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2013 Hostelworld Conference and HOSCARS (Dublin)

Hostel Conferences and Tourism Events

Rucksack Brian started this discussion 11 years 11 months ago

Hostelworld has announced the dates for the 2013 Hostelworld Conference and HOSCAR awards: 21-22 February, 2013

Location: The Convention Centre in Dublin City Center (Dublin, Ireland)

Price: FREE*

Schedule of events:
20 Feb – Evening welcome drinks at the Guinness Storehouse

21 Feb – Conference with presentations as well as scheduled meetings with your Buddy during the day, then HOSCAR award ceremony and dinner/party in the evening

22 Feb - Conference presentations and scheduled meetings with your Buddy

By popular demand this year’s conference will last two days instead of one, allowing more time for key note presentations, networking, and meeting with your Buddy.

Registration is now open!

*Please note: The conference is free to attend, but there is a significant cost to HW for the event. Last year there was huge demand and a large amount of No Shows. This year No Shows or cancellations made less than 7 days in advance will be charged 100€, invoiced to your hostel.

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ACBBPatrick

11 years

Is it more difficult to maintain (for example) 85% with 800 reviews than 85% with 400? It seems that a greater number of reviews would mean a greater number of bad reviews, and a greater number of good reviews. Wouldn't the percentages matter more than the number (after a certain minimum number of reviews is reached)?

Exactly look at this scenario
If your hostel has an average score of 85% with 800 reviews and then you get 10 straight 100% reviews your overall score will increase by 0.3%
If your hostel has an average score of 85% with 800 reviews and then you get 10 straight 20% reviews your overall score will decrease by 0.8%

If your hostel has an average score of 90% with 400 reviews and then you get 10 straight 100% reviews your overall score will increase by only 0.2%
If your hostel has an average score of 90% with 400 reviews and then you get 10 straight 20% reviews your overall score will decrease by a whopping 1.7%

Therefore you have to work harder to improve and work harder to maintain. Which hostel is a better experience for the guest?

Once you hit a larger number of reviews trust me it is wayyy harder to improve a score of 90% and very easy to drop from scores above 90% than it is to maintain a hostel at 85%.

A hostel rated at 85% is no where near the quality of a hostel rated at 90% Just read the reviews of a hostel that is 85% vs a hostel that is 90%. They are not the same experience from a guests point of view.

What is the purpose of these awards? Marketing? Improving hostels? We used to strive to find out what other hostels were doing to improve their guests experiences/reviews and get the amazing high scores (Lisbon awesome!)

Now to win the awards all we have to do is get more reviews or more accurately a better % of reviews to capacity.

One way is to make hostels smaller to HW. Reduce capacity and seek out other channels for the excess. Oops. Another is to get more reviews from our guests. Simple enough, watch for review incentives. Also hostels don't have to work at continually improving our product as much because these awards will now go to the, highest turnover properties, not the properties with the happiest guests.

Don't forget the other new secret algorithim we got hit with this year. The Quality Score. A conversion ranking system that helps to push the properties that get more bookings to the top of the city pages. Hostels are no longer ranked first by default with Hostelworld. This has been discussed on this forum at length, it's worth reading the points raised there and thinking about in context with this situation.

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LarsBeineke

11 years

Minimum Number of reviews is 400???
Ehm...TOP TEN HOSTELS WORLDWIDE.....there is exactly ONE Hostel that has more than 400 reviews...9 of them have less

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Rucksack Brian

11 years

Now to win the awards all we have to do is get more reviews or more accurately a better % of reviews to capacity.

One way is to make hostels smaller to HW. Reduce capacity and seek out other channels for the excess. Oops. Another is to get more reviews from our guests. Simple enough, watch for review incentives. Also hostels don't have to work at continually improving our product as much because these awards will now go to the, highest turnover properties, not the properties with the happiest guests.

Exactly right. The worst part is that this sets the focus for hostels on winning an award instead of providing the best service and the best experience that we can. When we take the focus off of our guests, regardless of what the plaque on the wall may say, then we have all lost. Especially the guests!

Minimum Number of reviews is 400???
Ehm...TOP TEN HOSTELS WORLDWIDE.....there is exactly ONE Hostel that has more than 400 reviews...9 of them have less

I think the 400 minimum reviews was for the "Extra Large Hostels" category. It would be nice to know the minimum number of reviews required for the other categories as well.

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ACBBPatrick

11 years

I envision motels located near airports as the winners based on these secret algorithims. I just don't understand why they have abandoned hostels.

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Rucksack Brian

11 years

It’s all about the money, pure and simple. They abandoned us for profit. HW has their Venture Capital owners breathing down their necks and expecting a return on their investment. As long as the end result is a bigger bottom line, then the ends justify the means for HW. Hostels are no longer the core of their business, but rather just one possible source of revenue. If they need to manipulate, exploit, and abuse us to make more money, then they will do exactly that.

Their secret algorithm was designed for just such manipulation. You may have an amazing hostel, but if you don't cater to HW's best interests, then you're not going to be recognized for your efforts. Now the pressure is on you to give them more. In the end HW wins.

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gordo

11 years

To be fair, HW is a business - it exists now as it always has, for one single purpose. To make money. There is no other reason. HW gives out the awards as they see fit, I see no reason to complain about how they do it beyond being confused about their decision making process. The awards are not some general industry recognition, its not like the Oscars or SAGs, its not peer recognition. Its the HOSTELWORLD awards, we're not entitled to a damn thing.

We really need to get over the idea that HW somehow owes any of us anything, its beginning to sound a little petulant. Hostelworld is choosing to make money instead of being nice to us? HOW DARE THEY!?!?!

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Josh Hostels

11 years

I was curious about the reviews thing, so I created a spreadsheet. I put it in a different thread here:
http://www.hostelmanagement.com/forums/how-much-does-number-of-customer-...

I think it might be more difficult to maintain good ratings if you have fewer reviews than another hostel...

To be fair, HW is a business - it exists now as it always has, for one single purpose. To make money.

It's true that HW is a business that has a purpose to make money, but small businesses also have a goal to make money. I don't think there is anything wrong with small companies addressing issues that affect their business. IMHO, large companies have no more right to their business interests than small companies have to theirs. :)

With customer ratings so important to hostel success in competitive locations, and the tendency of hostel enthusiasts to treat their hostel projects at their life's work, I don't think that it's unreasonable for hostels to be curious about exactly how the processes works... :)

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Travelguy

11 years

Hi All,

This thread has been quiet for a few weeks now, so not even sure anyone will read this. Never saw the above until a few days back. I own the 98% hostel that kicked of the discussion above, and have to say we were blown away that we had that impact and pleased others have shared what had been a head scratching concern for us.

What ACBBPatrick says of us above is pretty much right and much like Rucksack Brian suggests, this is what we received from HW when we inquired as to why we didn't win: "You might remember last year we introduced a “Most Popular Hostel” category for top cities. To calculate this we used an algorithm which took into account number of reviews, average rating and number of bookings. This year we have expanded on this algorithm to include also, bookings per bed capacity and reviews per bed capacity, so as to give a fair playing field for both small and large hostels. We have used this algorithm for calculating all of our awards this year."

We won the Hoscars for both New Zealand and Oceania the previous year and even though our % actually improved, came runner up in both this year. A great achievement, yes. However when we finished 2012 with an average of 97.05% from 355(!) reviews for the whole year (the 98% shown above was our rating from Sep '12 to just recently) and lost out to a hostel with about 50 more reviews but averaged 85% for the previous six months (at least), we have to ask: How much higher do we need to rate to beat a hostel with 85%? Surely the criteria is too heavily weighted towards booking and review percentages. It would have been nice to be notified about the changes before the awards and I feel for those who flew to Dublin expecting to win based on the previous system and didn't.

While I can see gordo's argument about HW being a business, I believe the new criteria for the awards will make little difference in terms of earing dollars from hostel guests... it won't do much to increase the amount of guests looking to book hostels, just where they book. On the other had, I understand (and perhaps accept) that they now offer B&Bs and hotels the ability to advertise against hostels. We really don't see them as competition. People who want a hostel environment will book a hostel - perhaps it may impact on private room bookings a little.

Anyway, I digress... We emailed HW 5 weeks ago for a more in depth explanation and have not had a response, perhaps showing how much they value small hostels. Further after winning Jan & Feb for NZ this year, we came 3rd in March even though we averaged 98%! We only received 18 reviews (from 146 bookings - 46 from 163 the previous). We can't (and won't) force people to leave a review. This new criteria doesn't seem right.

It was nice to see so many comments above that show people obviously feel they same way we do. Cheers.

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Rucksack Brian

11 years

Hi Travelguy. Thank you for joining the conversation. And CONGRATULATIONS on your stellar reviews! What you have achieved is truly something to be proud of!

Surely the criteria is too heavily weighted towards booking and review percentages.

I agree. The award is now more heavily influenced by the turnover rate than the customer satisfaction rating. As ACBBPatrick pointed out before, there are ways that you could work this system to improve your standing and win the award, but what would be the point? If hard work toward improving the hostel’s quality and customer satisfaction are NOT effective methods to improve your chances of winning, then what does the award really represent? An award that has to be won by playing that kind of game seems rather irrelevant in my opinion. For my own hostel I’m just going to be happy with my high rating, and Hostelworld can give the award to whomever they choose next year.

I believe the new criteria for the awards will make little difference in terms of earning dollars from hostel guests... it won't do much to increase the amount of guests looking to book hostels, just where they book.

But that’s exactly the point. With the new criteria HW is trying to influence WHERE hostel guests book. Not in terms of which hostel, but in terms of which site. HW is hoping that hostels will be so intent on winning an award that they will play the game by HW’s rules. The result would be that hostels would want to sell all of their beds trough HW instead of through other channels, and therefore earn more dollars for HW from hostel guests.

By changing the algorithm to focus on the number of bookings and reviews per total bed capacity (instead of the overall rating, or even the number of reviews per booked bed) HW is trying to capture the market share from their competitors. It’s a very smart and cunning strategy in theory, but as evidenced by the preceding comments in this thread, not very effective. It drives hostels to view the award as “hollow” (as described above).

For future years, if Hostelworld wants hostels or backpackers to think that their awards are prestigious, then they need to make sure that they actually are. Their new algorithm is not helping this pursuit.

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