]

Next year's AIHP meeting will be held on The Queen Mary docked in Long Beach California! Jan. 31 and first couple of days of February 2017..

Did you have a good time?
.

Did you have a good time?

so far so good. 2 more days to go.
.

This is your time to make new friends and innkeepers, not reading innspiring! We know you miss us all so much!

.

This is your time to make new friends and innkeepers...

Ha! You don't know me very well! I'm a loner. The worst thing for me at innkeeping meetings is that they've each become a people-person, used to chatting with strangers. They keep coming up to me, all friendly and bubbly, asking how things are going and making conversation, and I just want to hide in the back of the room, take notes, and get out of there!

 

[Lee2014]

Next year's AIHP meeting will be held on The Queen Mary docked in Long Beach California! Jan. 31 and first couple of days of February 2017..

Did you have a good time?
.

Did you have a good time?

so far so good. 2 more days to go.
.

This is your time to make new friends and innkeepers, not reading innspiring! We know you miss us all so much!

.

This is your time to make new friends and innkeepers...

Ha! You don't know me very well! I'm a loner. The worst thing for me at innkeeping meetings is that they've each become a people-person, used to chatting with strangers. They keep coming up to me, all friendly and bubbly, asking how things are going and making conversation, and I just want to hide in the back of the room, take notes, and get out of there!
.

Now we know why your inn is set up like that! Just come, stay, have a great time but leave me alone! Grr! Talk to me and I'll pull your teeth out! I have a hermit uncle, I understand.

You can pretend you don't understand English!

 

[Arks]

¿Qué? No entiendo.

 

[Lee2014]

¿Qué? No entiendo..

Si amigo!

 

[muirford]

Checked in to the convention hotel at 5 this evening, registered and got my tote bag and name tag. So I'm official now. Spending the evening drinking wine and planning what lectures I'll attend. The exhibitor marketplace has 59 booths, which is more than PAII had the time I attended their meeting..

Just remember to tell ten people each day about InnRewards.com and we won't give you too much of a hard time about running off on us!

So how was the trip with Tessie? Ready to brave it and make the dash to the East Shore?!?
.

So how was the trip with Tessie?

Really good trip. My first time to go so far from home and having to charge en route. It's my first time to charge at a Tesla supercharger. I stopped in Memphis at a Nissan dealership to use their high speed charger. (There is no Tesla supercharger near me. Innkeep loaned me her $450 adapter that lets the Tesla charge at a Nissan CHAdeMO high power charger)
They (Nissan) were very friendly about letting another brand car charge free at their charger. Tesla hasn't yet installed a supercharger in Memphis. I charged 30 miles more range than I calculated I'd need to reach the Nashville supercharger, and when I arrived at the charger I had exactly 30 miles range left on the car. Perfect. And that's driving 70 most of the way, with the A/C at my comfort level. So I'm very pleased!
But I want to talk about this conference. I'm blown away by the number of classes they offer, and the GREAT topics. I wish I could go to all of them. A lot of the classes are just 45 minutes long, meaning you can attend several each day. But I still had cases where I had to pick one among 4 I'd like to attend. They have 4 or 5 going at the same time, sometimes.
Lots of classes on websites, Facebook, Google, of course. But also on how to make towels fluffier. How to make beds the right way. How to cut food costs. How to make your breakfast a major selling point. Lots of things I'd love to attend if I had time. I'm definitely attending one given by the guys at Jumping Rocks. And how to create and price packages.
There are also classes on how to prepare your inn for sale, and how to attract buyers. And LOTS of classes for aspiring innkeepers. I expect to learn things here that will easily pay the cost of attending. It's a shame nobody else from Innspiring attended.
.

It is a real shame that their website was down the couple times I tried to get a look at it. It looks like you will be doing a lots of posting in the next couple weeks in passing on your new found knowledge to all of us poor souls.
Yes, you are the sole representation of Innspiring there this week (that we know of). That is quite a load to bear, but we are totally confident that you will not let us all down, but will be a good example and proudly promote our websites to those who are not aware of such wonderful places for innkeepers. But then you might get distracted and not meet new friends if we were all there.
I am very proud of Innkeep for letting you use her adapter. I know you will take good care of it and return it to her in good time so she can arrive safely out here with her vehicle. A gathering that you will miss out on this time…
.

Yes, you are the sole representation of Innspiring there this week (that we know of).

Yes, there was at least one other forum member there. Not me, I was innsitting for the owner of my former B&B, but I know someone who was in Nashville who is at least occasionally on here.

 

[Lee2014]

So how was the conference minus the chatty innkeepers you were dodging?

 

[Arks]

Great conference. I got more out of it than I did from the PAII conference I attended a few years ago.
Speakers and topics covered were excellent. Marketplace vendor booths were plentiful. Lots to look at. There was a new-to-me reservations system called Thin k Res ervations (no spaces) that sponsored a really good speaker on branding (presented to the whole conference). I saw a lot of people at their booth later so I think "Think" picked up several new customers.
I attended a good discussion of yield management (also called revenue management...like the airlines do, changing prices based on availability and day of the week and all that). Some of the reservation software has that built in to it, but they said the changing rates don't pass to the OTAs reliably so that's a problem. One of the speakers said he made $45,000 more last year than he would have made if he had just kept the rates the same all the time. And he pretty much admitted that he didn't even know what he was doing with it half the time!
Basically, his reservation system lets him define rules like "if they search for a room 6 to 10 days in advance, and there's only 1 room left, raise that room by 20%" or "if they search for a room 2 days from now and there are 4 rooms left, lower the rate by 10%". Stuff like that. The systems even let you combine rate rules, and set priority, so it can handle cases where two different rules might apply.
Good closing session for about an hour, with a panel answering questions from the whole group. The panel included the head of industry relations for TA, the general manager of bed and breakfast dot com, and some other industry leaders. 90% of the discussion was about Air.

 

[2cat_lady]

Great conference. I got more out of it than I did from the PAII conference I attended a few years ago.
Speakers and topics covered were excellent. Marketplace vendor booths were plentiful. Lots to look at. There was a new-to-me reservations system called Thin k Res ervations (no spaces) that sponsored a really good speaker on branding (presented to the whole conference). I saw a lot of people at their booth later so I think "Think" picked up several new customers.
I attended a good discussion of yield management (also called revenue management...like the airlines do, changing prices based on availability and day of the week and all that). Some of the reservation software has that built in to it, but they said the changing rates don't pass to the OTAs reliably so that's a problem. One of the speakers said he made $45,000 more last year than he would have made if he had just kept the rates the same all the time. And he pretty much admitted that he didn't even know what he was doing with it half the time!
Basically, his reservation system lets him define rules like "if they search for a room 6 to 10 days in advance, and there's only 1 room left, raise that room by 20%" or "if they search for a room 2 days from now and there are 4 rooms left, lower the rate by 10%". Stuff like that. The systems even let you combine rate rules, and set priority, so it can handle cases where two different rules might apply.
Good closing session for about an hour, with a panel answering questions from the whole group. The panel included the head of industry relations for TA, the general manager of bed and breakfast dot com, and some other industry leaders. 90% of the discussion was about Air..

So, what are your thoughts on the TA rep's presence. Are your views on team the same,better,worse?

 

[Arks]

Basically, his reservation system lets him define rules like "if they search for a room 6 to 10 days in advance, and there's only 1 room left, raise that room by 20%" or "if they search for a room 2 days from now and there are 4 rooms left, lower the rate by 10%". Stuff like that. The systems even let you combine rate rules, and set priority, so it can handle cases where two different rules might apply.
I found Yield Management buried in ResKey last night. It's on the Properties tab. I haven't activated it yet, but it looks useful. I also saw that one Innspiring innmate has already used it because he had posted a question or two about Yield Management on the ResKey support board.

I need to give it some thought about how I want it to work, and before I activate it I'll need to make some website changes to give a RANGE of rates, and tell people to enter their actual dates to see the rate being offered for that day.

Also need to figure out how it will work with my usual 20% discount for a stay of a week or more. I suppose it's straight forward. It calculates the rate for each day of the stay, adds them up, then reduces the total by 20%.

 

[Arks]

Great conference. I got more out of it than I did from the PAII conference I attended a few years ago.
Speakers and topics covered were excellent. Marketplace vendor booths were plentiful. Lots to look at. There was a new-to-me reservations system called Thin k Res ervations (no spaces) that sponsored a really good speaker on branding (presented to the whole conference). I saw a lot of people at their booth later so I think "Think" picked up several new customers.
I attended a good discussion of yield management (also called revenue management...like the airlines do, changing prices based on availability and day of the week and all that). Some of the reservation software has that built in to it, but they said the changing rates don't pass to the OTAs reliably so that's a problem. One of the speakers said he made $45,000 more last year than he would have made if he had just kept the rates the same all the time. And he pretty much admitted that he didn't even know what he was doing with it half the time!
Basically, his reservation system lets him define rules like "if they search for a room 6 to 10 days in advance, and there's only 1 room left, raise that room by 20%" or "if they search for a room 2 days from now and there are 4 rooms left, lower the rate by 10%". Stuff like that. The systems even let you combine rate rules, and set priority, so it can handle cases where two different rules might apply.
Good closing session for about an hour, with a panel answering questions from the whole group. The panel included the head of industry relations for TA, the general manager of bed and breakfast dot com, and some other industry leaders. 90% of the discussion was about Air..

So, what are your thoughts on the TA rep's presence. Are your views on team the same,better,worse?
.

So, what are your thoughts on the TA rep's presence. Are your views on team the same,better,worse?

He didn't really say a lot. One innkeeper stood up and said he was thinking of removing himself from TA because they keep upping the membership rates. The TA rep made it clear to him, in a nice way, that he cannot remove himself, that he will still be listed on TA whether he continues his paid business listing or not.
He explained what we already know, that business listings vary from inn to inn based on a yield management algorithm TA has worked out, and that if an inn thinks they are being overcharged, they can bring it to the attention of their TA rep and perhaps get a rate reduction.
TA wasn't the focus of the innkeepers. Air was.

 

[gillumhouse]

Basically, his reservation system lets him define rules like "if they search for a room 6 to 10 days in advance, and there's only 1 room left, raise that room by 20%" or "if they search for a room 2 days from now and there are 4 rooms left, lower the rate by 10%". Stuff like that. The systems even let you combine rate rules, and set priority, so it can handle cases where two different rules might apply.
I found Yield Management buried in ResKey last night. It's on the Properties tab. I haven't activated it yet, but it looks useful. I also saw that one Innspiring innmate has already used it because he had posted a question or two about Yield Management on the ResKey support board.

I need to give it some thought about how I want it to work, and before I activate it I'll need to make some website changes to give a RANGE of rates, and tell people to enter their actual dates to see the rate being offered for that day.

Also need to figure out how it will work with my usual 20% discount for a stay of a week or more. I suppose it's straight forward. It calculates the rate for each day of the stay, adds them up, then reduces the total by 20%..

It will be with an IF then statement. IF # of days is < 6 = 20% discount but written in math terms that at my advanced age cannot remember.