FACEBOOK PLACES

In my Facebook news feeds I see that more and more of my friends Check-in in different places on Facebook. Cafes, bars, restaurants, hotels, airports and conference centers. Some of the businesses I follow offer Check-in Deals. Not having used those features myself, I got really interested in what they are and how B&B's can use them.

Summarizing Facebook Activity

Last 2 months there have beed a lot of good articles published on the Internet about marketing both for hotels and other businesses. Those who sollow us on Facebook, could see on our Facebook Page various links and comments. To summarize the history for those who did not follow, or do not want to go through all the posts on our wall, I decided to categorize and publish the links in this new post here.

So what attracted our attention the last months?

Dilemmas in Social Media. Are we ready to meet them?

It is easy to make a mistake in the social media. Øyvind Kvalnes at Handelshøyskolen BI in Bergen, Norway, has identified in his recent research five dilemmas that can come up. While social media give a fantastic opportunity to discover and create network with other people, it also gives us challenging situations. As Mr. Kvalnes puts it, one gets a chance to discover oneself just as the Greek philosopher Socrates suggested. Mr. Kvalnes himself is a philosopher and professor at the Trade University of Bergen.

Do's and don'ts on Facebook. Learn from the biggest.

Recently my friend had a trouble with her flight with Norwegian, one of the biggest operators in Scandinavia. So I went to the air-company’s Facebook page and found the Discussion Board where I could share my (in this case) her experience of their nonexistent customer care. But this post is not about the complaints, it is about how the air-companies handle the Facebook communication.

A good Website for B&B

After having talked about using blogs and Facebook for promoting B&B’s, it may seem that creating own Website is unnecessary. But it is not so. There are a lot of reasons, why a real website has to be made by innkeepers. First of all, on Facebook or even blog you can't choose design and present your business in a way you want it, in a way that your guests and partners would accept as serious. Yes, a lot of people hang out on Facebook, but when it comes to the presentation and booking, they still prefer to look at more content, with good-quality pictures etc. It is just more reliable. After all, anyone can create a blog or a Facebook without actually existing. A good Website will present your B&B and make you a desirable host.

Facebook and B&B

I have noticed that our post named "Facebook" attracts attention. It is of course not because all our readers want to join us on Facebook, but as I estimate it, because people want to know how to use Facebook in their business.

There have been a lot of excitemenet about Social Media and Marketing in Tourism. There are even conferences devoted to this topic: take for example EyeforTravel’s upcoming Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2011, EyeforTravel's Online Marketing & Social Media Europe Summit, Enter2012, Social Media Strategies for Travel North America. I did have a pleasure to be present at Enter2011 in Innbruck, where a lot of information was shared both from scholars and industry representatives. But one does not have to attend all the events to have a success in Online Marketing.

Our Facebook Page

To go along with own words, we invite you to join our group on Facebook and become the fan of our web-page there.

Bed&Breakfast and the development of the Internet

I am getting exciting updates from LinkedIn, the group of  "Hotel Marketing + Distribution + Revenue Management ". The recent post was from Seth's Blog, something about the best customers. Scrolling down to January, 18, a post about Internet attracted my attention. The thought of how does the Internet develop in the case of small hotel businesses came up. Are those stages realised and used by modern inn-keepers?