A Call About Photographs

I was fascinated by a recent phone call. We’re about to launch an update to the website using a couple of new services for both the listing properties and their potential guests. We’re partnering with Jumping Rocks Photography to supply a broad collection of images from Inns and bed & breakfast properties from around the country. Their work is terrific, providing an accurate look at today’s hospitality options from our segment of the industry. But I digress, back to the phone call. The caller was interested to know from where we gathered the “stock images” on the new test site! Said caller went on to say the images were beautifully done, very clear, very representative of hospitality, romantic in tone, sophisticated, and finally shared that he thought even the food, which he thinks is a real challenge to photograph, looked amazingly delicious. I assured my caller that the images were in fact provided by Jumping Rocks Photography, who specialized in capturing the flavor of today’s Inns and bed & breakfasts from across the country. I further assured him they were true representations of the environments of these properties, not air-brushed or photo shopped to make the experience look potentially better than would actually be experienced by any future guest. The caller was amazed, simply amazed that there were places around the country that provided such great environments, food, and obvious extraordinary hospitality! We finished our business and I went about the rest of by day. But the exchange has come back to me time and again in the few days that have passed. Are there a lot of people who might not recognize that the images on so many property’s websites are images of the actual property and experience? Have we collectively done so poor a job sharing our experiences that people outside our sphere of influence don’t believe us? Are Inns and Bed & Breakfasts really so small an industry that the general public would more easily believe an air mattress on a bare floor is more likely the experience than the images that are painstaking produced in an effort to show the very contradictory actuality? Have the owners and operators of these professionally operated businesses gone so far beyond the public’s expectations that the average consumer doesn’t identify the images as reality? Or, are the Jumping Rocks photos just that good?! When I was an Innkeeper myself I went to any number of professional development workshops that encouraged us to under sell and over deliver. It made sense at the time. We would use phrases like, “we’re just a beautiful example of the period, offering warm hospitality and an abundant breakfast so no one goes away from the table hungry”. In fact, we were a five star, five diamond property with the highest quality of amenity, service, and extraordinary food. We wanted to provide that “wow” factor, far exceeding any expectations our guests might have had, and it worked every time. I took a call from a potential guest one evening who wanted to know if she was calling a “Bed and Dread”. I’ve told this story many times during my innkeeping days. I replied asking the caller what she was asking, because I didn’t understand the question. During the course of a brief conversation, she went on to explain, that while she’d never stayed at a B&B, she’d heard horror stories…..somewhere, not entirely sure where, and had vowed years ago to avoid B&Bs because of the stories she’d heard. Based on anecdotal stories, she’d discounted an entire segment of my industry! We owned and operated two properties, a large bed and breakfast and a small hotel. They were across the street from one another and identical in amenity, style, and service in practically every way. So I booked her a room in the hotel. I followed up with her while she stayed with us. She had a terrific stay, was thankful that we had hotel rooms available, and was planning to make a reservation for a year later before she left us! I will never forget the story, nor understand what she saw as the difference in her mind. Maybe as an industry we’re doing ourselves a dis-service. We’re underselling ourselves in an effort to wow our guests. But in the meantime the general public, potential guests, are not getting a true image of all the fabulousness that are the Inns and Bed & Breakfasts around the country. We have the photographs to prove fabulousness! It’s time Inns and Bed & Breakfasts toot their horns, and I don’t mean with a whimpy kazoo, but with the full power and force of 76 trombones and 110 cornets! This segment is truly, for a wide variety of reasons, a truly better way to stay, in fact by any measure it’s the only way to stay!