photo by Tracy Finn

 Happy New Year!

Block Island Family Vacation connects visitors with businesses.  For Real.....

Hey it's Kelly from Block Island Family Vacation .Com.  Our referrals have been profitable for all of our Block Island businesses.  This past year the site connected more visitors with businesses than ever!   Based upon info coming from the website's visitors, most people are currently looking for the following:

• House Rentals

We have lots of visitors reading the realtor's pages. We have each realtor's web and physical address and phone number on its own unique page.  There are options to fill out a quick form to make an inquiry to the realtor for a house rental. 

Even more popular is our actual house rental page. We are affiliated with HomeAway Vacation Rentals so anyone (realtor or individual homeowner) who has a listing on their site automatically gets listed on our site for free.   We are also affiliated with Vacation Home Rentals. Again, anyone listed on this site is automatically on ours for free. If you are a homeowner or realtor and want to get a house showcased on Block-Island-Family-Vacation.Com for free, ...find out how

• Room Rentals

Even more popular on the site are people looking to get a room at one of BI's great inns or hotels.  If you are interested in getting your inn on the site and getting referrals, ...find out how

• Package Deals

Our most popular request forms that are filled out and referred out are asking about package deals. We would love to brag about any of our inns that offer any kind of deal. In fact, we'd love to affiliate with our inns and help make it happen.

• Dog Friendly Accommodations

Again, our dog friendly visitors are very social. That page gets more hits, likes and visitors looking for a dog friendly place to stay, eat and things to do with their dog. Check out our post with tips for becoming dog friendly. If you do allow dogs at your business, we want to know about it.

ALWAYS updating.

 If you haven't been on it lately, you will see that it has a new look.  Many new pages are being  added each week and the older pages are being restyled one by one.

On a mission.

What started out as a simple informational site has morphed into a mission to connect visitors with businesses on Block Island.  As the ratings have steadily grown in the search engines since 2005,  the importance of keeping things up to date and finding new ways to accomplish the mission is realized.  I get many emails and now phone calls from people asking me where to stay and what to do on the island. 

My position as webmaster allows me to give personal recommendations.  I try my best to listen to get an idea of what the visitor is really looking for, then match them up with what I believe to be the best fit whether it's a place to stay, eat, shop, an activity or a combo off all.  Kind of like the Chamber meets Angie's List!

My intention was always to monetize the site but I did not want it to be where you pay for a listing every year and then your info sits on a site's page that may or may not get exposure or may or may not be updated. BlockIslandFamilyVacation.Com is interactive.  That's why it has 2 blogs, an online store and good plugins for social media.  Every page has a place for people to make  Facebook comments that others can respond to.  When any BI business contacts me because they want something about their business page updated, like changing a contact or anything - it gets done immediately.  Anyway, for now everything offered here is still free.  We only ask that if you are making money from referrals that you kick back once in while.  There's a donation section on the site to make it easy to show appreciation. We appreciate it!

Future Plans.

The near future is to keep plugging away at getting the site more complete.  The section on restaurants is mostly done and shopping is the next section to be added.  I am also working on ways to make it easier to plan and possibly book a whole vacation right from the site.  Stores may be added with shopping carts built in so people can shop Block Island all winter.  The sky's the limit.  Everyone prospers.