Jun

14

2017

9 Stargazing Guestrooms, “Bleisure” Travel, Easy Guest Experiences You Haven’t Thought Of

INNKEEPERS / INNKEEPING AS A CAREER  Posted by / 0 comments

Create Your Own Stargazing Guest Room – 9 Examples

Be inspired to create your own stargazing chamber with these 9 amazing guest rooms.  Light polution is everywhere these days and many are looking to see the night skys they grew up with. What better way to stargaze than from a cozy comfy bed whether it’s under a roll away roof, sheltered by a canopy or in the middle of a meadow. (There are 10 but I’m not counting the igloo!)

 

The stargazing bed below was fully booked in 2016

 

Turn Locals into Storytellers/Tour Guides

Savannah offers free guided tours with local citizens (see above). Consider suggesting this idea to your own visitors bureau or enlist a few amazing (possibly retired) local folks exclusively for your own inn (or for a prototype program for your town.)

I’ll never forget one of my favorite innkeepers, Lynn Montgomery, who later became a screenwriter. She took great pleasure in collecting stories of the people around her. Her inn is in a mountain town above Los Angeles. She met a local man, Ted Ducey, an old geezer/gold miner who had worked the area’s gold mines. She welcomed him to the inn (with whiskey, in this case), named the Ted Ducey room after him and let her guests know they would truly miss out if they didn’t meet an authentic Californian miner. He greaatly added to guests’ experiences.

 

How to find potential storytellers, senior tour guides

  • Senior citizen centers
  • Autobiography/memoir type writing classes

 

Interview Your Local Chefs for Your Inn’s Newsletter – Alice Waters’ Favorite Places

Here’s Chef Alice Waters advice to travelers. Use these questions and find unique content with a local chef’s advice on best places. Ms. Waters favorite places in Northern California include Muir Woods, Berkley, Marine County backroads. Adding unique content like this to your website and newsletters gives guests new aspirations to visit your inn and enjoy authentic experiences.  Read more…

 

Create a Collage About Summer

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a collage might be worth 3,000 words. A collage also takes up much less internet loading time, making your site come up more quickly. The photos above are from The Inn at Honey Run.  My favorite  designer at i Love Inns makes beautiful collages – so if you order a service today (newsletters, website, blogging) we’ll make one for you. Contact DRingler@iLoveInns.com.

 

Facebook – How Many Posts Do You Need?

Innkeepers sometimes wonder just how many posts are optimal on Facebook and on blogs. The latest recommendations for Facebook are to keep the content fresh by posting 3-4 times per week. (For Blogging today, most inns create one well researched blog per month, though some say more is better.)

 

 

 

 

2 Innkeeper Recipes: Oven Baked Bacon & Salmon Quiche

Watch for Bacon Thieves with Oven Baked Bacon from 10 Fitch inn’s Cheryl Barber Read more

Cheryl tells how to cook great bacon in several ways – look at her oven-prepared style.

 

 

 

And from Arizona’s Adobe Hacienda

Salmon Quiche

Ingredients:

  • 1 c chopped salmon
  • 1 c grated Swiss cheese
  • 1 c chopped onion – sauteed until translucent
  • 1 c of half and half
  • 6 eggs
  • ground pepper
  • fresh dill

Read more