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Best Way to Manage Real-Time Booking Availability for Multiple Hostels

Front Desk Operations

Hall Thomas started this discussion 6 years 10 months ago

Hi! I work for a small chain of hostels who are looking to streamline the booking processes for our current clients as they travel from one city to the next.

Namely, we would like to be able to offer a booking button to guests to help generate direct reservations when they leave for new destinations. We have tried word of mouth encouragement but it doesn't always work.

Our hostels operate different PMS platforms. I'm not sure if that is a hiccup to the solution.

However, we would ideally provide the guest with a real time view of the room availability and rates across our different hostels. Is there a solution for something like this? We would want one of our staff to manage and oversee it.

I'm also curious as to whether a Channel Manager needs to be involved in this process or not.

Any advice would be amazing!!!! Thanks

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Rucksack Brian

6 years

To understand what you're looking for, how would you like the booking button to work? Would it be on each hostel's own website for guests to use to make a direct booking? Would you have a single page with all the hostels in your chain listed, and the guest/staff member could use it to make reservations in any of them? Are you looking for something embedded in your PMS for receptionists to make onward bookings in the next hostel? Would you set up a booking kiosk (with a tablet?) somewhere in the hostel for people to make reservations in other hostels from the chain?

Also, what do you mean when you say a staff member would manage or oversee it? What part would they play in the reservation?

If all of your properties were working on the same PMS that would probably help. The receptionists could simply click over to the other property's system and enter the reservation directly. Which combination of systems are you using?

You could easily set up a single web page that lists each of your properties. You could embed whichever booking widget you are currently using for each one with an iframe to display real time bookable inventory.

MyAllocator has a system called MyGroup, that basically sets up a private OTA just for your hostel chain. That could be an option for you.

Hostel 2 Hostel is a system that lets you make reservations at other hostels and receive them in return. This thread has a discussion about them.

There was a program called Open Travel Exchange (OTE) that let you make onward bookings and share a small commission with OTE for use of the platform. It seems they have merged with Hostel Hops to do the same thing.

Maybe one of those would work for you? Or have I misunderstood what you're looking for?

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AlwaysTravel

6 years

Hi Brian- thanks for your detailed response.

Something like MyGroup looks like what we would want. Are there other softward providers that can achieve the same thing?

Basically, we send communications to our guests to say "Hey as you explore, we have other places you can stay" and then we would share a URL where they could select the city, dates, price range (essentially things you could do on an OTA), etc. and then the real-time availability would populate on that one website for all of our properties that matched their filter inputs.

I agree- having one PMS makes sense. We are working to transition to that but it takes time and lots of cooks are in that kitchen. We have a mixture of Optiloding, Front Desk Master and Bananadesk. They each have their own booking button so perhaps we could use the iframe approach you talked about? So long as the user could go to one URL, enter their desired filters (as discussed above) and then receive relevant info from the various hostels, I think that's a solution. To my brain, it offers the same convenience of an OTA except it is exclusive to our properties so we can retain our guest within our chain.

The other question would be how exactly the channel manager works in this situation. Assuming the real-time availability comes directly from the booking buttons (tied directly to each hostel's PMS), we'd need to figure out if tying into a channel manager is needed or if it's already handled since each hostel's PMS is already plugged into a channel manager. Overbookings have caused me so much Advil consumption :)

Do you know of any good examples of chains doing this with the iframe or button button functionality you mentioned? I'd love to look at their sites for some practical guidance.

Thanks for your input. Super helpful!

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Rucksack Brian

6 years

Something like MyGroup looks like what we would want. Are there other softward providers that can achieve the same thing?

If I'm not mistaken, the Israeli hostel association were using a similar service provided by HostelsClub. All of the hostels just had to list their inventory on the site (distributed through MyAllocator) and HC created a group booking engine for them. I don't know what the service cost though.

Basically, we send communications to our guests to say "Hey as you explore, we have other places you can stay" and then we would share a URL where they could select the city, dates, price range... Do you know of any good examples of chains doing this with the iframe or button button functionality you mentioned?

This sounds likle a really easy setup just using multiple iframes to put each property's booking engine widget under that property's name and location.

One option is to have one single URL with all of the hostels in your chain listed on the page. Each hostel could send an email with the same link. That would be the simplest setup.

As an alternative, each hostel could have a separate URL where their own hostel doesn't appear in the list so it would seem less generic, even if everything else were exactly the same. Just copy the content of the previous page and remove the hostel sending the email. The message could say something along the lines of, "Thanks for visiting us in CITY. As you explore, we have other places you can stay. If you liked it here, you might also like our hostels in... City2, City3, and City4."

I'm assuming that each hostel has its own website, but maybe that's not the case. If all the hostels in the chain are using one consolidated website, then a single URL with all the hostels listed might be better.

I wish I had a good example of another chain doing this, but off the top of my head I couldn't point you to one. If someone else reading this has a good example, maybe they can jump into the discussion and showcase their site.

The other question would be how exactly the channel manager works in this situation.

As long as each hostel already has a booking engine that's updated by their PMS or channel manager, you shouldn't have to set up additional connections. (referring to the iframe method)

There could be some small downsides to this method:

1) Every booking will appear to come from each hostel's own website. There wouldn't be a way to determine that it came from your URL link vs the hostel's website unless you use a coupon/promo code or ask the guest to mention something specific in the comment field.

2) If each hostel uses a different booking engine, then the look, feel, and process of checking rates and availability will be different for each hostel even though it's on the same page. That might be weird for guests, but at least it's a start until you can migrate all the properties over to one PMS and one booking engine.

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HostelOffice

6 years

We have a group booking engine, also automated emails to guests to inform them of discount codes they can use in our integrated booking engine in any of the group hostels for more direct bookings. Also integrated Channel Manager so you don't need extra software.

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