Hostel bookers and Hostel world ratings and review system

Hello,

Both Hostelworld and Hostelbookers have just number of reviews based visibility system.
Your property is visible on both Hostelworld and Hostelbookers the moment they approve your listing, but to get to the
upper scale listing you need to have reviews, on Hostelworld 10, and on Hostelbookers just 3 (they changed it couple of months ago, as i remember previous number was 7 or 8 reviews).
The thing you should know is that Hostelbookers never deletes your reviews, even 4 years old, but Hostelworld do :) Hostelworld rating system only counts last 6 months of reviews, and they delete it day by day, for example if your first review was posted on 14th of april, right now on 15th of september it wouldn count anymore, so the system makes you work even harder, because one day you can be no1 on ratings and with 6 months of bad work you can be last :(

hostelbookers is an agency that is a bit biased towards its guests against hostels when it comes to reviewing. It does not have good customer service with its hostels, it does not respond to emails within 24 hours and it is only interested in earning its 10% commission which it earns from its hostels. Hostelbookers does not let its hostels respond to reviews unless to is a sound bit within 500 characters though guests are able to write very long dramatic reviews which are often inappropriate in content and defaming. There is an excellent member of staff with hostelbookers but that 1 person apart, the system is completely impersonal - no point of contact just a 'help desk' and no interest in being fair.

Hostelworld on the other hand is an excellent agency which responds personally to emails and listens to their hostels - not in terms of reviewing necessarily, but in terms of helping with new systems or in terms of 'no shows' and problems which hostels sometimes encounter with guests.

In conclusion - hostelworld is fair - it works with both hostels and guests in the model of real customer service. Hostelbookers only gives guests a voice - hostels just have to sometimes 'take the abuse'. The system is unjust and therefore is ridiculed by guests who use it.

I also agree hostelbooker sucks.

My hostel has launched on Hostelworld since August. Within 100 days, we got more than 120+ reviews with a general positive rating of 94%-95%. We have a wonderful support from the buddy of Hostelworld and they answer your questions on the phone or by email promptly. A few weeks ago, we got a terrible review and even the reviewer thought that she misunderstood the system and wanted to change the bad review, the Hostelworld buddy promptly removed the review and sent a link to a customer to rewrite, minimizing the negative effect on us. That's the service we need.

When I contacted hostelbooker to join however, I had to send the same email five times to just get a response. It's a little surprise. No other booking engine is worse than this. Then I lost my confidence on hostelbooker, worrying that if something goes wrong and we need help, they will just ignore it. At the end, I decided not to join because managing a booking engine takes time and I really don't prefer to spend my time on working with a negligent partner.