As ever, we try to be innovative and we have developed a way of harnessing local marketing power.

How many times have you picked up the phone receiver and said “Sorry we’re full”? These may be lost opportunities for your friendly B&B rivals in your locality. Your friendly rivals do the same, thereby, in return, losing you potential business.

If B&B owners do not co-operate locally and pass on leads to others via a local network they are passing up on a valuable source of business. The result is either a higher marketing spend than necessary or a lower occupancy rate. Here’s how our system works:

1. You will have an availability page on your own website. Enquirers are invited to contact you if you have room availability.

2. If you don’t have room availability, the enquirer will be invited to look at the availability of others in the network. This will have saved you the trouble of answering the phone. Moreover the business stays in the network.

3. When we have phone enquiries, those amongst us who already pass on leads to friendly rivals know that it’s time-consuming passing on phone numbers and names, without even knowing if they have availability. Not any more! You can either:

• tell the enquirer who has got rooms available after a glance at your monitor, or if you are away from your monitor
• invite the enquirer to go to www.bed.gb.com and check for himself

4. The system acts as a portal and potential guests will be directed to your website (if you have room availability) after they find the relevant town page of www.bedbreakfastavailability.co.uk.

Now try the functionality of our database by looking for room availability in Marlow, Bucks, using the search bar above, for any dates in 2007-8.

The cost:

• bundled in FREE into a website design & maintenance package
• £49.95 per annum as an add-on if you already have a website

The scheme illustrated: