Don't Be Fooled: Book Your Rooms Directly With La Posada de Taos

The Message:  if you want the most accurate information about availability at La Posada de Taos with the best pricing we offer, give us a call at (800) 645-4803 or visit our website at laposadadetaos.com.

La Posada de Taos Late Afternoon in Winter

 
Expedia.com, hotels.com, travelocity.com, kayak, and hotwire.com all claim to have the most comprehensive listings and the best priced lodging on the Internet.  Then why do they tell those surfing their sites that La Posada de Taos has nothing available when we have open room nights?  

Simply put, we provide services to our guests.  We care about the quality of each and every form of that service we provide.  The booking sites sell "products" that mean only dollar signs to them.

In recent years various online booking "portals" have been created for folks to make lodging reservations just about anywhere in the world.  These sites claim to have all of the information you need to allow you to make discount reservations in places such as Taos, New Mexico.

The problem is that these sites don't even begin to offer all that's out there -- especially at small B&B's or boutique Inns such as ours.  

Until recently, La Posada de Taos participated directly with these online reservation sites, allowing guests to find us at hotels.com, expedia.com, travelocity, and others.  These sites were all linked into information we provided to BedandBreakfast.com.  

Our research indicated that guests who found us through those sites typically went ahead and looked directly at our website or called us.  They sometimes booked through the larger company, but most people found that the best deals were offered directly through us -- not through a 3rd party reseller.

We frequently visited those sites ourselves and found the information they had posted about La Posada de Taos contained critical errors and omissions, often to the detriment of the guests themselves.  For example, stating that breakfast was not included in the price of the rooms (we're a bed and BREAKFAST, so the price includes the full, multi-course breakfast) or that the rooms did not contain features that are standard here at La Posada.  Guests were confused about check-in and check-out times or they did not know that there were specific limitations on the number of guests that each room can safely and comfortably accommodate.

We and all the others using these 3rd party resellers, had to pay hefty commissions.  By the time we discounted their commission off of our rate, the real savings for guests was negligible or non-existent.  

Their inventory systems did not match up with ours and we sometimes ended up with double bookings.  In each case, we and we alone offered the guest a goodwill gesture of arranging upgraded accommodations for them at another local B&B.

When we left this system about a month ago, we joined a new network known as "GDS" that we hope will offer up-to-date and accurate information for anyone wishing to book rooms with La Posada deTaos.  That system should be up and running in a few weeks.  In the meantime, visit our online booking portal or call us directly, please.

If you visit one of these monster online 3rd-party companies and look for La Posada de Taos, they will tell you that we have no availability.  That's nice information but it is dead wrong.  In fact, it's deliberately false information designed to get you to book with a hotel or B&B that's paying the 25 or 30% commission to that 3rd party.  David v. Goliath.

La Posada de Taos Offers Homemade Fare Each Morning

So, give us a call, won't you?  We'll offer you competitive rates based on the value of the services we offer:  full, professionally-prepared, multi-course, gourmet breakfast; 600-thread-count sheets; concierge services, DVD collection, jetted tubs in premium rooms; privacy; close-in access to all the amenties offered by Taos itself; free parking; free wi-fi; free waters, sodas and teas.  All in one price that you won't find anywhere else through any online re-seller.

Do You Use Trip Advisor? Warning!

Do you use Trip Advisor?  About half of those who call us report that they found us on TripAdvisor.com. That's huge for a small business.  When half of your customers come from one source, you kind of feel like you should be paying attention.

Because we track the sources of hits to our website using a product called Google Analytics, we know that our guests also find us using BedandBreakfast.com, the New Mexico Bed & Breakfast Association, the Taos Association of Bed and Breakfast Inns, the Taos Vacation Guide, and the Taos Chamber of Commerce.  There are at least another dozen sources of hits to laposadadetaos.com originating with companies other than Trip Advisor who provide unbiased information regarding destinations in Taos.

Within the last quarter, however, TripAdvisor.com has overtaken everyone on our Google Analytics Report to become the #2 means of finding us -- behind only the ever-omnipresent "Google Organic Search."  TripAdvisor.com recently moved into the Top 30 websites on the entire Planet!  With 60,000,000 hits per month, its volume dwarfs all other Social Networking Travel sites.  The increase in hits to our website from this one site has been in excess of 5000%.

Incredible isn't it?

Because we have recently moved into the top slot on TripAdvisor.com's listing of Taos County B&B's, we're also working hard to merit that listing (of course, to really hold onto this type of thing, you have to be having fun doing it!).  A competitor who also sometimes inhabits the #1 spot doesn't include breakfast in the price of his lodging.   Regardless of the exact placement, being at or near the top of TripAdvisor's listings has also brought us not only more hits to the website, but a healthy increase in business.

I wish that I could end this blog entry there with the sunny story of success.  Not so, however.

As a Board Member of the Taos Association of Bed and Breakfast Inns, I'm always interested in the overall trends in the industry.  Trip Advisor's impact on lodgers in Taos continues to play itself out, but we can already see that it's doing both good and bad things in our small town.

On the good side, Trip Advisor is available for visitors to get some additional information about the choices in Taos.  

On the bad side, the choices in "Taos" that Trip Advisor is showing are incomplete and in some cases downright misleading.  Trip Advisor is arbitrarily excluding some of the top choices available to visitors by using an ancient Zip Code map that ignores some of the best B&B's in the entire Southwestern U.S.  

In some cases, B&B's are not listed as "Taos" and you cannot find them unless you know the name of the tiny old Zip Code they are in (these aren't incorporated areas, by the way).  Another way to find them is to find the tiny little green print near the top of the page that has geographical breakdowns.  If you can find it, click on "Taos County," please.

In an effort to make full disclosure: as you have probably guessed, La Posada isn't excluded from the Taos listings.  We have no financial interest in the businesses who are being hurt by this.  Our interest is in making sure that all visitors to Taos get complete information.  

I've addressed this issue before and I'm part of a continuing effort by various professional associations to get Trip Advisor to fix the problem.  Please understand that this effort has been going on for years.  Trip Advisor's corporate mentality, however, is clearly self-absorbed and defensive.  They not only cannot see how their arbitrary geographic designations are destroying small businesses, they deny that it could possibly be true.  Very defensive!

Problem is that the numbers don't lie and TripAdvisor doesn't care.  I've heard various local businesses discussing litigation.  

In the meantime, please don't use Trip Advisor as your only source of information.  Use it for reviews, but please realize that it is not authoritative.  What you can count on is that TripAdvisor.com's listing for Taos will be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading and arbitrary.  

We recommend that you use at least one other source of information when planning your Taos trip, please.