1. To set out a vision for the future of the BedPosts movement
2. To advise accommodation providers of new marketing opportunities

Invited participants:	Owners and managers in the independent serviced accommodation sector including hotels, B&Bs, guesthouses, inns, restaurants with rooms, cottages, apartments
Date:	Thursday 26th January 2012
Time:	10.40 am to 2 pm (Optionally continue at 2 pm on organised tour of Oxford Castle)
Lunch:	Buffet served during conference
Venue:	Oxford Castle Unlocked conference centre
Nearest car park:	Worcester Street - please see www.oxford.gov.uk for alternative car parks
Ticket price:	£15 (including lunch and tea/coffee & biscuits)

Time	Content	Facilitator / Presenter
10.40	Arrival: tea/coffee and biscuits
11.00	BedPosts, its aims, organisation, activities and what it means to you	Carol Starkey - Chair BedPosts
11.10	Focus on BedPosts members' issues Accreditation, reviews, marketing etc	Carol Starkey - Chair BedPosts
12.00	Social networking for extra business Harness the power of Facebook, Twitter, etc	Desiree Ratcliffe-Lattimore - Managing Director A,D8 UK Ltd
12.25	Focus on ideas for strengthening BedPosts, internally and externally	Carol Starkey - Chair BedPosts
12.30	Lunch service (continue during next session)
13.10	Search Engine Optimisation Get your website found in Google	John Gooding - Director Internet Results Ltd
13.25	Harness the power of BedPosts website Organise your community and advertise	Ben Gooding - Director Internet Results Ltd
13.50	Round up, next steps Go forward with your business and BedPosts	Carol Starkey - Chair BedPosts
14.00	Conference closes; optionally join BedPosts BreakAway members for guided tour of Oxford Castle: extra cost £5 pre-booked or £7.95 on the day

The conference is at the centre of a two-day get-together and conference participants are invited to join in other activities as desired:

1. Wednesday 25th January 2012 - Introductions over a three course evening meal at Oxford Spires, Four Pillars Hotel. Even if you are not staying at The Oxford Spires Hotel you might still like to join us for dinner.
2. Thursday 26th January 2012 - following the morning Conference - 14.00 Guided tour of Oxford Castle - £5 additional supplement if pre-booked. (£7.95 at the gate).
3. Thereafter free time in Oxford, with its range of museums, shops, restaurants or the Theatre which will be showing Spamelot on 26th January. Alternatively you might wish to return to the Oxford Spires Hotel for dinner and its in house facilities such as the gym, heated swimming pool, beauty treatments and lounge bar. (Please make your own arrangements to access these facilities).
4. Stay overnight on 25th and 26th at Oxford Spires, Four Pillars Hotel, Abingdon Road, Oxford, 0X1 4PS - for directions please see : http://oxford-spires-hotel.four-pillars.co.uk/contact-and-directions-_4/ This hotel is on a city bus route into Oxford City Centre.

For further information go to www.BedPosts.org.uk[page] ?

To park in the nearest car park, Worcester Street, is likely to result in a charge of £8.70 for up to 4 hours and £13.39 for up to 6 hours. Costs of all Worcester parking can be found on this page: http://www.oxford.gov.uk/PageRender/decTS/Car_Park_Charges_occw.htm

Alternatively park free at Water Eaton or Thornhill and catch a bus. Buses typically run every 15 minutes and the journey time is 15 minutes. Best to allow 45 minutes from car parking to arrive at conference on time. A return off-peak ticket for 2 is £4.

To plan your park and ride journey go here: http://www.oxfordbus.co.uk/main.php?page_id=22

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BedPosts started as an Internet Forum in 2006 as a method of communicating with and seeking help from fellow-accommodation providers over badly-drafted EU legislation - The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 - resulting in overzealous interpretation and application by the UK Fire Services.

After discussion of hundreds of different topics and a substantial increase in numbers, the membership decided to progress from talking together to also doing things together. They chose the name BedPosts, having two meanings, a pun on the fact that members post messages on forum noticeboards.

• The membership numbers are coming on for 1000, mainly around UK but a handful abroad.
• In addition to mutual support, BedPosts has been successful in using its purchasing power to negotiate the supply of products and services for its members at discount prices.
• BedPosts has relaunched its website with more than 2000 pages and a new focus. The focus is on presenting members' accommodation to the general public to secure more business for members during the troubled economic times ahead.

BedPosts is a mutual and democratic organisation characterised by frequent voting on its forum. The conference members will be divided into focus groups to discuss the issues facing us in 2012 including accreditation, TripAdvisor and other reviews, booking engines, Olympics, economic recession, red tape and legislation. From the presentations by the focus groups a number of ambitions will be submitted to the membership as a whole.

The aim for 2012 is to achieve 1 million page views by the travelling public, both in UK and abroad, who seeks accommodation in UK. The website has been constructed by Internet Results Ltd which has a proven record in the field of search engine optimisation. Main Features:

• 2000+ town/village pages containing advertisements of members' accommodation
• Linking system from members' websites which will drive these pages to the top of search engine rankings
• System of automatically passing excess demand to one another
• Content of town pages managed by members
• Community software including forums, blogs, pages, chat, calendar and maps

Membership of BedPosts is free of charge, the costs of its major expenditure, the website, being met from advertising revenue.