John B. Bailey
A career hospitality manager and lodging consultant, John started off at the ripe age of 16 working at a resort and then a country club in central New Hampshire. After college, he moved to Crested Butte, CO and worked in various lodging facilities. When the urge struck to get back to the “real world”, he moved back East, where he found employment at The Ritz-Carlton, Boston for several years. There, he worked in middle management positions at the Front Desk, Reservations, and Accounting.
Moving from the day-to-day operations of a hotel, John took a job in a relatively new industry (Hotel Sales & Marketing Systems) and worked at Newmarket Software Systems (now known as Newmarket International, an Amadeus company) for nine years. Over the course of those years, he worked with hundreds of hotels consulting with them in how to refine their systems to maximize the use of the software and the hotel personnel.
Around the turn of the century, John purchased a 12 room inn near the Mount Snow Ski Resort in southern Vermont. For the next 13 years he managed all aspects of running a bed and breakfast from making the beds to fixing leaky, broken, messy “whatevers” to designing and publishing multiple websites to flipping pancakes to developing budgets to marketing across multiple industries, demographics, and methodologies. If it has anything to do with a country inn or bed and breakfast, John has done it.
It was there, facing a slow “Stick Season” that he discovered the world of niche markets. The inn started with one niche that eventually brought in six figures per year at its peak, and then moved on to developing other niches to fill in the gaps that still needed to be filled. The inn was successful to the extent that the inn no longer needed to be dependent on the local ski resort and a fickle Mother Nature for its business.
Having moved on from the inn, John now serves as a small business web designer (NicheMarket Services) and niche lodging consultant to inns, lodges, and bed and breakfasts throughout the Northeast as well as a niche facilitator (go here for more on that – Murder Mystery Weekend) to inns, lodges, and bed and breakfasts throughout the Northeast. He looks forward to working with, and providing service to, all those lodging facilities seeking to improve upon their current successes.
Elizabeth B. Pynchon Bailey
A career Retail and Banking manager, Elizabeth brings her financial prowess to the table (whether that table is the counter in the kitchen, a table in the dining room or a desk in the office; she’s comfortable anywhere numbers can be found). When consulting with bed and breakfasts, country inns, and lodges looking to fill those valleys that inevitably occur throughout the year, Elizabeth will analyze the financials involved with pursuing any given lodging niche.
Is it feasible? Is it realistic? Is it attainable? She’ll be straight up with the financial picture.