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Hi from OnlyHostels.com

Introduce Yourself

OnlyHostels.com started this discussion 10 years 7 months ago

Hi everybody,

We've already been mentioned in other posts on the forum (relating to direct booking and the current discontent with HostelWorld) so I'd love to take the time to introduce OnlyHostels.com to you. We are born out of a need in the hostel industry – for an OTA which not only meets the needs of hostel bookers but also hostel owners.

We are a team of hostel owners, hostel workers, travelers and travel bloggers working together to create our ideal hostel booking system. We've taken our ideas and the feedback from others to create a booking site which fixes many of the issues prevalent in the hostel industry today. These include poor quality hostels and non-hostel accommodation being available on hostel booking sites and high commission rates which are not complimented by excellent customer service standard.

We're committed to improving the hostel industry as reflected by our corporate values.

We exist to improve the hostel industry - for both hostels and customers
We provide the highest possible standard of service
We listen to needs of hostel owners and customers and adapt our service accordingly
We ONLY ever sign hostels
We only ever sign high quality hostels

We are launching in less than a week and when you start using our service, we want to hear your feedback. We will only be able to ensure our continuous improvement by getting views and opinions from hostels owners and hostel bookers. We want to to create a sustainable relationship between all groups involved in making a great holiday experience for hostel bookers.

Let me know if you would like any further info about OnlyHostels.com or have any questions about what we are doing.

Otherwise have a great day :)

Thanks,
The Only Hostels team

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John Moriarty

10 years

Hi Katrina,

Thank you for your post and it is always good to see new players to the market but for many with already Gomio,Hostelsclub and Hosteltimes unable to compete with HW and HB many might not see the need to sign up.

Firstly can you advise if you are connected with any channel managers as many use them to reduce work load?

Also how do you define high quality hostels and how do you decide who is allowed join onlyhostels?

How will you compete with HB/HW and booking.com in regards getting your name out there. These have multi-million dollar budgets for google ads that smaller OTAS cannot compete with.

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bluealmondhostel

10 years

I hope you guys do things differently, as John say HB and HW have huge budgets which i'm sure you would find difficult to compete against if you follow the same business model.

here's are some crazy and not so crazy ideas.

-How about you for a month don't charge any commission to hostels.
-use oauth with google or facebook for logins (we are really tired of passwords).
-make an agreement with a cheap and good channel manager to finance hostels for one month with the condition they connect to OH.
-Add travel insurance.
-Video friendly intranet.

maybe you can open a thread and we can all brainstorm the things we would like to see in a hostel's OTA, because if you are going to enter the field offering the same things for hostels and clients as your competition, there's no really an incentive for anyone to use you.

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OnlyHostels.com

10 years

Hi,

I actually really like the idea of offering insurance, as an experienced traveler myself it would be great if someone offered me insurance based on my backpacker needs i.e. insurance for a couple of big items (laptop and camera), lost luggage and delayed departure (we've all been there). Maybe even the ability to buy insurance when I am no longer in my country of residence as currently (as far as I am aware) only Worldnomads operates in this market. It's great to give people choice. We have already created our ideal customer journey for a hostel booker - what info we should be serving them, when and how - but we need to build up our base functionality and deal with the more advanced needs after.

With regards to how we will compete against established OTAs, we will do exactly what you say. We will engage in conversations which are relevant to the community. We will do what we can to fix problems and ask you how we are doing. As a team of people who are actively involved in the hostel industry we have contacts whom will consult with - but we will always look for more opinions.

To answer your other questions - yes we are working with channel managers. I personally have worked for hostels where we have used another system (I would prefer not to name names) and moved to MyAllocator to make managing beds far simpler. The improvement is substantial. With regards to high quality hostels, we will judge based on the reviews of our customers. However, we will talso ake into account the volatility of reviews and the fact that some points you will never be able to improve e.g. location. Moreover, we will provide guides on how to improve standards to any hostels on the site whom we feel have slipping standards. This will be much like accession to the EU, guiding to help the industry as a whole.

I'll start off a separate discussion on what people would like to see in an OTA as this is something which is extremely relevant right now and it's also a time when we are likely to get the most content :)

Thanks,
Katrina

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ESS Universal Ltd

10 years

Hello Katrina

we are a hostel equipment supply company who are set up in the UK and Ghana, we are about to open in New York and Sydney as the demand for our quality products is indeed growing. We carry the Independant Hostels UK logo at the bottom of our site, we offer a substantial discount to anyone who is or is willing to sign up to this booking agency. We are happy to help these guys for free and no strings attached; for us? Their logo gives us recognition, for them? Any hostels that visit us gets to see the benefits of signing up with IHUK. If you would like us to display your logo too on our site we are happy to do that, we will then edit our contact us form asking "are you a IHUK or OnlyHostels.com member?

This will give us two associated logo's on our site and hopefully attract clients for you anywhere we supply :)

ESS universal Ltd (UK) www.heavydutybunkbeds.co.uk
ESS Universal Ltd (Africa) www.essbunkbedsghana.com
ESS Universal Ltd (USA) www.heavydutybunkbeds.com (starting mid 2014)
ESS universal Ltd (Australia) www.heavydutybunkbeds.com.au (starting spring 2015)

Good luck Katrina!! Regards Will
[email protected]

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