Hi,
Tomorrow’s the anniversary of the discovery of the x-ray (1895), Cortes conquered Mexico and Montana was admitted to the Union. Birth anniversaries include author Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind (1900), Hermann Rorschach (the ink blot test founder 1884) and pioneering female war corespondent Martha Gellhorn (1908).
I just came back from the PABBI conference, PABBI is the Pennsylvania Association of Innkeepers. It was held at State College this past Tuesday through Thursday. We just keep growing! Our first conference four years ago we had 60 Innkeepers and this year we had 122 Innkeepers, the pre-conference Aspiring Innkeeepers program grew to 26 aspiring Innkeepers and we had quite the cadre of excellent vendors ( growth of 53%)!
One of them, Jay Sethi, a retired Indian surgeon, his company J & S International hires people in the Himalayas to make detailed textiles. He has rugs, chair covers, pillow slips and other textile items. They are hand made and provide income for some of the poorest in the world. I picked up 9 pillow covers at just $8 a piece. Here they are:
As everyone knows, the United States is finally implementing the chip card process. I have received threatening letters from Heartland (my current credit card processor) that I needed a chip capable credit card processing machine for months. I called Heartland four months ago inquiring about getting a chip capable machine. I initially was told they did not have one for the lodging industry, they would contact me when they got one. I contacted Heartland again and was told they were getting ones that would work in the lodging industry and would contact me when they came in. I called a third time with the same result. There was several credit card processor represented at our conference, because of my frustration with Heartland, I spoke with two processors. The third processor was Blue Pay, you may remember me complaining about Blue Pay three years ago. They had assured me they had lower processing fees than Heartland. When I went to switch processors, Blue Pay reprogrammed my machine and it would not would not work. The phone number for support they gave me was for credit authorization and those folks didn’t have a phone number for technical support over the weekend. So I was stuck writing down credit card numbers to process Monday. When I attempted to reach my rep, he didn’t answer his phone (he always did immediately when trying to get me to switch). And he didn’t return my voice mails. I ended up cancelling the contract and went back to Heartland. Blue Pay had reprogrammed my credit card machine for their system. And they put something in my machine that Heartland couldn’t over ride. I ended up needing to buy a new machine. Obviously, I’m not interested in dealing with them. I ended up talking to Tom Weiskotten who has chip ready machines and clearly showed me how his fees were going to be less than Heartland.
Another big change for me will be my on-line reservation system. I’ve used Webervations since I opened up heer, customer service does not exist in that company. They are extremely cheap, $150 a year. May on line reservation systems charge that or more per month. That was the main reason I have stayed with them. You get what you pay for in life, I used them to securely receive credit card information and contact information I needed to process a reservation. The other ones do all that and then have a data base of all your guests information and you can use that much as I use ACT, another large an unresponsive company. I would take the information from Webervations manually move it into ACT and then keep track of my guests. With these newer systems all that is done with their system. And (this is a big AND) they open the door to what we refer to as OTA (online travel agents ie Expedia, Booking.com, etc). I can open my rooms to these venues when I feel like it. They have recently lowered their fees from 25 – 30% of the sale to 15%. So I go in and can close my inventory to them whenever I want. Like weekends, holiday, Steeler home games, etc. There’s no sense paying 15% commission when I am going to already sell out any way.
I do love getting away and meeting with other Innkeepers, it’s to the point that I am friends with most of the attendees. There is so much to learn and share. Not to mention I got to hang with my good friends Tony & Sue that live in State College.
Enjoy your weekend,
ed
