Tags
Bed & Breakfast, Bed and breakfast, Connecticut, innkeeper, JJ Ramberg, Makeover, Mike Michalowicz, MSNBC, Online Booking, Your Business
There’s an old saying, “He can’t see the forest for the trees”. It means that a person can become so fixated on the details they fail to see the big picture. Recently MSNBC ran a story on an innkeeper who was struggling with this very thing.
Mike Michalowicz, author of The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field, paid a visit to 36 year-old innkeeper Erika Hall – owner of Abbey’s Lantern Hill Inn in Ledyard, Connecticut. Mike visited Erica on MSNBC’s “Your Business” to give her inn a makeover. It wasn’t long before Mike realized that Erika was trying to manage the minutiae of the business without having a clear overall picture of the business. So MSNBC arranged for several experts to help her turn her business around.
One of her rooms had a makeover from Andrew Giannelli, an Interior Designer who specializes in bed and breakfasts. Erika was hesitant at first but gave the room top ratings when it was finished. Erika’s finances needed some help so MSNBC called in an Advanced Certified Quickbooks expert Dawn Brolin MSA to help Erika with her books. New photos of her rooms were taken by Christian Giannelli one of the preeminent photographers of inns and b&b’s in the country. MSNBC also sent a representative from TripAdvisor.com to help Erika with her website and promotions.
While the details can be important – just as important is to raise your sights from the trees and occasionally “check-in” with the forest.
One area Erika knew she needed help in was her reservations. Your Business host JJ Ramberg stated that online bookings have become the industry standard. Erika knew she had lost business by not accepting online bookings so Jeff Bryce with Reservation Nexus was called in to get her started. Jeff and Mike figured that ResNexus would increase her revenue and save her about 45 days each year just to start. That number would increase as Erika became more familiar with the system. Erika’s new reservation system was combined with a new website by Denise Blasevick owner of the S3 Agency. Together both will help Erika attract more people to her inn and ensure she captures every reservation possible.
In an earlier Suite Exchange article I related the experience of growing up surfing the beaches of Hawaii. Some beaches have dangerous riptides (strong columns of moving water) that can pull you out to open-ocean if you’re not careful. Often you don’t even realize you’re in a riptide because the sensation of movement is masked by the movement of the ocean. Many times the only way to tell if you have moved at all is to occasionally look up and check your position against a stationary landmark. Those early experiences taught me the important lesson of regularly looking up and “checking-in” to get my bearings.
Erika experienced this when the MSNBC team helped her “look up” and see the business from a more top down view. The net result is increased revenue and more free time. (maybe time to catch a few sets) While the details of the business are important – just as important is remembering to raise your sights from the trees and occasionally “check-in” with the forest.