This is a story about fishing, but it’s also about a small B and B that “got away” with taking only minimal damage during Hurricane Katrina. In fact, not only did the Royal Street Inn and R Bar survive, its managers are looking past Mardi Gras, past even the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in late April-early May all the way to summer, when if all goes according to plan they will market a series of fishing expeditions.
First, a definition. Unlike a typical B and B, the Royal Street Inn has no kitchen and does not serve breakfast to its guests. The second “B” stands for bar, specifically the R Bar, which is right below the Inn. Guests at the Inn receive either two or four free drinks per night, depending on the size of their room.
“If your hotel is filled, then your bar is filled. It works very well,” said Matthew Kopfler, a managing partner.
Come the summer, Kopfler will launch a series of fishing trips, which he hopes will serve as added draws for hotel guests.
Photograph by Richard H. Levey
Matthew Kopfler, a managing partner at the Royal Street Inn and R Bar, hopes to bring nature enthusiasts to New Orleans all summer long with a series of fishing expeditions.
“I like to fish, and I think a lot of people would enjoy the opportunity to go offshore on the Louisiana coast. Look at all the marshland people are talking about that we’re losing. If you can see it, you can have a better understanding of what’s going on,” he said.
Kopfler will use e-mail messages sent to former guests to tout the new trips. “We have a really large database, and do an e-mail contact once a week, letting everybody know what’s going on, if we have rooms available,” he said. “We get a lot of hits back from that.”
The database itself is fairly rudimentary: Little more is captured than name, address, e-mail address – not even drink preferences. Yet.
Kopfler doesn’t know if the Royal Street Inn’s clientele will embrace this new activity, but he is eager to put a blurb in the newsletter and test whether they are. “It’s fishing in itself, just shoot it out there and see what we comes back,” he said.
If it doesn’t work, the bar and inn have a number of fallback options. Currently its e-mails showcase a variety of cultural events the bar hosts.
“One of the partners [Gallery owner and painter Jonathan Ferrara] is an artist, so we do a lot of neat things to expose New Orleans culture to the world,” Kopfler said. “We’ll do independent film screenings, we do book signings, and we have art for sale. That’s why we do it each week, because each week we’ll have a new thing.”
This article is part of a weeklong series on direct marketing and the economic recovery of New Orleans.
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