Innkeepers have practiced their unique brand of 1:1 marketing long before Don Peppers and Martha Rogers made the term fashionable. The Hospitality Key is a recognition and acknowledgment of that "effort" and it recognizes those Innkeepers who are preserving the unique "B&B experience" within this digital environment. It does not rate the effort or give it a score.

Similar to their properties, many of the ways that Innkeepers accomplish this is unique. Innkeepers have been creating relationships and dialogue with B&B guests for a long time and now they are in the process of learning how to do it -- digitally. A B&B will be featured if, in our editorial judgment, the Innkeeper has successfully used this new medium to extend the 1:1 relationship with their guests. What we look for are those Innkeepers that are using the medium to help guests by providing easy access to information about their regions in a friendly, welcoming, digital way.

The Hospitality Key is about the effort and doing - not who wins. As a result we have avoided all attempts to "score" the website or "rate" the design effort and have in fact avoided any inclusions based only on graphic design. We do not attempt to rate or score how well each B&B accomplishes this. So don't look at this as a rating - no one gets 2, 3 or 4 keys.

One last thing - No one pays anything to receive a "Hospitality Key". In fact several of the featured Inns do not even have an expanded presence on this site. The featured properties are here because they have done something interesting.

We continue to welcome URL suggestions from guests - e-mail us