10 years
A reader of this Hostel Management Forum has asked me via email how we gain a hostel more bookings. As that question is a natural extension of this debate thread then I make this post.
1. There is a natural process for bookings at all hostels that we identify and work to optimise. Not all hostels have the same dynamics but many hostels have a combination of similar dynamics.
2. The big thing to identify is how to gain momentum of bookings for the user. Many hostels kill their momentum by selling weekends too soon or over pricing weekday beds.
3. If you give up your control of the specific dynamics of bookings for your hostel by jamming as much allocation as possible to as many agents as possible then the hostel can distance itself from the reality of the specific market they function within and has less chance to achieve a momentum of bookings. That hostel may well achieve a frequency of many short term bookings but the frequency of bookings will just be the same as the majority of competitors in their city. Little of what these hostels do is sustainable that contributes to gaining future longer duration bookings.
4. We do not block the existing dynamic that delivers bookings. This is often overlooked as a valuable mechanism towards success. An example of how the natural dynamic gets shut down is by replacing 100% bed price paying guests with 88%, 85%, 80% bed price paying guests by giving allocation priority to as many agents as possible. Not only do we facilitate more direct 100% bed price paying bookings via enabling the natural process to exist. But technologically our integrated booking engine is very advanced enabling rooms to be booked as multiple types concurrently. Click here to see film on it.
5. We wrap in much other qualitative advice that the software facilitates and automates. Not only have we been in the market 15 years with our software but we also have run hostels and I personally have a Masters Degree in Internet Communication that all adds up to sharing very valuable relevant advice to users. Not all users put that advice in to practice but if it is important to a hostel then they do act on that information.
6. There is a telegraphed future direction of technology that provides opportunities for hostels immediately. Hostel owners generally do very little to improve their online presence other than how they look online and obvious things like creating a FaceBook page for their hostel. Therefore, we set up the software to do for the users what they could not be bothered to do for themselves. When a PMS supplier can automatically improve Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and remove the need for the hostel to pay for that then it is an injustice to state that a 100 euro a month fee we charge is expensive.
7. We do not want every hostel to use our software. We only want users that value what we do as they are more fun to work with. Business is meant to be fun as it is not all about making money. Sure when you have fun and are successful at what you do then you do make money enough to do other things for the hostel industry to support it like paying to be a Super Sponsor of this forum and creating a collection social media posts that help other hostels to learn new things as with Hostel Guru News.
8. If you ask us what we do specifically then we do not give that answer. Results is all that most users see. Just as listing with every agent possible is not correct then so is posting a list of SEO things to do. Our software is not static and un changing as it has to move with the market and technology. We like to give our users a competitive advantage so we will not publicise specifics. My Masters Degree cost me a lot of time and money to achieve for the benefit of users so we do not wish to give that away. There are User Stories on our website.
9. The reality is that most hostels do gain over 65% direct bookings when using good software. Don't use our software. Go ahead and pay for other software. But the fact remains - if it is not helping you grow your direct bookings then you will increasingly be working more days per month just to cover your expenses.
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