18 | Bed & Breakfast News | March - April 2016


B&B owners advised to


hotels across the country may be wasting their time if they expect the efforts they put into ‘social media’ to pay off in increased bookings.


Nearly six out of 10 (59%) accommodation providers polled by eviivo – the leading provider of booking management apps for independent UK hotels and B&Bs – admitted to using the likes of Facebook to encourage bookings.


A quarter of those surveyed said social media is “very important” to their business and 36% confessed to spending five hours or more on it each week. In addition, more than one in five (22%) spends money on paid advertising each month.


Analysts at eviivo say the picture is actually quite different - their latest research has found that being active on social media has very little impact on a hotel’s bottom line.


The company analysed bookings data for some of the 5,600 B&Bs and small hotels it works with; and has revealed that social media is responsible for a meagre 3.3% of the web traffic to hotels’ websites.


Thomas Messett, Chief Marketing Officer for eviivo


‘unlike Facebook’


Social media ‘generates only 1% of bookings’ while OTAs bring in 74%, study shows. According to a new study, B&Bs and small


OTAs remain ‘no. 1 source of revenue’


More importantly, the study found that only 0.75% of bookings made for independent hotels and B&Bs originates from social media – compared to 74% of bookings emanating from online travel agencies (OTAs) such as Expedia, Hotels. com, Laterooms, booking.com and others.


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