POLAND, Maine — When I tasted the chorizo, I muttered a blissful expletive — a farm-to-table Instagram promise fulfilled and served up lakeside. Wolf Cove Inn’s Instagram account had caught my eye with its unhinged authenticity, yet its substance was undeniable. It’s the Goldilocks of social media feeds — polished but not too polished, trendy yet substantive, and above all else, approachable.
I’d find myself thinking, “ahh, classic Geoff” or “wow — gorgeous,” yet I never once commented. Instead, I passively gobbled up the inn’s content without ever interacting — not uncommon these days. Still, my curiosity led me to Google this cozy B&B in Poland, Maine (yes, of Poland Springs fame!), and ultimately visit, but I largely remained a ghost in their metrics.
Digital discovery offers inns and bed & breakfasts a free, mega-opportunity to reach would-be guests, but there’s a catch: Most B&B owners are overwhelmingly busy turning over rooms, unclogging toilets, and managing the books.
So how did the owners of Wolf Cove Inn, Nicole and Geoff Skidmore, manage to crack the code? Their approach blends hospitality roots, a cozy lakeside locale, and a wink of Marvel-Esque comedic superpower as the foundation. That and a nod to serendipitous timing.
Nicole spent her teen summers working at her grandparents’ beloved Cape Cod bed-and-breakfast, the Captain’s House Inn. In college, she studied hospitality but ultimately worked at her father’s California-based circuit-board company. Nicole and Geoff met in 2015, while he was putting in 17-hour days at Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and working on Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios projects.
As the pandemic hit, Geoff said, “Let’s just stop this. Let’s think about what we really want.” When Nicole resurfaced her dream of becoming an innkeeper, he decided to take a leap of faith.
“Maine wasn’t on our radar until very late in the game … because we were these thin-blooded wimpy Californians who were just terrified of the idea of New England winter. We’d never lived a real winter in our lives. We didn’t want to learn, at our age, how to adapt.”
But to their credit, that’s what they did. In a quirky twist, they visited New England during a 2023 Arctic blast, facing wind chills of negative 40 degrees. Despite their fears, they recognized the raw beauty and outbid a private equity firm to become the inn’s new owners. When they returned in June, timing was top-of-mind again — Nicole was six months pregnant.
“We didn’t take this decision lightly,” says Geoff. “It affected the trajectory of our whole life [and] our son. ... But when we drove up in the beginning of June and saw it [unfrozen] for the first time, it was just like holy smokes, this place is gorgeous.”
They hit the ground running. The inn’s natural beauty made it easy to connect with would-be guests through social media. The American Express Travel 2023 Global Travel Trends Report echoes this, finding that 76 percent of travelers use social media for travel inspiration. I’m one of them, but the challenge for Geoff and his team is that I’m a phantom — innkeepers can see basic reach and viewing metrics, but they get little behavioral insight unless someone actually interacts with the content.
With no behavioral data, it’s like throwing darts blindfolded — after someone spins you ‘round and ‘round ad nauseum. Metrics can’t link someone like me to a booking months or years later, making it hard to justify the effort — a common challenge for busy innkeepers.
Geoff’s no ordinary innkeeper, though. He’s a Disney guy who dabbled in Marvel projects and has finely tuned comedic timing. And Nicole? She studied hospitality and has body-as-comedy prowess nearing the Lucille Ball benchmark.
Social media is a fickle beast. But these innkeepers are business-savvy creatives willing to throw endless strands of spaghetti at the wall — week after week to see what’ll stick.
If there’s trending audio, they morph it into innkeeper puns. When others zig, they zig — then zag again for good measure. They feature the property’s amenities, Tripp Lake’s beauty, farm-to-table dining, affable employees, and rooms from grandma-chic to modern Maine-woods elegance.
The algorithm loves authenticity, and the Skidmores let it flow like the water from the town’s famous natural springs. Multiple industry reports reveal what we already know — that travelers love personalized experiences and unique accommodations. So, the lakeside inn’s sauna, outdoor ice bath, and 130-year-old boathouse anchor the experience offerings and are heavily featured in social media. In fact, the renovation of the boathouse was a direct result of Instagram feedback.
Geoff says yes, it’s sometimes tough to track a direct correlation between social media viewership and bookings. Yet there are benefits. When people interact with posts, he and Nicole can pivot swiftly, unlike a large hotel. For example, when viewers clamored to an early post about the inn’s small, historic boathouse, this nimbleness allowed them to capitalize quickly: They called an interior designer to give the lakeside structure a glow-up.
They transformed it from a cute but overlooked hut into $40,000 in revenue — in just four months, “because of this organic response on social media,” Geoff explains. The private al fresco dinners they host there became “a new experience because we were listening to the pulse of what the traveler was looking for — this unique, rustic, authentic Maine lake experience.”
Geoff admits that he spends a lot of time creating content, especially Instagram reels, but when guests say that’s why they’re visiting, it’s worth it. So, in the end, the algorithm does deliver the metrics — to the inn’s doorstep rather than on a tiny screen.