Christine Slade is an experienced “BandBer”. For the past 11 years, she has owned and run the highly praised Kiddicott Farm (ranked 2nd out of 77 Exeter B&Bs and Inns on TripAdvisor). Having started out with Yellow Pages and postcards in the windows of local shops, she has seen all the ways in which marketing a B&B has evolved over the years.
Her lovely property is set in 55 acres of glorious East Devon countryside, just 3 miles from the historic Roman Cathedral City of Exeter. All the en-suite bedrooms have rural views and the dining room overlooks the gardens and orchard. Surrounding the property, the pastures and meadows are home to deer, badger, fox and many native birds, including resident families of buzzards, sparrow hawk and kestrel.
1. How long have you run your B&B?
Eleven years.
2. What motivated you to open it originally?
In 1997 we sold everything we had – house, business, etc (would have sold the kids, but no buyers!) – to buy the ‘dream.’ We bought 55 acres of land with redundant agricultural buildings. But that was only the beginning! We then lived in very unsavoury accommodation for 4 years whilst we fought planners and neighbours tooth and nail to build on the footprint of redundant buildings. Our original dream of having a working farm with animals went down the drain, thanks to foot-and-mouth, BSE, etc. We had to earn an income, so we used two bedrooms in the main farmhouse and built a three-bedroom annex. Kiddicott Farm B&B was born!
3. How long have you had a website?
Eight years.
4. How did you advertise your B&B before you had a website?
Yellow Pages. Postcards in village shops. We also went to a few events at WestPoint Exhibition Centre and literally gave out scraps of paper with scribbled contact details on. We had business cards printed and gave them away to various businesses. We also sent a cover letter about Kiddicott Farm to hundreds of companies that I thought might have reps/colleagues coming to Exeter.
5. Have you ever paid for Google advertising?
Yes. I had one of their first £50 vouchers – I tried it for 3 months, but didn’t notice much difference. Every business is at the mercy of Google; they are the only search engine of worth. We all want to be on the first page of their search results but unless you are extremely tech savvy and keep up with their “spiders” and the quiet but deadly tweaks they make, this is very difficult to achieve.
6. Do you find you get fewer website visitors these days through natural listings (e.g. “Exeter B&Bs”)?
Yes. Up until February of this year, business had been reasonable – just enough to make a living. But throughout Feb/March/April everything went completely dead, almost to the point where Kiddicott Farm was getting so few searches that it looked as if it had been removed from the Web! I had been having the distinct feeling that something was seriously amiss! About 3 weeks ago, I had a phone call from Yell.com. I chatted to the guy and he asked me if I had a Facebook page. I replied that I had started one ages ago, but I couldn’t get on with it and it was still lurking somewhere in my ‘to do’ file. He was adamant that I should get a business page up and running as fast as possible. After doing some research, I found that Google have turned the whole search optimum on its head. Key words and phrases are no longer the Holy Grail – website ‘movement’ is the new elixir. Websites are now not only an integral part of any business, they are a physical necessity to be nurtured, cleaned and fed – as you would prepare a bedroom and feed a guest. Google will not entertain a static page anymore; you have to keep on refreshing the content. This is coupled with the obvious marriage between Google and Facebook.
7. Do you get any guests who find out about you in other ways (e.g. not via the internet)?
Only word of mouth recommendations – very few.
8. Have you thought of offering online booking through your website?
Yes, didn’t really want to do this, but might have to.
9. What do you think is the most important thing the government could do to help B&B owners in these difficult economic times?
If they were to do anything at all, it would be an improvement on what they do now, which is nothing! I wanted to register with Booking.com, only to learn that you have to pay 15% commission – fair enough, but on top of this is 20% VAT – on a £50 overnight stay I lose 35% – I’m not VAT registered.
10. Any other tips?
Normally my phone is ringing off the hook around this time of year: Devon County Show week etc. We are always listed on the website and in their booklet. I thought I had better check out their website to make sure it was all working, only to find that we are not listed! Normally they send out renewal packs in January, but had omitted to send one to me. Consequently, I’m off the radar. So, this could be a lesson for other B&B-ers: keep a diary record of whom you are ‘registered’ with – e.g. B&B/Accommodation Directories – noting when renewals are due.
An interesting interview.
I would strongly reccommend getting adding an offline booking widgetb to your website.
We use one which is commission free. There is a purchase cost which we feel is reasonable and it is provided by the Queensborough Groub and the system is called Q Book. We find it easy to manage.
You could also set up an arrangement with Laterooms.com at the same time. The advantage of their system is that you do not always have to give an allocation and so can have yourrooms ‘on request’ and then close it out when you are full or nearly full or whenever you want to.
Dear Christine,
Thank you for including us on theBandBer news site.
We have also suffered from internet invisibility and resorted to joining facebook and twitter, meanwhile we are reliant onrepeat trade and word of mouth.
Keep up the good work!
kind regards,
Richard.
Hi,
Thank you for sharing many interesting facts and may I say you are very lucky having such a wonderful B&B lifestyle!
Regarding your comment about the booking.com fees being 35% of your room rate.
You are as far as I am aware incorrect as the total fee is only about 18%! The vat is added on to the 15% commission only.
My wife & I use booking.com a lot and find them to be extremely efficient at generating bookings throughout the seasons and well worth the commission.
Kind regards,
Stuart
Dear Christine,
Thank you for including us on theBandBer, we have experienced similar problems with invisibility on the web. We too have joined facebook and twitter and are hoping things will improve, meanwhile we are relying on our regulers to spread the word.
Keep up the good work!
Dear Christine
We started our B&B De Montalt Wood in Feb this year and I found your article very interesting.
Re plummeting hits – we spent £300 per month in Dec Jan Feb March to an SEO company to build links to our Web site for the keywords “B&B Bath”. It worked well , about 60 hits in March. Then 1st April our hits, too, dropped, and have remained at about 8 – 15 per month since.
I now know that Google changed their algorithm on that date with operation Penguin. This ceased all links from specialist sites whose only purpose was to cajole Google Robots into thinking loads of real people were linking back too us when, in fact, they (the specialist sites) were merely allowing SEO companies to upload trashy articles which they never expected anything other than Google robots to read. We are now in dispute with our SEO company who, we maintain, should have been aware that Google were bound to have prevented this practice because they keep urging Genuine content.
About the same time we also paid £150 for a commercial outfit to set up an optimised commercial facebook page for our B&B with 500 guaranteed “friends”. At present I dare not active the account for fear of that, too, being contrary to the spirit of “genuineness”. I am looking into it.
But we have a twitter account and a Google Plus account. For those who don’t know, G Plus is a sort of Facebook on steroids and hopefully will maintain is momentum of increasing its user base. Currently, Facebook and twitter are King but the highest power, I understand, is to have a blog on your own web site for which WordPress, Drupal or Joomla are indispensible.
So it does seem that us B&Bers have got to get verbose from now on!
HI to you all,
I,m finding interesting about google ,and lately find too you have to start changing things around to stay up on the pages .
I too use Queeenborough and think they are very good but i wish they would bring a better deal out for intergrating booking.com and soon to follow Expedia hotels.com , you pay commission,s then at present £1.00 per booking and whilst this is not expensive added on top each month it all adds up for small businesses. did get a cancellation via booking .com and Queensborough still charged me the fee as it is linked via my diary system.
Good luck every one.
We use MyukTravel which works on the same basis as the Queensborough group – you pay a set amount one price for free online booking (ie commission free) through your web site which is live. 2nd price is if you would like to add a property management system which is attached to laterooms, booking.com or any online system you wish to add on which all increases your exposure ie customer books with booking.com it takes that room off the other sites automatically so you don’t get overbooked. Its not cheap but means I can spend the time saved (that i was messing about updating everything) for direct marketing and working on my blogging and social media which has in turn led to bookings through the web site which are commission free. I would also say an advantage to Myuktravel over queensborough is you can change commission rates on a daily basis ie say I know the tuesday and wednesday of a particular week are very quiet I could put the commission up to 17% to push sales if I chose to and the rate would return to normal on the thursday.
Also Booking.com – we no longer have to pay VAT on commission to them since July it is due to them moving abroad or something but does give them a competative advantage over laterooms to which you still have to pay VAT on commission.