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American B&B: We are Unique and Specific

As an owner of an historic, 5-room B&B, I believe that, until Booking creates a separate sub-site that caters specifically to BnB, historic inns and independent family-owned hotels, our travel and tourism niche will never attain proper visibility and will not be served well. The B&B, particularly the American B&B, is an easily-defined and distinct niche in the market. When people search for a "hotel" they do not expect to a "B&B" to be among he search results. When they search for a "B&B" they do not want a "hotel" to be included in the search. As a result, we are the "red-headed step-child" of mega-booking sites. Then, when we try to fit our sterling properties into the cookie-cutter model of the exit-ramp dormitories, we inevitably are either dumbed-down to looking like them or culled out by the search values. It's not working well for me and i think the Booking (and the others) need to address it or we need to form a separate "BookingB&B.com" site that also answers the "uberizing" of our brand.


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Saad Zyada 5 years ago

Booking.com used to have "Villas.com" another website for b&bs and other non-hotel accommodations.

But it obviously didn't show great success.

In the mean time the search results now are based on the guest preferences

ie. if a client used to look for B&Bs you will appear on the top of the list for him

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Thomas Joseph Lynch 5 years ago

Thanks for the input. Villas.com was a vacation home site and nothing to do with B&B's. It was an early effort at the "homeaway" concept carried out poorly.

People who search specifically for B&B's do not search on BDC. If you accept my premise that B&B's are a unique subset of travel destinations then they do not fit well in the BDC model. The question of us and DBC is the same: how to maximize visibility, stays and $$.