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Approaching Hostels about a change of management

General Hostel Operations

rjd1983 started this discussion 14 years 4 months ago

Hello

What do you think is the best way of approaching under-performing hostels? I've seen a few hostels in London where I feel if I was in charge, I could make the place much better. They are mainly pubs, with dorms attached.

I feel like I should just e-mail them direct if they are interested in hiring some one to redo their hostel? However, I'm not sure if that's the best approach as someone could delete the e-mail as they are worried they are going to lose their job!

So what is the best approach in contacting a hostel to see if they would be willing to take you on to redo their business? Do I e-mail them to their normal address, and say "I can run your hostel better than you can"?

Most likely contract length would be 6-12months.

I don't have years of experience of managing hostels, or redoing them, but I have the drive, enthusiasm and the know of what makes a good hostel, and how to go about it.

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footprints

14 years

Personally if you were to contact me and tell me you can make my business better I would want to know 'who are you' and why do you think you can make me more money. First issue is you are telling me my staff / management are crap this could put my back up, even if I know I have an issue with a manager I don't need you coming in here and telling me that.

The best approach would be to get to the owner, you are right in sending an email could be dead in the water as in 99.9% of cases it is going to hit a staff member, so even if you make it past the spam filters then past the staff you still have to sell it in an unsolicited email. (that's allot of upstream in a barbed wire canoe with one arm)

You say you don't have experience of turning around establishments, this is also a huge issue as what do I do take you on your word that you know what your doing, bit of a gamble with my business don't you think. Having no proof of your capabilities is a bit of a problem, and what you would need to do is fix that so you can end up with cases where you have turned places around.

Your best chance would again be to get to the owner, and offer to work for free but take a percentage on new generated revenue, this will limit the gamble on my behalf but there is no way I am about to get rid of any existing staff.

I would want a proposal of what you want to do, how it is going to increase my bottom line and how you are going to make my existing staff work better / train and generally keep the new profitable direction going once you have left.

If you can do that for a couple of establishments then you have something to work with, for the further contacting of other as you see them low performing businesses.

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crhostel

14 years

I would have to agree with Footprints. You would definitely need some level of experience, otherwise your just anther guest with an idea. I can't tell you how many times we hear "you should..." and 95% of the time I've already thought about what they think I should do, and there's a good reason not to do it. That doesn't mean that I'm right though. It just means that I think I'm right, and if someone is going to have a go at changing my mind, they need to have some experience in working in hostels, or be able to show me some results from previous efforts.

I had a guy that would constantly say that he could increase my business by xx%, and that he was an expert in creating "profit centers". Aside from talking to me like douche, he never presented any proof of his claims. No white papers or case studies, so I ended our relationship, and I'm glad that I did.

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Scotch Argus

14 years

I'd just apply for a job their. Once inside you might have a better appreciation on how to turn things about. Often in hostels the staff turnover is high, so it might not be hard to get a job. I wouldn't email with a sales pitch about how you are going to make changes etc. You might find that there is limited budget however to make changes, both in capital expenditure and staffing. IN my experience hostels that need improvement often need money spent - and this is just what the owner doesn't want to do. They may have got into dorms rather than traditional hotel rooms as they wanted to take advantage of their location and have less fussy guests and invest little or nothing in it. AKA a flop-house.

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Josh Hostels

14 years

I'd just apply for a job their. Once inside you might have a better appreciation on how to turn things about. Often in hostels the staff turnover is high, so it might not be hard to get a job.

I think this is a good idea. Find a hostel that needs work and get any job available there. Work your way up and try to make changes once you're there, or at least get a letter of recommendation which will help when getting a job at the next hostel...

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