Opening and Operating a Bed & Breakfast in the 21st Century: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Inn Keeping Success with Professional Online Marketing Strategies

by Amelia Painter

COLLECTOR'S EDITION - Expanded and Revised Second Edition of a must have guidebook to success in the Bed and Breakfast Industry in the 21st Century. Great for aspiring, new or experienced innkeepers. This book covers innkeeping basics, but addresses the Internet topics in detail and helps the reader understand the steps necessary to successfully market a B&B on the Internet.

220 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2007

About the author

Amelia Painter has been a staff writer for the national travel magazine "Bed & Breakfast America" and is the author of "Organic Container Gardening for All," "Opening and Operating a Bed & Breakfast in the 21st Century," "Discover Iowa: Cooking With Iowa Wines, Meats and Other Iowa Products," "Phantom: Queen of the Road," and "Surviving College" -- now out-of-print. Painter has many interests and often writes short pieces on non-fiction topics for newspapers and magazines.

Reviews

[Lee Youde · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by the President of the Iowa Bed and Breakfast Assocition, Mary Nichols (owner of the Hannah Marie County Inn), as she felt it would help me make some career decisions, as I was seriously thinking about adding a bed and breakfast experience to my existing Wedding Chapel.

This book was extemely helpful to me as it gave me an insight into the industry and made me very aware of the need to have a good handle on Internet technology for the hospitality business. Before reading this book all I knew about B&Bs was my own personal experiences staying at them as a guest.

I've since met the author of this book, but not in a B&B environment. I met her in a more artistic venue and discovered that we have a lot in common as she too loves dogs and loves photographing them, but I've also come to realize that she is a B&B Internet marketing expert. We've spent many hours discussing the operation of a bed and breakfast and I recently assisted her and her husband to close down their Iowa B&B.

According to the author, Amelia Painter, this book is now a bit out-of-date, BUT in my opinion, there is still great value between its covers as the basics of opening a bed and breakfast have not changed.

I highly recommend this book for anyone aspiring to own and operate a B&B. It really helped me realize that my property was not a good choice for this type of business. The book saved me from making a potentially expensive experiment.

[Lee Youde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amelia Painter

I purchased this in 2008 book at the Clay County Fair from the Iowa Bed & Breakfast Innkeepers Association -- they are the publishers of the book. I wanted to read it as I was considering the possibility of turning my property into a bed and breakfast establishment.

The book truly opened my eyes to the business side of owning a B&B as I mostly was attuned to the more romantic side of the possibility since I own and operate a wedding chapel.

This book most likely saved me thousand of dollars and tons of energy as its straight-forward discussions of the business side of the B&B industry gave me a wake-up call. I realized this option was not for me, at least not any time soon.

The other insights I received from reading this book was some very useful information about marketing on the Internet. Of course, the text was geared to the lodging industry, specifically bed and breakfasts, but there was a glossary of terms, a discussion on domain names, a detailed and easy to understand explanation of what a meta tag was and why websites have them, and much more. For this reason, I keep this book in my Reference Library.