A personal note from Lisa Kolb, Owner and Co-Founder of Acorn Marketing.
Dear Inn Owner,
The amount of misinformation that has been shared with me during this year's sales inquiries has, quite honestly, left me dumbfounded. Well-meaning inn owners have expressed with confidence and enthusiasm what they thought they knew, only to find out they had been misinformed.
Mark and I have been in this industry since 1996, and yes, over the years we have heard our share of misinformation. However, the increasing frequency, and quite frankly, ridiculous and unproven claims in recent years have left me very concerned.
If you don't know what the truth is, and by truth, I mean provable, without a shadow of a doubt truth, you are going to base financial marketing decisions on bad data. Those decisions are going to damage your bottom line, and potentially your business.
This is why we presented the webinar, Misinformation and the Innkeeper! this past Wednesday.
Please review the infographic below, and read the amazing stories of the crazy misinformation that we have heard in the last 6 months. If you too have been told or believe any of these inaccuracies, and would like proof as to why they are inaccurate, I'm happy to help.
Email help@acorn-is.com and include your question. We will meet with you virtually and show you why you may be dealing with misinformation.
Story 1 - Direct Traffic Is Good, Right?
I recently spoke with an innkeeper who was sharing how proud they were that 70% of their Google Analytics traffic was coming from direct traffic. In fact, they showed me the Google Analytics report from their current provider showing that direct traffic was indeed at 70%. However, what they didn't realize is that this is NOT a good thing, and definitely not something to be proud of. When you you have a large amount of direct referral traffic (over 30%), that means your referral tracking is not working correctly. You want your direct referrals to be as small as possible and have that data dispersed to the actual place the referral is coming from. Want to learn more? Register for our FREE webinar in August.
Story 2 - I Don't Need an ADA Room. I'm an Historic Property!
While discussing physical ADA guidelines with a newbie owner, I asked how many rooms they had. Since they had more than five rooms, I then asked which room was ADA compliant. They said they didn’t need to provide an accessible guest room because they were an historic property. I asked who told them that, and they said it was their real estate agent. All historic properties are still required to follow ADA guidelines. You may have various exemptions because you are historic, but you are not automatically 100% exempt just because you are historic. Not sure about your exemption status? Make sure you come to our free ADA webinar in July.
Story 3 - My Mobile Site Speed Doesn't Matter. My Desktop Is Fast!
I met an innkeeper at a 2022 innkeeping conference who had recently released a brand new website but was experiencing a downtrend in bookings. In an effort to help, we looked at their mobile load time and discovered it was 35+ seconds ("time to interactive") when using the mobile site. We then logged into Google Analytics and looked at their mobile bounce rates, because we know mobile is typically at least 50% of your traffic, and their bounce rates indicated they were losing 9.5 out of 10 mobile visitors. A pretty new design is nice, but speed may matter even more.
There are so many more stories to tell, which is why we put together the webinar. We encourage you to request access if you missed it live.
