Commercial Hostels in Europe Report

This one?
http://hotels.cbre.com/NR/rdonlyres/ABC7E44E-5ED9-4BB1-AFB2-1F4C0AF520F7...

Both of those are pretty interesting links.

Continuing Josh's quote from the first link:

The hostel market is still relatively opaque, where information on the configuration of individual properties and the ratio of beds to rooms is not routinely available. This lack of transparency extends to the nature of the businesses themselves, which are predominantly owner-operated freehold interests with little need to disclose operating data.

Is it fair to conclude that the act of keeping our information to ourselves is helping to prevent small hostel markets from getting bulldozed by big investors?

Guest Profile
Figure 3 illustrates the segmentation profile of typical commercially operated hostel with educational groups underpinning its occupancy.

45% from youth groups is pretty huge. Would that include all of the Bus About, Contiki, STA, and similar group bookings? I'm surprised that single tourists only make up 20% and that families constitute almost the same amount of business. I wonder if this is only taking the hostel chains from Figure 1 into account. That is a very different breakdown of guests from the hostels I have work with.

From the second link:

And, while hostels may be taking on hotels, Wyatt does see a time when hotel chains will enter the hostels market.

“It will take another few years before the larger hotel companies see the opportunity,” he says. “But if a large, publicly traded hotel company enters the space via an acquisition, this would supercharge the hostel market. Given that growth in Europe and the US is slowing for many large hotel companies, the hostel space represents one of the last bastions of potential massive growth.”

Small, independent, owner-operated hostels better get together and petition for some fair regulation before hotels make a full charge into the market. With heavily funded pressure from the hotel industry on lawmakers, the NYC legislation might just be the beginning of the end for backpacker hostels. While we may operate in different ways and cater to different clients, it won't make a bit of difference if we're all rendered illegal.

From Gordo:

I actually have a meeting with the author of this report later in the week.
...
actually have a lunch with CBRE tomorrow.

Will those meetings be private discussions about your own dealings, or industry chats that you can talk about on the Forum? Sounds like fun!

Is it fair to conclude that the act of keeping our information to ourselves is helping to prevent small hostel markets from getting bulldozed by big investors?

Definitely. Hostels should be extremely careful about what entities they give their data to. Combined data from many hostels in a city will let the investors know whether they should open a mega-hostel in that city.

Does anyone know if PMS software companies or booking sites might be selling this kind of data? It would be good if companies that deal with hostels specifically mention data confidentiality in their contracts so that hostels know for sure that the data they provide about their cities won't be given to potential future competitors, even in an "anonymized" form.

Given all the data is aggregated rather than property specific, there's no privacy issues - its the equivalent of the unemployment data collected by every government everywhere; no names, just numbers.

I don't think that it's about personal privacy -- only that a company (HW, HB, YHA, etc.) might be passing on a hostel's secret business information to potential future competitors. Whoever buys that report of your occupancy statistics might determine that they should open a 500-bed hostel around the corner from your hostel. :)

It's definitely useful information for future competitors. :)