What are the best online venues for listing a New England
(Connecticut) Inn that would generate a high number of click-throughs?
 Pay sites are not out of the question, if the fees are reasonable,
nor are the obvious, such as Travelocity, Hotels.com, etc.  Please
provide links to information about any fees that might be required.

Hello:

Your question was really interesting and as I specialize in travel
myself, I tried to come out with the best online websites that can
provide you with the highest ROI. To be honest with you websites like
hotels.com, expedia.com and other major travel portals do get a lot of
traffic but they require a wholesale rate and your hotel can get lost
into the directory. Therefore, I will recommend the four major
websites to advertise your inn and believe me that they get a lot of
traffic and if you are willing to advertise your inn as one of the
featured property, you will certainly get a very high Return on
investment. My advice is to target these “niche” website where not
only you pay little to advertise but get more traffic. MY SINCERE
ADVICE TO YOU is that get the best plan and from time to time
advertise your website as a featured property or some feature like
this because the rates are much much lower than other hotel portals
and magazines and your webpage is really SEEN.

Wherever possible, instead of providing you a summary of the rates, I
am providing a link to the “advertising rates” page so you can
yourself evaluate its feasibility.  Following are the results:

Bed & Breakfast Inns Online

Website: http://www.bbonline.com
Summary: This is definitely the top website for advertising your inn.
Don’t be confused by the name, the inns in the directory are a mix of
BB’s, Inns and small hotels. The website can generate huge revenue for
your inn as the average traffic to a listed Inn ranges from 3000 to
7500 visitors per annum, depending upon the advertising category. The
prices of listings are very cost-effective. Moreover, they give you a
satisfaction guarantee that you will drive traffic to your website.
Pricing levels and related information:
http://www.bbonline.com/innkeeper/pricing.html

Bed & Breakfast 

Website: http://www.bedandbreakfast.com
Summary: Another great website that can generate a lot of traffic. It
gets around 750000 visitors per month. The visibility of your website
depends upon the membership plan that you choose. My favorite is the
“featured inn” program that can truly generate a huge income if you
play your cards right. The website also allows your website to get
advertised in a variety of different travel portals and get you the
flexibility of reserving online. The website also provides you a 90
day money back guarantee.
Pricing levels: http://www.bedandbreakfast.com/innkeepers/levels.aspx

B&B List

Website: http://www.bblist.com
Summary: That is the first time I am recommending anyone to use this
service therefore be aware that this might or might not work with you.
SO why am I listing it here? This website has a marketing plan through
which it advertises its listings through a variety of media including
search engines. The technique that they described to promote the
listings sounds a good investment to me as I am aware of the search
engine optimization techniques. They also provide you with a minimum
traffic guarantee.
Pricing levels and marketing technique Information:
http://www.bnblist.com/Innkeep/innkeep.htm

New England Inn Keepers Association

http://www.newenglandinns.com
Summary: Joining this association will not only let you advertise on
their official website but will allow you to advertise your website on
many of the magazines in CT and New England. You will have a variety
of other marketing opportunities as well that can really make your
marketing campaign very successful.
How to Join and Marketing Opportunity Guide: 
http://www.newenglandinns.com/dbpages/d_join.cfm
(Please click on the marketing opportunities booklet for more info on
marketing opportunities)

Search Strategy:

My own travel industry experience.

Inns
New England inns
Bed and breakfast
Connecticut inns
New England hotels

Useful terms:

B&B AND New England
B & B marketing strategy.

Remember, this is not it. I am searching for other methods to promote
your website. I will look into major travel portals and magazines as
well. I will post my findings tomorrow i.e. Monday (EST). If you need
an answer early, please clarify. Thanks for asking.

Sincerely,

Leader-ga.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by belleair-ga on 10 Mar 2003 16:59 PST

This research is interesting - some of the sites don't seem all that
professionally done, however, which makes me wonder whether or not
they are truly viable.

How do you come to the conclusion that these have 'a lot of traffic'
and that they would yield the 'highest ROI'?

Also - did not see the additional information you indicated you would
post this morning.  Would you update me on when this will be available
please?

Thx.

---

Clarification of Answer by leader-ga on 10 Mar 2003 19:34 PST

Hello:

First of all please accept my apologies for posting late and secondly,
I messed up the name of the third website which is
http://www.bnblist.com instead of http://www.bblist.com. First let me
answer your concern and than I will list some other important
resources.

Number of visitors to these websites:
bedandbreakfast.com
http://www.bedandbreakfast.com/innkeepers/whyjoinbnb.aspx
BB online
http://www.bbonline.com/innkeeper/pricing.html

Now why do I say that the following websites can yield high ROI? And
of course their reputation. These websites are able to maintain top
rankings in the most popular search engines (see below), therefore if
your website is listed with any of these websites, the chances are
that you will be seen. Moreover, if you list your website on the top
or your hotel is a featured property, chances of getting more hits are
higher than if your hotel is hidden somewhere deep.

 Let’s take an example of search engines. Suppose anyone looking for
an inn in Connecticut, USA or New England is likely to use some of the
popular keywords such as bed and breakfast, Inns, New England inns or
Connecticut inns. The only search engine that tells us the number of
visitors to its website is http://www.overture.com. (see the end of
this discussion on how to use this feature). According to
http://www.overture.com the number of unique visitors that looked for
the above mentioned keyword in the month of Jan 2003 are:

bed and breakfast (119853)
inn (14040)
new England inns (1656); 
Connecticut inns (862); 
Now consider this: The websites that I mentioned have top rankings
(see below) in the search engines which get much much more traffic
than http://www.overture. For a comparison go to
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html

By comparing we can see that top three search engines get 8 times more
traffic than the http://www.overture.com. From which we can imply that
each of the top search engines get (*8) unique visitors for the
keywords. Now let us see what are the rankings of these websites on
the four keywords that I mentioned. (please note that these are not
the only keywords, there can be hundreds of them e,g new England bed
and breakfast (1681) and Connecticut bed and breakfast(1768). Here are
the rankings of the websites on top search engines for the four
randomly selected keywords:

Google
Keyword: Inn
4 http://www.bbonline.com

Keyword: Bed and breakfast
1 http://www.bedandbreakfast.com
3 http://www.bbonline.com
Also http://www.bedandbreakfast has the number one position in the
sponsored links.

Keyword: New England Inns
1 http://www.newenglandinns.com

Keyword: Connecticut Inns
2 http://www.bnblist.com

Overture* (disregard keywords new England inns and Connecticut inns as
there are not enough advertisers)

Keyword: Inn
2 http://www.bbonline.com

Keyword: bed and breakfast
10 http://www.bbonline.com

Yahoo
Keyword: Inn
4 http://www.bbonline.com
Also http://www.bbonline.com has the second position in the sponsored
rankings.

Keyword: bed and breakfast
2 http://www.bedandbreakfast.com
3 http://www.bblist.com
Keyword: New England Inns
2 http://www.newenglandinns.com

Keyword: Connecticut Inns
2 http://www.bnblist.com

AOL

Keyword: Inn
1 http://www.bedandbreakfast.com in sponsored listings
6 http://www.bbonline.com

Keyword: Bed and breakfast
1 http://www.bedandbreakfast.com
1 http://www.bedandbreakfast.com on sponsored listings
3 http://www.bbonline.com

Keyword: New England Inns
1 http://www.newenglandinns.com
3 http://www.bedandbreakfast.com on sponsored listings

Keyword:  Connecticut Inns
2 http://www.bnblist.com

MSN
Keyword: Inns
2 and 8 http://www.bbonline.com on sponsored listings

Keyword: bed and breakfast
3 http://www.bbonline.com
Top http://www.bedandbreakfast.com on the popular listings

Keyword: New England Inns
9 http://www.newenglandinns.com

Keyword: Connecticut Inns
No  listings in top 10

Lycos
Keyword: Inns
2 http://www.bbonline on sponsored listing
3 http://www.bbonline.com

Keyword: bed and breakfast
1 http://www.bedandbreakfast.com
6 http://www.bbonlinme.com

Keyword: New England inns
1 http://www.newenglandinns.com

Keyword: Connecticut Inns
No listings in top 10

This is the proof that the websites that I mentioned are really
serious about their marketability and are worth consideration. BUT
this is not the marketing promotion tool.

Here are the other important links that I promised:

Hotel Marketing Tools
http://www.hotelresource.com/hyper/sales_and_marketing/marketing/
Another hotel marketing website
http://www.arrivares.com/web_marketing/default.asp

Another promotion tool you might want to look at
http://www.hoteliernetwork.com/index.html

******HOW TO LOOK FOR THE NUMBER OF VISITORS ON OVERTURE******

While on the main page, click on the advertiser Center….than click on
‘tools’ form the top menu…….than click on ‘term suggestion tool’ from
the menu and type in whatever term you like.

Hope this will work, If not please clarify and I will answer your
inquiry. Thanks again for allowing me the opportunity to clarify.

Sincerely,
Leader-ga

Although the original answer supplied was interesting, it lacked
factual basis, relying largely instead on the user's experience, which
was not quantified.  The clarification posted yielded more in-depth
background, but still did not address the potential value of the more
mainstream sites such as travelocity, hotels.com, etc. except to the
extent that the researcher indicated that a wholesale rate would be
required.