For businesses large and small, the debate rages over the appropriateness of taking to social media to voice personal political opinions – especially for small travel businesses intricately linked to the people who run them.
A bed and breakfast in Edgewater, NJ, USA, found itself in the middle of controversy this week after responding to a local woman’s disapproval of the inn’s “Chick-Fil-A Appreication Day” advertisement.
The inn, The Whitebriar Bed and Breakfast, was using signage outside their establishment demonstrating support for Chick-Fil-A amidst the ongoing same-sex marriage backlash.
A local woman, a lesbian mom named Joianne Fraschilla, posted her disapproval to Facebook, writing:
“This is somewhere my son loves to pass by and we have been excited to visit. I’m sad to see a local business anti LGBT marriage.”
The inn, owned by Carole and Bill Moore, apparently responded with the following:
“Isn’t it wonderful Joanne (sic) Fraschilla, that you and your son can enjoy the animals here because I have a traditional marriage with a husband who works with me 90 hours a week to take care of these animals, and the summer camp….we’re 66-68 years old….there were no gays or queers in our time…..if two old ladies chose to live together..so be it, let them deal with God when they get there…but to have the ‘face sucking’ thrown in my face of two gay lesbians who are totally destroying the ‘normal balance in a child’s life’ as you claim your son…”
“Where is the role model that your son needs to know how to act like a man? or will he only see the ‘one sided selfishness’ of a ‘single parent’…and end up an out cast in society by being ‘gay’ himself because he didn’t have a father as a role model. I’ll pray for you….remember what the bible says: ‘Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas’…..guess that’s why God invented aids….
THIS LOCAL BUSINESS WILL BE ONE MAN ONE WOMAN ONE GOD MAKES MARRIAGE….AND PROUD TO DO SO….YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY TO OWN YOUR OWN BUSINESS”
Understandably, the reaction has not been favorable.
The Professional Association of Innkeepers International felt compelled to respond, emphasizing their disapproval of Whitebriar’s actions.
“On social media web sites, we expect to see some form of bigotry almost daily,” said Jay Karen, President & CEO of PAII. “But I was honestly shocked to see such hatred from an innkeeper. My experience with the thousands of innkeepers I’ve met over the years has been quite contrary to the behavior we saw this week. I stand with our board in condemning the language expressed by this innkeeper.”
The official statement continues:
“While we believe in the First Amendment right to freedom of speech in the United States, we take issue with the extreme hatred displayed by the innkeeper at the Whitebriar Bed and Breakfast in Edgewater, New Jersey. The attack is not becoming of a professional innkeeper, and it is an embarrassment to our industry.”
The risk of alienating one cohort in favor of another is usually not worth it for a business that relies on all kinds of people to stay afloat.
An inn in Canada, now-defunct, was fined $4,500Â in 2009 for refusing to honor a gay couple’s reservation.
This is yet another example of the perils of social media for small travel businesses: the Internet can magnify even the smallest infraction, making it ever more imperative that travel companies have robust social media policies in place to avoid any self-inflicted crisis.
What sorts of lessons have you learned from social media interactions?
Related posts:
About Nick Vivion
I’m with you on your statement “The risk of alienating one cohort in favor of another is usually not worth it for a business that relies on all kinds of people to stay afloat”. The Internet has become the global playing field and this whole Chik Fil A debacle has enlightened us to some new protocol for keeping opinons to ones self. As if espousing one’s opinion on the Internet isn’t bad enough, you’ve got to wonder what the local code enforecment officer had to say about that sign!
Unfortunately it seems that the discourse, most especially in the United States, is increasingly polarized – and it makes me wonder if the ease of communication online has stunted the actual maturity of our general capability to communicate as human beings. It’s definitely something to think about. The evolution of the Internet is going to require increasing attention on how to maintain the values of good citizenship – even with the theoretical shroud of Internet anonymity.
I agree Nick, it is wise for a business to keep politics and personal religious feelings out of business. It’s just not professional. Clearly, Whitebriar did not conduct themselves professional by their emotional outburst.
I’m curious, though, why PAII felt obliged to get in the middle of it. Wouldn’t it have been safer/wiser to stay out? Wouldn’t it have been more professional to not add fuel to the fire? I say this because I know from personal experience that the PAII community is home to all sorts of people with a wide variety of personal, religious and political beliefs. It’s possible that PAII may alienate some of their members by getting involved, just as they may please some others by getting involved. They would have angered none, I think it’s safe to say, had they kept out of it.
Nick, I wholeheartedly agree with you about the lack of maturity–except I disagree that this is an overwhelmingly American problem. Browse reddit, Digg and any other number of social websites and you will see immature trolling from Scandinavians, Britons, Australians, Italians–everyone raised by an Internet culture, regardless of nationality. This stunted maturity, in my personal (non-professional) opinion is partially the result of widespread ease of access to information and communication abilities, but also due to the advent of an unprincipled generation that has failed to be disciplined, taught and instructed out of love, and so it resorts to a baser instinct–doing what makes one feel good at that moment.
Thanks for that insight, Brandon. My personal view is that it’s definitely something that’s spread beyond the US; however, we are such babies when compared to nations that have been around for over a thousand years. I think we have a fair amount of learning still ahead of us. My primary concern is that the youngest generation has no media training. Schools need to start doing a better job of teaching communication skills for both face-to-face and online encounters.
But back to travel. My take on PAII getting involved was the tenor and vitriol that came across in that particular Facebook post. It was pretty extreme, and it is most definitely a good lesson to learn. What would have happened if Whitebriar had been more diplomatic about their beliefs rather than the more extreme approach that they took?
That’s a very good question. Indeed, the tenor of Whitebriar’s response was completely out of line. Not only was it unprofessional, but it was abusive, and that is unacceptable. I do wonder what the response would have been had they responded on Facebook with reason, self-restraint and clarity. Sadly, we’ll never know.
Personally, it seems that most people respond on social media in the tenor in which a message was posted. I would like to think that had a cogent, measured, diplomatic and much more restrained response been crafted, there would have been a far different response from the public.
Hi Brandon,
We felt compelled to get into it for a few reasons. The way I discovered the issue was one: a dear, old personal friend sent me this message on Facebook, along with a link to a blog post about the issue:
“Jay, in our ongoing discussion about why I don’t stay at Bed and Breakfasts I submit this. Some owners are just freaking weirdos and I thought you might like to see this. Below is a link from one in New Jersey. Please tell me this idiot is not a member of your association. If so maybe they shouldn’t be.”
This message underscored for me that the B&B experience is inextricably linked to the host(s) in the minds of travelers. Because we have over 20,000 properties in the US and Canada in our industry, with each one run by and hosted by different people (no standard corporate experience here), travelers are going to encounter lots of different kinds of innkeepers. Most are going to be perfectly warm, generous and hospitable – many even become close friends with guests over time. But there are unfortunately enough negative stereotypes about B&Bs and innkeepers that we felt it was necessary to make a statement distancing our industry at-large from the idiosyncrasies of this one innkeeper.
People don’t say “I’m not going to eat at a restaurant ever again,” because of one crazy chef or hostess. But many travelers will write off B&Bs because they encountered some ornery innkeeper one time, 10 years ago. I mean, c’mon, right? But we are saddled with this strange syndrome of being stereotyped as an entire industry based on the eccentricities of a few people.
Plus, the leadership of PAII wanted to make a clear statement about our industry having wide open doors. This wasn’t the first story this year about B&Bs being unwelcoming to gay travelers (I know of 3 situations of discrimination – 1 in the US, 1 in Canada and 1 in the UK). We don’t want anyone thinking – as an industry, we were at all ok with what happened this week. That we would chalk it up to just, “Eh, just a weird innkeeper spouting some hate.” It struck a nerve with our leadership, and the amount of kudos we’ve been getting from innkeepers and travelers shows us we did the right thing.
Jay
Jay, you bring up some very valid points. The B+B experience is so dependent on the owners – which is way many people absolutely love them while others prefer the more anonymous hotel experience.
I think it’s critical to point out that these instances have been focused on the gay traveler – yet what about other traveling minorities? The homophobic instances have been widely publicized; how are B+Bs experienced by other minorities?
By pointing out that openness and inclusivity are important aspects of PAII, you do a good job of reminding folks that travelers are a diverse group and that the majority of innkeepers are ecstatic to welcome any guest into their establishment with warmth and hospitality. And those that don’t are not worthy of the term “professional.”
I befriended the owner of Whitebriar after reading an article about her situation, and realizing her B&B is only 30 mins from my home.
Today, my 14 yr old daughter and I spent the day with her, helping her remove all the gay porn, profanity, gutter accusations and absolutely disgusting additional posts from her Facebook page.
Before you feel too sorry for the rainbows-and-love equality crowd, you should know that this woman, for simply speaking her mind under the First Amendment, has been bullied, threatened, crank called every 5 minutes (I know, because I was there today and answered a couple of those lovely hate calls myself), and physically threatened.
Oh, and my daughter (a computer whiz with Facebook, which was why I brought her along) now thinks homosexuals are insane and disgusting….not a surprising deduction, after seeing just some of what we had to help the owner remove.
Great job, gays! And you wonder why so many can’t stand the sight of you.
Annette
Similar to the way that you have lumped all gays into one group (even though individual human beings make their own choices), the PAII is also concerned about innkeepers being lumped into one group (even though individual innkeepers can also can make their own choices).
The point of this article is not to feel “sorry for the rainbows-and-love equality crowd,” but rather to speak to the role that technology can play in the travel business – both positive and negative. Businesses employing technology such as Facebook must be acutely aware that anything without proper privacy settings can be seen by the entire world – for better or worse.
Hi Nick,
i’m weighing in pretty late on this, but I need to say that I am happy that people are now forewarned. There will certainly not be an incident in the future at Whitebriar, because no-one who has ever felt any form of prejudice will choose to go there. We can thank the social media for that aspect, if nothing else.
I think that what has happened since the “Chick-Fil-A” incident has become about far more than the right of an individual to voice an opinion or belief, regardless of the fact that it might be a very poor business decision. I fully support that right, but it seems that it has created an avenue for people to express their hatred and prejudices, as well as to demonstrate that their personal “moral” agenda is more important to them than their business. Hopefully there are a lot of straight people, like me, who will choose to express their opinions by failing to patronize.
This all brings up a lot of issues, which are not , in fact, about social media. But I think it is interesting to realize that social media attention to a person’s 1st amendment rights has degenerated into a demonstration of exclusionary social bonding.
Let’s just consider Chik Fil A and Whitebriar to be the modern version of the “white’s only” drinking fountain. I will NEVER be that thirsty.
Thanks for sharing that perspective!