Wednesday, April 18, 2007

PAII Conference

We recently attended the 2007 PAII Conference in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. If you are an Innkeeper or want to become an Innkeeper someday, you should make a point to attend these Conferences. The PAII Conferences and trade shows are not only a great opportunity to network, but they are also a source of inspiration. New products, distributors, and ideas abound. We hope to see you at the next Conference!

If you were not able to attend the most recent PAII Conference, we wanted to share our slideshow presentations with you:

Food and Alcohol Safety Issues for Innkeepers

Exit Strategies for Inns with Restaurants

Creative Electronic Marketing

Monday, April 16, 2007

E-Mail Address Are Important!

Recently we attended a national conference and happened to gather a sizable number of business cards from innkeepers requesting additional information from us. We are always happy to respond and answer questions and to forward additional information. We came back from the conference and started to work on fulfilling the requests. We sat down, separated the requests into piles for similar requests, and then came to a screeching halt! Much to our surprise over 50% of the business cards contained no e-mail addresses! The innkeepers were diligent about furnishing their website addresses, but no e-mail addresses. So off we went to track down the website address and dig through the websites to find their e-mail addresses. Even then, some of the websites didn’t actually list their e-mail address.

So our question today is: do people know how important it is to put an e-mail address on their business cards? By the look of this independent survey, I would say no. In the world of ever changing technology, an e-mail address is as important as a telephone number. So, if you don’t have an e-mail address on your business card, fix it! A guest may just want to drop you an e-mail to say that they had a lovely time at your innor they may have left something that they would like to have forwarded to them. Other situations could include wanting to purchase gift certificates, asking to send a brochure to a friend, asking to share a special recipe, and more! Guests aren’t the only receiver of your business cards. This could include business acquaintances (like us), vendors, local trade people, and more. It is much easier for people to keep a business card versus a brochure.

In closing, we encourage everyone to step back and evaluate your business cards…e-mail addresses are important!