Re: innkeeping: NCBBI New Members

[owner-innkeeping]

Huntington Hall wrote:
> 
> At 03:40 PM 6/29/96 -0500, you wrote:
> >in response to larger inns for Indiana:
> 
> >>Joan,
>  "Larger inns" is the current controversial topic, and has been for the
> past
> 5 years, at North Carolina Bed & Breakfast and Inns meetings. perhaps I
> can
> give you two views, one as an assoc. officer and one personal.
>  There will always be some dissention as to those that want and those that
> don't. little guys are always afraid, big guys wonder why? at NCBBI we
> just
> voted into full membership an Inn with 26 rooms! Yes, it was a point of
> great contention, but for 5 years we have worked at solving this problem,
> to
> create a mutual solution so the association could go forward. 2 years ago
> we
> created a membership catagory called "Provisional Member". This means the
> inn doesn't meet some criteria for our full membership(with voting
> rights).
> An inn can be accepted under "Prov. Membership" by a board vote, but must
> be
> voted upon before the entire membership at a Called General Meeting,
> before
> it can be accepted as a Full Member.
>  Although this particular inn was large and had more rooms than we
> allowed,
> it met all the other criterea of our inspections and in fact, according to
> our district inspector" the personal touches were all there and perhaps
> our
> assoc. could learn a thing or two from this inn, it would certainly be an
> asset." he proposed that this inn be voted directly into full membership,
> but this wasn't done in accordance with the by-laws. The inn was voted
> into
> prov. membership by the board and in June, was voted into full membership
> at
> the General Membership meeting. A prov. member must be voted upon by the
> gen. membership within 1 years time and either they are accepted,or not. A
> prov. member has no voting rights and is not listed in our directory.
> Several points of contention were brought up at the vote and the innkeeper
> was present to answer questions. All voted "yeah", one chose to abstain.
>   And now for my personal views:
> At NCBBI each member gets one vote, so it doesn't matter how many rooms
> you
> have , you still have the same number of votes, ONE. we have spent years
> trying to meet budgets, selling cookbooks, directories, trying to make
> another $3.50, yet we have inns that want us, they want to be members and
> they want to pay us money, What is wrong with this picture? Our dues are
> based on the number of rooms, so More rooms, more money. from a financial
> standpoint, the assoc. can't loose. I did a survey several years back and
> there were enough largers inns that would join our association if we would
> let them, that their dues alone amounted to over $6,000.00 but, you
> guessed
> it, we didn't want them. Larger inns also have more guests renting rooms
> and
> therefore more exposure to the association
>  I remember proposing larger inns at an annual meeting. Things got nasty,
> some innkeepers refused to talk to kate and me. Thats when i decided to
> get
> involved.
> I was persistant, bringing it up at every meeting and today, some of those
> same people voted Yes! on a larger inn. NCBBI history in the making!
> 
> the times, they are a changing...
> (p.s. please don't ask about changing your associations name!(grin)
> and for the record, we only have 5 rooms, we're a little guy)
> 
> Sincerely,
> Bob DeLong, 1st Vice President NCBBI
> Huntington Hall Bed & Breakfast
> Murphy, NC


It sure seems that the people who are involved with the B&B associations 
generally understand the value of more association members.  I do 
believe we may have more time to devote to association items than some 
of the owners of smaller properties as we do have two people who help on 
an as needed basis.  It gives us the opportunity to "get-away" from the 
Inn as we need to at times.
The One Inn/One Vote is the only fair way to handle Asociation business.  
When the association does things that help Inns get more business then 
the potential benefits are larger for the larger properties.  However, 
just because we have more rooms we don't necessarily make any more 
money, as our costs are also higher.  We do have the potential to 
improve revenues by renting more rooms.  Our occupancy rates may be far 
lower even though we have more guests on a daily basis.

When I recommend other properties to our guests the only criteria I use 
is "Are they association members, If yes, I will recommend them, If not, 
I will not recommend them under any circumstances."  This also applies 
to Inns in another state.  I check to see if they are members of their 
state association.  If they are I know they have been inspected and meet 
at least a basic standard (varied by state) of hospitality, cleanliness, 
and professionalism.  To keep a property out of an association due to 
number of rooms is not very smart and everybody loses. (In my opinion).


-- 
Jim & Susan Hildebrand
Innkeepers, Anderson House Inn
201 E. Main Street, Heber Springs, Arkansas  72543
(501) 362-5266  (800) 264-5279 FAX (501) 362-2326
Web Site at:  http://www.bbonline.com/ar/anderson