As small business owners, it seems we are constantly receiving calls verifying our business information. In the slower season it can be 4-6 calls per day, though it seems to slow down a bit in the busy season. Not long ago, a thread on an online innkeepers’ forum discussed this issue, and it seemed appropriate to discuss it here, as well, for a broader audience. It is the nature of innkeepers to want to be helpful, so verifying business information seems helpful, painless and appropriate.

A recent post from Daniel Edward Craig on the 4 Hoteliers site(and re-posted in other places) has caused me to reflect a bit on the “business is business” side of things, as compared to the warmer, fuzzier, guest satisfaction side. The article from Daniel Craig was based on a question he had received, asking if your hotel ranks at the top on TripAdvisor, are you not charging enough? Daniel surveyed a number of lodging professionals (hoteliers and consultants), and received a variety of answers.

Rules, rules rules. Our lives are filled with rules, and many of them are essential to an orderly civilization. Sometimes, though, it seems that even in a hospitality industry, innkeepers can become consumed with the idea that little signs (house rules) around the house can solve their problems. Rules, rules, rules! But I’m on vacation! Most of us have visited a B&B where there were little cards everywhere you turn. Each card has a rule on it.

Several weeks ago we posted our concerns over the significant drop in BBOnline traffic (referrals) following their site redesign late last year. When we heard from BBOnline, the response was disconcerting, so we posted further concerns. More recently online innkeeping forums (both public and private) have had active discussions about the drops in BBOnline traffic to inn websites. Significantly, while the exact amount of traffic loss varied from inn to inn, no innkeepers reported gains or traffic staying constant from year to year.

This isn’t a rant against Google. Really, it isn’t. But it is an interesting customer service lesson for small businesses, taken from large businesses. Most people who are in business can see first hand the value of good customer service. For small businesses, especially those in hospitality, this is particularly true. In the hospitality business, good customer service can lead to good reviews on TripAdvisor or other services. It can also lead to instant gratification when you see the smiles on the faces of your guests/customers, hear the sincerity in their voices when they thank you for the time they’ve spent at your establishment, and promise to return.

Should your website or blog have a privacy policy? Why would you want to have one? Are there any laws that require a privacy policy? Do small businesses (like bed and breakfast inns) need a privacy policy? What should my privacy policy include? Having a privacy policy is not something most small businesses think about when they think about content for their website. But should they? The short answer is yes.

We’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Pinterestlately, but surprisingly little of it comes from within the Innkeeping community. I say it is surprising, because Pinterest seems almost as if it was made for innkeepers – it is easy to use (we jumped in for our Freeport Maine B&B, and were happily pinning awayin minutes), plentiful graphics grab the attention of the visitor, and it is so addictive that users stay connected for a long time.

Will your failed effort to repair your online reputation sink your business? Stories about bad (and occasionally good) reputation management efforts have become all too common. Still, businesses often don’t get it. You can run, but you can’t hide! You can’t avoid the impact to your reputation by staying away from social media – you just don’t know what’s being said about you (whether positive or negative). We all make mistakes, so the best thing to do is plan how to deal with them.

Yet another Facebook change! After the “accidental” slip of Facebook pages a few weeks ago cause so much uproar (navigation moved to small text on the left side of pages, no more ability to designate the landing tab, etc.), we suspected that a major change to the appearance of pages was about to appear. Last night it did. Page admins will have received an email telling them about the wonderful new “features” and encouraging the admin to switch to the new layout now.

As if you needed another reason to claim your Google Place page, the most compelling reason yet has now appeared. It is ridiculously easy (unless or until Google has fixed it) for a scammer to claim someone else’s Place Page if they have a mailing address in the same town as the business. Don’t believe me? Mike Blumenthaluncovered the way to do it, and it is quoted in detail at Search Engine Roundtable.

Recently the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII)asked me to do a webinar on building a dashboard to aid in online reputation monitoring. I had read a really good article on the topica year or so ago, so put some of that information to good use, added a bit of my own, and created the presentation. The presentation (slightly adapted) is below. One note from the audio (which isn’t included) is that at the time of the presentation the TweetBeep.

In recent weeks others in the travel and tourism industry have been highly critical of review site TripAdvisor for various shortcomings in its administration of its online lodging reviews (and other reviews, as well). The concerns expressed are world-wide, not simply the complaints of a few, in a small part of the world. This post is an attempt to gather and synthesize the concerns, to try to identify the core problem, and to suggest improvement.

As review sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and others, supplemented by the more specifically-targeted sites like the bed and breakfast directory reviews, become so very important to small lodging properties, Google did not miss out, and began adding reviews from many of these sites on their “Place Page” (formerly Local Business Center) for the business reviewed. Google’s next step was to add the ability to review a property directly on the Place Page.

Not so many years ago, as the use of the internet technologies was maturing, there was a lot of talk about the leveling of the playing field, allowing the smaller businesses to compete with the larger. You don’t hear so much about that, these days. As businesses of all sizes have turned to internet marketing and social media to build relationships with customers and potential customers, the scales have reverted to the same imbalance as in traditional marketing.

Amid all the frenzy of keeping up with Twitter and Facebook and now Foursquare and YouTube and Blogging and sorting out which directories to list on, and responding to the never-ending flow of emails from directories telling you to hurry and post your latest specials for this month, your latest photos, your latest hot deals, your best recipes and oh, yes, did you remember that you actually have a business to run?

When you think about it, attempting to provide security in a medium (social media) where the objective is to share (at least to some degree) personal aspects of your life, doesn’t make much sense. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that Mark Zukerberg of Facebook famously declared that privacy is dead. But is it? Should it be that way? Even with Facebook moving the goal posts every few weeks, and changing the way you control access to your data, and sometimes defaulting to very poor choices, you still have some opportunities to control what you share outside your circle of friends (real friends, I mean, not just Facebook “friends”).

What holds you back from using social media (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, or others) to market your property? We’ve address some of the barriers in earlier posts (see, for example, What Good is Social Media?, or click the Social Media link in the tag cloud below right), but another barrier is time. One of the commonly asked questions is, “How much time do you spend on social media?” The answer is (and should be) different for different people.

Today Google announced its new “Google Places” program– which is a new name, and several new aspects, for its Local Business Center. While many things will remain the same, there are some important new additions being rolled out gradually. These could have quite an impact on businesses – especially smaller lodging properties. A few weeks ago Google signaled the beginning of this change, by calling the Local Business Center listing a Place Page.

A few weeks ago, at the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) annual conference in Austin, Texas, we did a presentation called Managing Your Online Reputation. If the ideas expressed there (guests posting video, reviews, photos, etc., on Facebook and other social media sites before even leaving the property) are not enough to motivate you to take some steps toward monitoring what is being said online about your business, perhaps this latest scam will.

At this week’s 2010 PAII Innkeeping Conference, we presented a workshop on Reputation Management. The slides from that presentation are below. Some of the attendees at the session had specific questions, and the audio will reflect those questions and answers. The audio will be available for purchase from the PAII website. If you have questions, please feel free to contact us or leave a comment.

Even as many B&B’s and small lodging properties are jumping on the social media bandwagon, experimenting with Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and many other social media avenues, a sizeable number of innkeepers are digging in their heels, figuratively at least, objecting that there is little evidence that participating in < put social media network here > actually provides real reservations. So, when all is said and done, is there any measurable return on investment (ROI) from social media?