Expectation Management in Hostels

Expectation management can be summed up as: Under-Promise, Over-Deliver. Set reasonable expectations, and then exceed them. If you give your guests everything they expect, they will be satisfied. If you give them even more, they’ll be impressed. That’s our goal every day.

This may sound strange, but you don’t have to be the best in the world. We can’t all be the best at the same time. The trick is simply to be (even) better than the guest thought you were going to be.

So how do you do this in a hostel?

Set the correct expectations before your guests make their booking. State through words and images what you do and do not offer so that the guests know what to expect from you. You organize free walking tours every day and pub crawls every night? Say so. All of your toilets are the “squatty-potty” style? Say that too. Whether you love raucous partiers, or you don’t tolerate drunken shenanigans, make sure to let your guests know in advance so they know what they’re getting themselves into.

The post Getting the guests you want has some good recommendations for setting the correct expectations.

As a note, it is advisable to set reasonable expectations and avoid creating undue hype. Superlative words and descriptions like best, most comfortable, coolest, friendliest, coziest, etc. should be avoided. They can easily set impossibly high expectations, and they usually describe subjective opinions that you simply can’t control. Replacing those extremes with the more subdued good, comfortable, cool, friendly, and cozy will send the same message, but your guests won’t walk in the door expecting you to outdo all others. You don’t have to brag to sell beds. Your happy customers will do that for you.

Describe the positive side of negative attributes. Paint them in a positive light to show what’s good about them. See the thread Dealing with outside noise as an example. If it’s loud outside maybe it’s because something fun is going on, and guests might want to be involved.

Be transparent about the things that aren’t perfect. The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel does an amazing job with expectation management, claiming to be “The Worst Hotel in the World.” They marketing themselves as “accidentally eco friendly” and use the slogan “It can’t get any worse, but we’ll do our best.” This certainly makes the expectations easy to exceed.

This is an extreme example though. The humorous approach makes it a lot of fun, and something worth sharing with friends. That’s great for marketing, and it’s working for them. For most hostels I would advise not setting unrealistically low expectations though. It’s good to under-promise, but don’t actually degrade your hostel. Think ‘modest’ rather than ‘self-deprecating.’

Surprise your guests. It’s easy to exceed your guests’ expectations when they’re not expecting anything at all. For example, advertising free breakfast can generate more complaints than no breakfast because expectations for meals differ from person to person. So don’t advertise that you provide breakfast. Then offer it anyway as a nice surprise. Receiving anything is nice when you’re expecting nothing at all.

Similarly, you could put a price on a service or product, and then offer it to guests for free or with a discount to increase the perception of value. This could work with breakfast, towel rental, ear plugs, laundry, or anything else you charge for.

Hostelworld is also doing a fantastic job right now of surprising guests by sending them unexpected gifts as part of the HostelworldTreats campaign.

Upgrade when you can. If you have unsold beds in a more expensive dorm, the cost to upgrade someone is negligible. It may make a big difference to your guests though. This could be especially beneficial during slow periods if you combine guests into a few rooms. It makes it seem like there are more people around the hostel and increases the chances of everyone interacting. It may also reduce your heating costs. Free upgrades to a private room could be given as prizes. Or you might simply do something special for those guests who you particularly enjoy (or who you think need to feel papered/appreciated).

Tell guests what to think when they arrive. Sometimes you need to plant certain expectations in the guest’s mind. Simple statements can have a profound effect on a guest’s impressions of your hostel, especially in areas where they might not give much thought. For example, you might say, “We’re very serious about safety and security, so we have keycard access to the building and all the rooms, individual lockers for your things, and a receptionist keeping an eye on things 24-hours a day.” This isn’t necessarily more than any other hostel is doing, but it gives the impression that you do it with a purpose because you really care about security. That’s more impressive than simply having locks, and more likely to exceed their expectations.

Provide a service that others don’t bother to do. The simple act of answering emails with a personal response rather than relying on an FAQ page sets the expectation that your guests will get person attention at your hostel. From The 5 Golden Rules of Expectation Management and Why You Can’t Ignore Them:

Thanks to the proliferation of online companies that are so big and so reliant on using FAQs as customer service, simply having someone respond to an email is better than normal.
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I understood that when dealing with customers, people love having an email they can send to get help from. They also love it when the email they send is replied to (go figure!). What is interesting is that the email reply doesn’t need to necessarily solve their problem, it just needs to be some kind of acknowledgement. Someone saying we know you exist and have this problem and we are going to help you.

Ask your guests for feedback. If you can get guests to point out any problems that they see in the hostel, then you can fix them right away. By fixing a problem you can repair an expectation that was not met before it’s too late. You can also exceed the expectation by taking immediate action, demonstrating how much you value their input.