Last month this 2000 Tracking Study - Use of the Internet by Innkeepers profiled how various Web marketing and promotion strategies are paying off in higher Occupancy Rates. This month's article, the 3rd in a series of 4, reports on - How are Innkeepers and Guests using On-Line Tools such as E-mail, On-Line Availability and On-Line Reservations.

Use of the New On-line Tools
Increasingly communicating with guests is moving to an on-line format in lieu of more traditional means - telephone and mail/fax. Consider these facts:

• 99% of Innkeepers who have an e-mail address now include it on their web sites
• 71% of Guests said they would prefer to use initially e-mail instead of calling to ask questions about room availability
• 93% of e-mails received by Innkeepers contain a question about room availability

E-mail is fast becoming the preferred form for the Guest to ask that first question - "Do you have any rooms available for...?" Innkeepers are still experimenting as how best to manage this challenge. Several tools have been created to manage this challenge: E-mail Forms, Auto-Response tools, On-line Availability and On-line Reservation tools. All have a role to play in the accommodation industry.

Over the past year Innkeepers have thought about and experimented with software tools like on-line availability and on-line reservations. They report trial with all the tools and in particular 38% have tried on-line availability and 36% on-line reservations. Issues surrounding adoption of on-line tools are:

• How to maintain the personal Contact with the Guests/Control of booking process
• Commissions/Cost
• Effort required to Update
• Overbooking (in the case of on-line reservations)
• Guest preferences - which on-line format do they prefer to use and why: e-mail, on-line availability, on-line reservations

Innkeepers Use of E-mail forms, On-line Availability and On-line Reservations

	E-mail Contact Form	On-line Availability	On-line Reservations
Currently have or plan to have	46%	58%	36%
No Plans to Add	54%	42%	64%

Innkeepers are quite adept at looking at trade-offs and evaluating incentives and inducements to use new tools. Innkeepers were asked their opinions about recent incentives being offered by some vendors to trial on-line reservation tools and systems, 29% found the free software in exchange for commissions as an attractive offer while 33% maintain that it would not factor into the decision making. Thirty-eight percent (38%) said it was a dumb idea to start to pay commissions to get free software. Whereas Innkeepers acknowledge paying commissions may be on the horizon in order to use some "reservation" software tools, Innkeepers are pretty evenly split as to agreeing/disagreeing that it is inevitable.

Guests' Use of the Tools
Last year we flagged 2 new Guest driven trends - use of e-mail and on-line availability. We would like to conclude with an update on these trends referencing 2 Guest surveys subsequently conducted. Not only do on-line Guests prefer using e-mail to telephone, but also e-mail appears to inspire Guests to contact more B&B's. Frustrated by having to leave messages on voice mail systems and impatient with lengthy delays in response to their e-mail questions, Guests e-mail several B&B's: 95% of guests who use an electronic on-line format contact 2 or more B&B's about room availability before making a selection. This should raise some Innkeepers' eyebrows about answering your e-mail promptly! This tells us that a clear and simple competitive advantage exists for those Innkeepers who don't delay in responding to the Guest.

Most Guests, who have used an on-line room availability system, prefer to use on-line tools such as e-mail and on-line availability to check availability information on-line in the future. These 'Convenience Seekers' (97% either Strongly Agreed or Agreed Somewhat) also indicate that they have significant ambivalence about making the actual reservations on-line without talking to the Innkeeper. For those Innkeepers contemplating using an on-line reservation system (e.g., completion of the transaction on-line), they should consider the following: of the 60% of Guests who Strongly Agreed that on-line availability would be important to them in the future, less than 10% Strongly Agreed that they would "also like to actually book the room on-line without talking to anyone."

Clearly Guests don't view B&B's as a commodity purchase
Guests have a wide array of lodgings from which to select - B&B's, Hotels, Motels, etc. Innkeepers have worked hard to differentiate themselves from other types of accommodation. It's clear to us that Guests view staying at a B&B as a "special", a non-commodity purchase decision. So the question is: Should Innkeepers support anything that turns B&B's into a commodity product? - We think that based on the Guest Survey results the answer should clearly be NO!

In quick Summary here are our findings about the various on-line options:

1. Should Innkeepers make it easy to use E-Mail to ask about room-availability question - Absolutely yes - but be prepared to provide fast, prompt responses
2. Provide On-Line Availability - Yes
3. Provide On-Line Reservations - No - not at this time.

Don't forget to tune in next month to find out what the Guests have to say about all this. After all B&B's are in the "Hospitality Business" and the guests opinions are what ultimately counts the most.

We and our co-sponsors -- B&B Getaways (www.bbgetaways.com) and PAII (www.paii.org) would like to thank the many Innkeepers who contributed their time and input. As in all good research, you often raise more new questions than you help answer. These contribute to future research surveys that we may conduct and share with you. If you have questions you would want to include in future surveys, or if you want to participate on future surveys, please drop us a note by e-mail: info@digital-direct-marketing.com or write us at: DDM, A Communications Agency, Inc., P.O. Box 1039, Kingston, NY 12402.

Nothing contained in the above article can be used or reprinted without the express prior permission of the authors.