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BedandBreakfast.com reviews widget

Add the reviews widget to your website by May 30, and you'll be entered into a drawing for $1,000!

Now you can easily display your preferred selection of BedandBreakfast.com reviews right on your own website! Just follow these easy steps:

1. Log in to your Home Base, and click Reviews Widget in the table under Free Member Benefits.
2. Create your customized BedandBreakfast.com Reviews Widget in a few easy steps. Play with the layouts, click the radio buttons to change the rating colors, and click the boxes to change the text and background colors. Go for combinations that are easy to read and match the colors on your website.
3. Don't forget to click the Pick reviews for your widget link in the upper left-hand corner of the Reviews page to filter out any reviews you do not want to appear on your website. This will not affect the display of reviews on your BedandBreakfast.com listing.
4. If you have a RezOvation website, we will add the widget to your website absolutely FREE! Contact Support@RezOvation.com or 866-565-1800.

Many innkeepers have already added the widget to their websites! Here are a few examples of the different variations of the widget. Remember that you can use any or all of these on the appropriate places on your website:

Horizontal: Sweet Dreams Luxury Inn, Abbotsford, BC (scroll down)
Vertical: The Australian Walkabout Inn, Lancaster, PA
Compact: Bykenhulle House, Hopewell Junction, NY
Full page: Pinehill Inn, Oregon, IL

Including the widget on your website will help you add more reviews and increase reservations generated by your website. It will also help you save $5 a month on your BedandBreakfast.com membership. Every month a review is posted on your paid listing, we will credit your account $5; save up to $60 per year! Since the program launched in January, our members have been credited $8,329!

TripAdvisor and BedandBreakfast.com

Did you notice that when you clicked TripAdvisor’s links to Hotel photos, Map this hotel, and Hotel amenities for your property in the past, you were taken to web pages that covered all the hotels around you, but not your property? BedandBreakfast.com is solving the problem!

Previously, if you were bookable on Expedia or hotels.com (remember that Trip Advisor, Expedia.com, hotels.com are all under the same ownership), then these links went to your information on Expedia.com or hotels.com. If you were not bookable on one of these sites, the links typically connected to all other properties around you that were bookable. Either way, there were no links to pages with a property’s website or telephone information. TripAdvisor has no “self-serve” advertising model and no ability for properties to go in and control those links; unlike Google or Yahoo, for example, TripAdvisor is not equipped to handle thousands and thousands of individual advertisers.

We are now testing a relationship with TripAdvisor so that their 8 million monthly visitors can click through to some of the detailed listings on BedandBreakfast.com, which includes links to your website, your phone number, availability calendar, and more. We will keep you posted of the results of this test.

More BedandBreakfast.com members are now on Kayak.com

BedandBreakfast.com has had a distribution partnership with Kayak and SideStep for some time now. Until recently, only BedandBreakfast.com members that had “live” availability (through the BedandBreakfast.com Online Reservations program) would appear on these sites. We’ve recently expanded that partnership to potentially benefit all of our members! Now when potential guests use Kayak.com to find accommodations, any of our BedandBreakfast.com members could appear in the results. Travelers are linked to your detailed listing for photos, room descriptions, and links to your website and availability calendar. This is just another way we're driving potential guests to the B&B industry.

Connect with CEO Eric Goldreyer

Subscribe to Eric's blog to stay updated on news from BedandBreakfast.com, Inns.com, RezOvation, and Webervations. Here's a little bit from a recent post:

Click here to read the rest, plus posts about return on investment, credit card security, and how shield your rate integrity and protect your RevPAR. We welcome your comments!

Also, follow Eric on Twitter for late-breaking news and updates!

Free webinars for BedandBreakfast.com members

Watch your inbox for invitations to our new free webinars! We've given several webinars for different sections of the country. We've worked out the kinks and are ready for more! Upcoming topics include Yield Management: It's Not Just for Hotels, Selling the Value of B&Bs over Hotels, and Reviews -- Use It or Lose It.

Here's what webinar participants are saying:

"I thought yesterday's webinar was chock full of great information. The webinars are a very valuable service that BedandBreakfast.com provides and I truly appreciate the information." Charlotte, Ardmore Inn, Woodstock, VT

"Took a more ideas away than I was expecting! Thank you!" Jill Ryan, The Inn at Black Star Farms, Suttons Bay, MI

"Thank you for your valuable suggestions. I got a whole page of suggestions that we'll be trying to implement in our 2009 marketing efforts." David, Burgundy Lane B&B, Waynesboro, PA

"I thought the webinar was extremely helpful. It provided a number of new ideas we had not considered. We will be looking into several new advertising venues such as blogs and facebook/myspace/twitter. Thank you for a very informative, useful and enjoyable experience. We would like a copy of the presentation." Mornington Rose B&B, Stratford, ON

122 videos are live on BedandBreakfast.com

Don't forget that Silver members and above get one free video on their listing. Mail us a copy of your video on a CD or DVD, or use the free website MegaUpload to send your video files to us. On the MegaUpload home page, click Language at the top of the screen, then select your country. Next, browse to select your file, enter our email address (Support@BedandBreakfast.com) and your inn's name and contact information, and click Send! Be sure to include your name and contact info so that we know to which listing to upload the video.

When we get your video (by either mail or email) we will send you a confirming email to let you know we’ve received it. If you've sent a video but haven't received confirmation of its receipt, please contact us; we may have not received it.

Here are the requirements:

• Size: Maximum 100 MB.
• Video compression format: Video files from most digital cameras, camcorders, and cell phones in the .WMV, .AVI, and .MPG file formats are OK.
• Time: Three minutes is ideal; 10-minute maximum.
• Copyrighted content: Please ensure that your video does not contain music or images to which you do not own the copyright.

We will format your videos to the right compression and size. Click here to see a sample video.

Please don't hesitate to contact with any questions: Support@BedandBreakfast.com, 1-800-GO-B-AND-B or 1-512-322-2700.