Environment | Kristi Dement

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Bed and Breakfast Linens

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Kristi Dement Leave a comment

As owners of bed and breakfasts, you build your brand based on the quality and level of hospitality you offer to your guests. This includes guests’ first impression of your place and their individual guest room down to the look and feel of your sheets and linens.

As many of you know, the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) is an organization for bed and breakfast owners and innkeepers as well as vendors in the hospitality industry. The following are a few of the companies that fall into the PAII Vendor Membership Category of “Linens, Bedding, Towels, and Accessories”:

Berkshire Amenities Group (Gene Faul)
Comphy Co (Mia Richardson)
Turkish Towel Company (Barton Brass)

Innkeepers should strive to provide an experience above and beyond their guests’ expectations. Thus, choosing quality linens for your bed and breakfast is of great importance. Create an environment where your guests will not want to leave. This will encourage them to come back as soon as they can return.

Here are some tips to help guide you when selecting your linens. Before you start buying linens for each bedroom, make note of how many beds you’ll be fitting within each room as well as their respective sizes (twin, queen, king, etc.). Make sure you have extra pillows for your guests as well as a couple quality blankets for each bed. One blanket can be placed on the bed between the comforter and the top sheet while the other blanket can be put in an accessible guest drawer or closet space.

When choosing the quality of your bed linens, ensure that the material is 100% natural content featuring a thread count of at least 500. Consider choosing white to avoid any fading colors. White also has the advantage of looking crisp and clean while giving an airy and welcoming feel to the room.

When selecting your bathroom sets, make sure you select plush, 100% cotton towels with a dense loop. Anything below these quality standards can detract from the guest experience. Also ensure that you have the correct sizes, including bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths.

Coordination is key. Colors should play off each other to give a natural flow from the bedroom to the bathroom. What matters is the perceptions of each guest. Whatever you end up choosing, make sure the bedroom and bathroom colors complement each other.

Be sure to provide a generous number of towels, to give your guests the feeling of comfort and luxury. By having an extra amount of linens and towels, they will last longer. When your towels are plush and sheets are smooth, your guests are more likely to remember their positive experience (including restful sleep) and return to your inn for another visit.

Posted in Amenities, Associations and Ratings, Decorating, Guests

Gilchrist and Soames

Posted on January 31, 2015 by Kristi Dement Leave a comment

BeeKind Shampoo, 236ml Spa Liquid Soap, 300ml.

Gilchrist and Soames offers luxury and eco-friendly bath amenities such as high-quality shampoos, conditioners, soaps, shower gels, and body lotions. Gilchrist and Soames is based in Indianapolis, Indiana and Peterborough, London, England.

Their popular BeeKind Collection features honey and certified organic extracts of red clover, calendula, lemon grass, and chamomile. A portion of the net profits from these products supports honey bee and sustainable pollination research.

Verde Gift Set

Gilchrist and Soames collaborated with master perfumers to capture their Essential Elements Bathe Collection’s distinctive spirit and essence. The fresh neroli fragrance will keep guests coming back for more, while high-performance antioxidants rejuvenate and nourish people’s skin and hair.

Their English Spa Collection encapsulates their company’s London heritage, infusing refinement and purity in an immaculate blend of English botanicals. Natural oatmeal, aloe, lemongrass, and seak kelp are classic and timeless.

One of their newest collections is the Reserve Collection. Innovative ingredients of at least 95% natural origin are expertly blended with high-performance botanical extracts to nourish and pamper.

Gilchrist and Soames is committed to protecting the environment. Safeguarding their delicate ecology is deeply rooted in their business philosophy. They pursue new materials and technologies to make their packaging as recyclable/re-usable as possible. Their products are never tested on animals.

Gilchrist and Soames supports Clean the World’s Parnership Recycling Program to advance the global hygiene revolution. Did you know that today in the United States alone we will throw away 1 million bars of soap?

With the donation of your discarded soap and shampoo products to Clean the World, they will be closer to their goal of saving at least one million lives each year.

Donating unused soap as well as plastic bottles:

Reduces the spread of illnesses and deaths related to a lack of proper hygiene
Reduces waste
Minimizes environmental impact
Promotes a sustainable future
Creates “green” jobs across North America
Impacts those suffering domestically and globally

Value to participating hotels and bed and breakfasts:

Receive valuable recognition and positive guest perception by working with Clean the World
Spread the word with web content, newsletters, articles, and press releases
Appeal to the meeting and event planner industry by attracting professionals who are seeking to book with properties adopting sustainability initiatives
Reduce waste disposal and recycling fees

Hospitality recycling partners will receive:

Clean the World Collection/Shipping bins
Transportation of donated items from your property
Access to online training materials.
A customer service representative for support
Quarterly, detailed goods donation reports
A framed certificate that can be proudly displayed in the lobby area to inform guests of your bed and breakfast’s participation in their program

Program pricing:

Sixty cents per room per month for non-Gilchrist and Soames customers
Fifty cents per room per month for Gilchrist and Soames customers
$50 minimum monthly fee applies

Gilchrist and Soames not only has excellent products, but they support green initiatives such as soap and bottle recycling, eco-friendly packaging, and no testing done on animals. Clean the World is an affordable way to positively impact the environment as well as aid people in need of hygiene products. See the video below for more information.

Hospitality Partner Program from Clean the World on Vimeo

Posted in Amenities

5 Ways to Attract More Attention Online

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Kristi Dement 2 comments

What can we do to grab the attention of the online world and become more visible to our internet audience? These are five ways we can attract more attention online.

1) Words–The words we use really help determine our online visibility. In the online world, fresh content is everything. We need to make a list of keywords we want associated with us and our brand. We should consistently use those keywords in our content.

2) Actions–Ever hear the phrase, “What we do speaks louder than what we say“? People observe others. Whether we want them to or not, people see actions as well as lack of taking action. For example, if we consistently receive the same negative comments online, then we know we need to take action. This is not the time for us to ignore it and hope it goes away! We should appreciate comments and respond to both positive and negative feedback.

3) Formatting–People like easy to read content. Most people don’t read word for word online. They like to scan the page.

Use bullet points
Add numbers
Offer descriptive subheadings
Make important text bold
etc.

4) Links–We should provide links to other places in our website/blog as well as outside resources. This goes a long way in showing others that we like to be helpful and provide useful information. We are more likely to be seen as leaders on our subjects.

5) Get visual–Images and videos attract eyeballs. People notice meaningful pictures. Pinterest is a great visual social media platform that literally has billions of pins.

We should ask ourselves, “What does my target audience like to see online?” When we see things from their perspective, we can be more creative. Are we using the right keywords? Are we taking appropriate action? Does our formatting make our content easy to read? Have we provided great links? Have we featured attention-getting images or video? When we can say yes to all five questions, we will attract more attention online!

Posted in Blog and Social Media, Promotion, Success

B&B Social Media Success

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Kristi Dement Leave a comment

B&B Social Media Success is the name of a Pin Board I have on the social media network called Pinterest. I pinned the pins on that board for the sole purpose of helping bed and breakfast owners successfully use social media. What I did not expect, and I was completely surprised about, was the response from those not even in the bed and breakfast industry. I currently have over 1700 followers on that board alone! What is crazy is that I did not start it more than a few months ago!

That is the power of numbers and how things can go viral fast. I recommend the book, “Contagious: Why Things Catch On” by Jonah Berger. Berger is the James G. Campbell Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He discusses six principles of “Contagiousness”:

Social currency: people desire to share cool things to look good in the process
Triggers: people talk about things cued in their environment
Emotion: when people have high arousal emotions (like excitement or anger) they are more likely to share it
Public: behavior that is made more public enables social influence
Practical Value: people share things to help others (save time, save money, become more healthy, etc.)
Story: people share memorable stories

So what can you do to have social media success and your bed and breakfast become “contagious”? Kristi Dement of Bed and Breakfast Blogging is here to help! Contact Kristi today so you can have social media success and more guests at your B&B!

Posted in Blog and Social Media, Guests, Kristi, Promotion, Success