Dearborn & Shanoan thought, "what an interesting idea". They were already providing the hearth and home for their circle of friends who dropped in frequently to be nurtured by Dearborn and Shanoan's love of good conversation, great cooking, and new friends.

A month and a half into the bike tour, they found themselves in Kanab, right in the middle of Utah's majestic color country. Besides the beauty of the land, they fell in love with the openness and heartwarming innocence of the local people who welcomed the weary cyclists into their homes.

"What about opening a Bed & Breakfast here?" they asked themselves. A real estate agent showed them a large home nestled in a valley on 13 acres, strategically located between two Utah splendors, the Zion and Bryce national parks. They knew that was the perfect place and bought the house on the spot in June, later to be transformed into the Eagle's Nest Bed & Breakfast.

Rather than completing the bike tour, they went back to California, packed up two U-Haul trucks and a trailer filled with antiques and cultural artifactsto furnish their new venture. They arrived back in Utah in August and began to lovingly renovate the home and to add a hot tub and a private bath for each of the four guest rooms. In March, 1995, after seven months of renovation and theme decoration throughout the house to satisfy Shanoan's fine sense of esthetics, they were ready to welcome guests.

Even before they opened their doors, many of their friends, particularly the ones from the Bay Area, kept on saying they needed to have a web page to market the Inn. But there was no local Internet Service Provider in this sparsely populated region - until February, 1996.

Dearborn immediately signed on and started cruising the Net to see what other folks from their area were doing on the Web. He saw a few sites he liked and noted that the ones which caught his attention were created by a local company called Xpressweb.

They worked with Xpressweb for about a month and had a site up by March, 1996, which included about a dozen pages with a welcome, picture and description of each room, the innkeepers' background, area information and directions, and a reservation form. Dearborn concentrated on the functionality of the site and Shanoan set the artistic tone, including the creation of the eagle drawing on the home page. For less than $1,000, they had a web page and an annual contract for the hosting of the Eagle's Nest home page.

To expose the site, Xpressweb also registered it with about a half dozen of the major search engines, as part of the fees. Dearborn personally spent several more days to list the Inn in travel and national park directories and Zion and Bryce listings. Many of these services offered free listings but charged anywhere from $35/year to $15/month for hot links to their sites. Since they had no idea what type of results they would get from the web page, Dearborn decided to take a "wait and see" approach before paying for these additional link services.

By October, six months after launch, an additional $3,000 in business came from visitors who found them through the Eagle's Nest home page. Deaborn and Shanoan are surprised that the web page has become the second or third most important source of visitors.

The highest number of referrals come from local motels who send their overflows to the Eagle's Nest during high seasons. The next source of referrals are from either the free Utah and regional travel guides or from their own web page. Other current forms of marketing include the yellow pages, three B&B books, the AAA travel book, and guest referrals which are expected to grow as the Inn gets more exposure.

Given the positive results from the web page during the past year, Dearborn plans to list their page in more directories for the coming tourist season. He discovered that the key words which were most frequently used to locate their site in the search engines were national parks.

He also found that half of the people who located their page were willing to contact them via the site or e-mail, whereas the other half still preferred to call them through the 800 number. One interesting benefit is that 15% of their inquiries are from overseas, particularly from the Netherlands and Germany, as well as from Asia and most recently an e-mail from Africa.

Shanoan feels that one of the best side benefits of going online is the continuing relationships they are maintaining with some of their guests via e-mail. She has traded recipes with new friends from Europe and throughout the U.S. As their guest lists expand over time, it would be ideal to update their friends and visitors through a quarterly online newsletter.

Their advice to others about creating a web site to promote a business is: "Unless you are fairly well versed in creating a web site, contract a professional to either help you, or have them do the site entirely. Equally important, if not more so, is to make sure they get you exposure via search engines or other links so you can be found. Ideally, they will also educate you on how you can do even more on your own. You can have the best web site in the world but if it can't be found easily, it's a waste of good money".

To relish the peace and beauty of Utah while gazing at the star studded sky from the hot tub or to be pampered by a country gourmet breakfast, come and enjoy Dearborn and Shanoan's warm hospitality at Eagle's Nest Bed & Breakfast .