The 2008 BBISD Board Retreat was held at Peregrine Point B&B in Rapid City, SD on April 18th and 19th, 2008. Members gathered and covered a variety of topics. It is always great fun and a learning experience when members get together!

Welcomed guest speaker, Cindy Olson, Hospitality Central, who gave a presentation on the importance of the International Tourism Market and how our association could benefit from this opportunity. The Board will study this further as this market evolves.

Marilyn Oakes from Buffalo Rock Lodge had some great advice for us from her legislative work and experience in our industry. We are reminded not to show the credit card # on our receipts after they have cleared. It is critical business practice to carefully protect and properly dispose of this type of information. All B&B gift certificates must have an expiration date and sales tax should be charged during the purchase of the gift certificate, not just during the redemption of the certificate.

The SD Vistor Industry has new campaign to raise awareness of the amount of tourism money that circulates through our state. We can purchase a stamp at Impressions in Rapid City for $12 that says “Tourism Dollars at work in SD” to put on all of our correspondence.

We discussed our Web site: southdakotabb.com. We feel that navigation on our Web site is good, and that we have good content on our site. Our new visitor rate was 85% with 67% of our traffic coming from search engines. We discussed possible key word buys and banner placement that will begin in the near future and will drive more traffic to our Web site. We also discussed what makes our brand unique. Our key benefits are providing hospitality, a true experience, being an ambassador for SD, knowledge of the area and quality service—innkeepers with personality. We all are to look at our favorite web sites and those of other associations that do a good job of reflecting or communicating who they are. Please send any ideas to Sara Steever (info@steeverhouse.com) so we can look at a possible future upgrade of our design. We also discussed a virtual tour of the communities that our inns represent. It is the intent of the Board to pursue the Governor's Million Dollar Challenge matching grant to help fund online marketing for BBISD.