Making Agritourism a Part of Your Business

April 22nd, 2011 by

Agritourism and your bed and breakfast

Offer your guests the experience of harvesting produce for an evening meal.

For many decades people have traveled to their favorite pumpkin patches, dude ranches, corn mazes and farms, loading the kids in the car and making their way out to see rural America.  Agritourism isn’t a new idea in travel. The new idea is that Agritourism can be marketed as destination travel. By developing travel packages that include farm based activities and services, these packages will provide marketing weight to draw visitors to your business.

The most recent study conducted by the US Department of Agriculture showed that Agritourism is a $556 million dollar a year industry. Can you become a part of this growing industry?

Agritourism includes a wide variety of farm and farm-related activities, including:

  • Recreation: Fly Fishing, Hunting, Bird Watching and Horseback Riding.
  • Education: Canning Classes, Cooking Classes, Wine tasting and Tours.
  • Entertainment: Festivals, Harvest Parties and Petting Zoos.
  • Hospitality Services: Lodging, Farm to Fork and Guided Tours.
  • Direct Sales: Farmers Markets, Souvenirs and Fruit Stands.

If your business is involved already in the above mentioned activities, you will want to check out Farm Stay U.S. This is a free listing site (enhanced listing range between $200-$300 a year) that allow people to explore and learn more about business that are part of the agritourism industry. Farm Stay U.S. features 750 businesses in all 50 states.

Don’t miss out on becoming a part of this growing industry. As America turns towards a healthy and more sustainable future, travelers will turn towards vacationing and visiting places that support these efforts.

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New website design for The Jackson House Inn

April 21st, 2011 by

A warm-hearted congratulations to Rick and Kathy Terwelp, innkeepers of The Jackson House Inn in Woodstock Vermont! Rick and Kathy recently became the owners and reopened the 1890 old Victorian home Bed and Breakfast, and came to us at InsideOut to host and re-design the website. They had beautiful photography of their recently rejuvenated inn taken by Christian Giannelli, which is showcased throughout the new website. Show worthy features of the Jackson House Inn include classic New England-style guest rooms and spacious one-room suites, well suited grounds and property for beautiful weddings and group events, and delightful homemade breakfasts made with fresh local ingredients, surrounded by a breathtaking view of the gardens and distant hills.

Kathy and Rick are passionate people who have poured themselves into their bed and breakfast, and it shows! On TripAdvisor they have nothing but excellent reviews, and a good number of them in only a few months of running the bed and breakfast. We are happy to provide them with a great new website design that showcases the best parts of their inn, and allows them to maintain and update the blog, specials, photo gallery, and content of their website via WordPress.

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Announcing the launch of Amelia Island Bed & Breakfast Inns

April 19th, 2011 by

New Amelia Island Bed & Breakfast Association Website

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Website for Amelia Island Bed and Breakfast Inns, Amelia Island Florida’s premier listing of bed and breakfasts . The Innkeepers were looking for a site that captured the feel of the island while balancing the beaches with the Victorian charm of the island. Lead Designer, Beth Logan enjoyed working with such a beautiful group of Inns.

The new Amelia Island site was designed around WordPress, this fully functional customized design built in WordPress enables the website administrator to make quick additions to their new site. With WordPress, the user will be able to manage their website with a single login and make blog posts, add photos, text, pages and much more…all with an easy to use interface. We are so pleased to be able to put the power and flexibility of the web back into the innkeeper’s hands!

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InsideOut Team Attends WordCamp Seattle 2011

April 18th, 2011 by

Here at InsideOut, we are all fans of WordPress! Because of that, and a desire to learn more about WordPress and how we can better use it to serve our clients, some of us attended WordCamp Seattle on April 16th. WordCamp is the premier event to talk with other designers, developers, and users of WordPress, and expand our knowledge.

The event was hosted at the University of Washington and was attended by around 300 people. There were 14 speakers, each a specialist in their field ranging from best SEO practices, to creating a great website theme, to proper coding techniques.  It isn’t every day you get to meet one of the actual WordPress developers (who flew in from Washington DC) so it was a real treat that he was giving a lecture on best coding practices.

Trina Packard, Skyla Grimes, Kailey Lampert, and Brad Doss split up to attend the following lectures:

  • Tools for Tummeling
  • Using AJAX in Plugins and Themes
  • Making Custom Theme Options Easy
  • Writing Better Plugins for a Better Web
  • Theming for the Masses
  • WordPress SEO
  • Best Practices for Plugin Development

WordCamp was also well documented on Twitter using the #wcsea hashtag.  That is one great thing about a room of 300 “geeks” – using social media to communicate, coordinate, and share information!

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Understanding Google Analytics

April 18th, 2011 by

This is the first part in a series exploring Google Analytics for innkeepers.

Google Analytics graph

You’ve eagerly installed Google Analytics on your site. You’ve waited impatiently for a few days to let data pile up. Now you’ve logged in to Analytics—and are overwhelmed by numbers.

Rates, percentages, visits, traffic, “absolute unique visitors”—what does it all mean?

Don’t panic, gentle innkeeper. Below is a guide to the Analytics jungle pointing out the most useful benchmarks and giving tips on how to interpret them. This is the first in a series introducing innkeepers to the ins and outs of Analytics, so stay tuned for more.

If there’s one number I should pay attention to, what is it?

Keep reading →

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A new Design for Youngberg Hill Inn, Winery & Vineyard

April 14th, 2011 by

Youngberg Hill Inn

We are very excited to announce the launch of the new Website for Youngberg Hill Inn, Oregon’s premier wine country winery, Inn & vineyards in McMinnville, OR. Wayne & Nicolette Bailey have backgrounds in winemaking, distribution, food & beverage, hospitality, and marketing. This brought together the perfect combination for visitors to enjoy good wine, good food, beautiful Oregon views and the hospitality of a Bed & Breakfast.

We at InsideOut Solutions enjoyed working with such a multifaceted Inn and look forward to working with more in the near future. Our talented team consists of top notch designers, coders and idea driven individuals, creating fabulous websites is what we love to do! The new Youngberg Hill Inn was designed around WordPress, this fully functional customized design built in WordPress enables the user to make quick additions to their new site. With WordPress, the user will be able to manage their website with a single login and make blog posts, add photos, text, pages and much more…all with an easy to use interface. If you are interested in a new website in which you can utilize the power of WordPress for your CMS give us a call or email. Contact Us:

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Website Redesign: Seven Essential Pieces

April 5th, 2011 by

Redesigning Your WebsiteYour website, built five years ago by a professional (or someone’s cousin for free), is showing its age. You’re embarrassed to send clients there. It has out-of-date information. And nobody can find it on Google. Perhaps you feel your website is fine because, hey, you fill your guestrooms each season, but you notice that your Google Analytics bounce rate has gone up or your visits to the site have gone down.

Remember that while your aging website has been doing its job, your competition has been working diligently on their marketing efforts, many of whom have beautiful new, high functioning websites.

We’re just going to go ahead and rip the band-aid off and say it:
It’s time to update your website.

Planning a new website design for your inn can seem daunting. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, but there are a few basic functions and content areas you should include to make it an effective marketing tool.

Keep reading →

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PAII Northwest Innkeeping Conference Here We Come!

April 4th, 2011 by

IOS_ at_PAII_NW

InsideOut Roadtrip! Making our way to PAII NW

It isn’t very often that we get to drive to a conference without first getting on a plane. How delightful to spend time with colleagues wending our way from the northern edge of Washington State in a 4+ hour drive through small towns, misty forests, hugging salty inland waterways replete with oyster beds and fishing boats on our way to the 2011 Northwest Innkeeping Conference and Trade Show held just south of Portland, Oregon in Clackamas.

With the conference located in such close proximity to the offices of InsideOut Solutions in Sequim, WA, it’s become possible for a good number of the staff to travel to the conference to meet innkeepers from all over the Northwest, including Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

Keep reading →

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