Hello everyone,
This is my first post on this fantastic forum; I'm just starting to explore it and love all the great information here.
I'm wondering if anyone has any experience listing on some of the websites normally meant for hotels - if you do a search on Expedia you'll see there's some hostels in New York listing rooms for example.
As our hostel has a lot of private rooms, we're wondering about getting on these sites - looks like the hostel in New York is even listing dorm beds.
Looking over the Expedia contract, this line seems like it would rule out the option: "Property shall set the Rates for Rooms to be...at least the lower of 25% or $20 below the Best Available Rate". I don't know about you, but $20 off my dorm bed price wouldn't leave much left over.
I also don't know if maybe it's cheaper to go through a GDS distribution company, rather than make individual contracts with the websites - although my guess is that they would charge a membership fee on top of the commission??
Anyway, all advice is greatly appreciated!! I'll see where I can offer my own tips on this forum too.
Of course, let me know if this topic has already been discussed somewhere (haven't found it yet though searching the forum).
Thanks!
Adam
Manager
Ocean Island Backpackers Inn (www.oceanisland.com)
16 years
Interesting... I just searched Expedia for hostels.
It looks like most of the hostels are allocating expensive bookings to Expedia. I'm not sure how that one hostel can make money by allocating dorm beds -- though maybe the dorm beds are normally $15 and they marked them up to $30 to cover some of the commission.
16 years
Yeah I was thinking that too... You would think then that if you looked at these hostels own websites that the rate would be $20 less - however, taking a look at London's Generator hostel, they're offering dorm beds on Expedia for $30. Looking at their own website, they've got the same beds for 17.50gbp or about $34 (I'm using Canadian dollars if anyone's getting different numbers). So it appears as though they're not adding on Expedia's $20 commission. They could be absorbing it I guess, and getting $10 for the dorm bed, but I sort of doubt it.
I did have a conversation with someone from Tier One Hospitality Solutions today, which offers a service called 'Karyon'. From what I understand, they'll set up a site you can log into, update availability and rates, and it will proliferate this info throughout the internet on the big sites. And it sounds like they'll negotiate a rate that works for you, depending on the size of your operation (he talked about setting up a flat rate, per booking, reservation fee).
Anyway, I'm still working on the problem, so any more help is great!
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