Great meeting at Casa Flamboyant
Eddie & Tisha of Casa Sol in Old San Juan, Bill & Renée of Rainforest Inn in El Yunque, Margie of Casa Isabel in Condado, Asdrubal & Iones of Hacienda Iones in Florida plus our amazing hosts Ricky & Florin of Casa Flamboyant -- we were all together discussing our Puerto Rico Bed and Breakfast Association.
After we were served a magnificent lunch we sat down and covered:
1. Ways to offer our customers better service. Different cool ideas for little perks we can add like local Puerto Rico chocolate on the pillow or piña colada welcome drinks.
2. Features of the SelectRegistry (an international website of Boutique Inns) that we can emulate from their website and incorporate in our Association website. How our members are "Boutique Bed and Breakfasts" that offer more because we live on the property, act as concierge and serve a "sit-down" full home-cooked breakfast with gourmet touches.
3. How to offer "elopement" small wedding ceremonies and describe features like that on our websites. And speaking of websites we all agreed that our individual websites are the most important marketing tool we have.
4. We discussed the Puerto Rico B&B tour our association offers. Visitors booking our tour can stay in Old San Juan, out on the north west coast in Florida, in the El Yunque rainforest, near a river in Rio Grande. And all of our places offer different incredible activities which we are going to describe on the Association website so that guests can easily see what a myriad of possibilities the Puerto Rico B&B tour brings!
5. We strategized what to do to maintain our competitiveness in today’s sharing internet based market, what makes us different, the truth behind our offerings, that the real local experience is to stay with locals, learn from them, explore their surroundings and daily activities, savor the local foods, learn their culture and live the history. This and more is what a truly vested and certified Bed and Breakfast can offer to it's visitors.
We also talked about marketing opportunities and the importance of staying active within the association. And the importance of pricing our rooms to match our "high end" market.
Watching promotional videos about our different bed and breakfasts
After a round-table of productive discussions we showed our different advertising videos about our properties. Also Eddie showed a video of one of the weddings Casa Sol hosted as well as a couple of videos of guests who took advantage of our bed and breakfast tour and described their happy experience.