Review: bedandbreakfast.com
You MUST be listed on here. I have mixed reviews of some of the staff and philosophies of this site, but they have the biggest reach by far of all of the bed and breakfast listing sites. Check out your region and city and sign up for the lowest package that puts you near the top (visible when you first load the page). The “Premium” option at 699 is crazy in my opinion, but in some highly competitive markets, you may need to be there to even be seen.
The Good: The site has a “web 2.0 ish” design (although I am not a big fan of the new uuber blue look), the solid reach (places on page 1 of every state search for b&b on Google) and many internal pages have good pagerank.
The Bad: The site uses a lot of flashy elements and advertising from folks other than us innkeepers. The blue text is poor from a readability standpoint. Our personal experiences with the online reservations program and the gift card program have been poor. As the industry leader, they would gain the 5th star by adding a mobile search, reducing the clicks to the inns websites and toning down the non-inn advertising.
Our Inn Results: We advertise on BedandBreakfast.com. We are in a moderately competitive area on their site, there are about a dozen inns listed in our region. In the last 6 months we received 875 click throughs to our website from this one. The visitors viewed an average of 5 pages and spent an average of 4 minutes on our site. Of those there were 23 who followed our preset conversion path and became a reservation. (This does not account for others that may have become a reservation through alternate paths i.e. phone sale, return visit to our site or booking directly via an alternate channel). Overall, BedandBreakfast.com ranked 1st in our paid directory click through and conversions in the last 6 months.
My Ratings:
A 2008 Gold Medal Winner!
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The Stats:
Age of Domain: 9 years
Main Page Pagerank: 6
Number of Inbound Links: 82,694
AlexaRank: 53,774
Alternate Domain Names: Yes
Direct Links to Your Website: Yes - starting at the $299 per year package.
Least Expensive Membership (annual): $149
Most Expensive Membership (annual): $699
Notes about Packages and Membership: 4 packages to chose from. Main difference is the placement on the search result page as well as details of the inn and photos. Many options for bidding style placement as featured and inn of the month etc.
The Site:www.bedandbreakfast.com
Review Date: January 10, 2008
Agreed, as a B&B manager in Dublin / Ireland this is a must advertise in site.
We also have a free accommodation finding / booking service for all parts of Dublin called Almara Accommodations Dublin. We find and reserve Hostels,B&Bs and Hotels at no charge. Any size group from 1 to 100. If people prefer they can ask us for an availability search and we will give them contact details to reserve for themselves. See enquiry / advice form at www.almarabb.com/almaraa.htm or sister company at www.almarabb.com
We would be very interested to hear your comments.
Dear folks,
Thanks for taking the time to review our website!
Just wanted to update you on a few things:
- The blue text will be changed soon.
- A mobil app has been on the schedule for a couple of months and should be out by Summer.
- I would love some additional information on what is meant by “reducing the clicks to the inns websites”. You can search by Inn name right on the home page. So it is one-click to a property from most pages on the site (including the home page)…?
Thanks!
Eric Goldreyer
Founder & Owner
BedandBreakfast.com
Also new to the site is actual direct links. Prior to 2 days ago they were re-directed (click counter) links that were less valuable to your website. Now they are completely direct, with pretty useful anchor text to give the link meaning and your own website a bit more of a boost.
@innkeeper, you may want to alter your rating system as you seem to show any link to a B&B website as “direct” even when they are actual re-directs. DIrect links are more valuable than re-directs.
As a tiny B&B with a correspondingly tiny marketing budget I wish bedandbreakfast.com would include a link to my website in their lowest membership level. Only one B&B in my town even advertises on this directory, and they are rethinking whether it is worth the cost.
Otherwise, yes, it is a pretty and professional looking site.
BedandBreakfast.com is amazing!!!
In the past 30 days I’ve netted more than $5,000 from their referrals! BedandBreakfast.com is my #1 referring website - over 3X more than BBonline for customers, and almost 20X Lanier.
I couldn’t be making it without the support of BedandBreakfast.com - they, along with their ReZovation web design, technical support and easy to use resevation software, have done eveything they could to make my site and my business more successful.
The Staff both at BedandBreakfast.com and ReZovation are fantastic and are constantly working to improve my results. I consider them my best ally and would be at a complete loss without their support - and all for less than $100 per month - WOW! I love em! thanks guys!…..
The above comment should have included my Inn’s name “Inn on the Riverwalk” in San Antonio, Texas and website address for verification http://www.innontheriverwalksa.com Please feel free to add.
thanks!
J
We’ve read a lot of recent critiques about Alexa’s lack of accuracy, and suggest that you considering references Quantcast either instead of Alexa, or in addition.
Thanks, Sandy
I wish bedandbreakfast.com looked less like a discount travel site. That blue they use everywhere is garish and all the ads and lists all over the place are overwhelming. I get a headache trying to use the site. A cleaner, simpler design would better represent the kind of quality experience every b&b aims to provide.
Sandy,Thanks for your feedback. As you can see on the more recent reviews, iIn our new format we do include the Quantcast statistics. The main issue with using them exclusively is that if a site has not been “Quantified” by the site owner, their statistics are not very accurate. Our site is a work in progress and we appreciate this kind of input. Hopefully in the next few weeks the new site will launch, which includes user ratings - allowing our visitors to post their own ratings and results.
Chris - we couldnt agree more about the blue! If you look at Erics post earlier, he seems to indicate that the blue is going away… Lets hope he is correct!
Innkeeper, you may want to update your review. I just found out that bedandbfast.com raised their rates! As if they weren’t pricey enough! The lowest package with a link is now $350 (sorry, $349). At this price, you might want to advise your readers to check how this directory places in the search engines for their specific town, not just their state. There are lots of towns and small cities where bedandbfast.com don’t show up well. Small BnB’s in these areas might have to think a little harder before forking over this kind of money. Every situation is different, and I don’t think there are any ‘musts’ that apply across the board.