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Hostel Reviews Topics

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

Josh started this discussion 15 years 11 months ago

I'm thinking of making a main theme of the January email newsletter hostel reviews and how to improve them.

I'm wondering if there is a margin of maybe 10% on the online reviews? I was looking at ratings of hostels I've stayed at and some of the hostels in the 80s% were top-notch, but some were only okay. Some hostels in the 90s% were clean and safe, but not really more spectacular than many hostels in the 80s. Hostels in the 60s and 70s often have significant problems.

Here are some recent threads & Wiki pages about hostel reviews:

Any suggestions for tips or topics that could go in the newsletter?

Ideas:
What cities have the highest rated hostels?

What cities have a lot of hostels, but not many high-rated hostels?

What are 5 or 10 easy things a hostel could do to improve ratings?

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aboriginalhostel

15 years

What are 5 or 10 easy things a hostel could do to improve ratings?

- Excellent service will leave a positive remark. If a guest gets personalized tips, and a feel of individual care, they would rather mention it in their reviews. If there are any special tasks, like find me a guitar shop in town, make all efforts to give a solution, it will be highly appreciated. The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is that little bit of extra you do provide.

- Contact them from the beginning. A sample booking confirmation draft will do for a head start, where you put the reservation details manually, meanwhile you offer amenities, promotions and/or special features.

- Reminder on a note in the internet room, asking people nicely to express their opinion on review sites.

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Josh Hostels

15 years

- Excellent service will leave a positive remark. If a guest gets personalized tips, and a feel of individual care, they would rather mention it in their reviews. If there are any special tasks, like find me a guitar shop in town, make all efforts to give a solution, it will be highly appreciated. The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is that little bit of extra you do provide.

I worked at one hostel where one of the front desk employees would just answer questions like this:

Guest: "Can you tell me how to make a telephone call to Germany?"
Employee: "I don't know." [goes back to surfing MySpace]

or even worse:

Employee: "I don't know. You can use the Internet for $6/hour." [goes back to surfing MySpace]

At a couple of hostels I made an HTML page that was the default home page of every front desk computer. It had links to resources for all commonly asked questions:

things to do, museums, etc.
airport shuttles
airport phone numbers (lost luggage, etc.)
airline phone numbers
country calling codes
tours
beach info
weather
a link to Google search
etc.

The front desk couldn't say they didn't know the answers to questions...

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wenke

15 years

Most appreciated by Hostel guests are friendly staff members.
This is I guess the most important point.

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santa klaus

15 years

- Excellent service will leave a positive remark. If a guest gets personalized tips, and a feel of individual care, they would rather mention it in their reviews. If there are any special tasks, like find me a guitar shop in town, make all efforts to give a solution, it will be highly appreciated. The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is that little bit of extra you do provide.

Look at this bugger! :D

Staff were amazing at helping with personal requests. Especially for organising transport. Hostel itself was a little "standard" which is fine, but nothing apart from the staff stood out. Bar was average. Heading back to MUC, might try somewhere else and go and ask the staff at wombats if i have trouble. Cheers, enjoy.
Michael, Australia | Male 18-24 | 20th December 2008

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Josh Hostels

15 years

What are some ways to get unmotivated staff to start being more helpful to customers?
(Some large hostels have many front desk employees.)

Ideas for better training:

Make standard guidelines for the welcome speech? (a list of things the front desk should be sure to say and do on check-in)
Make guidelines for checkout speech? (a short list of things the front desk should be sure to say and do on checkout)
Create resources for the front desk? (like the HTML page mentioned above so that staff have an easy way to look up info for the guests)
Demonstrate by example -- find the employee(s) who provide the best customer service and have them help train and give feedback to the other staff?

Anything else these hostels (for example) could do to bring the overall ratings up a bit without too much difficulty? The next newsletter goes out to most of them so maybe a page of useful tips could be helpful to bring the ratings up...

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Josh Hostels

15 years

Look at this bugger! :D

Is that a review for a non-Wombats hostel?

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santa klaus

15 years

Is that a review for a non-Wombats hostel?

Unfortunately not!

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Josh Hostels

15 years

Unfortunately not!

oh... sorry, I think misread it the first time :confused:

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aboriginalhostel

15 years

Look at this bugger! :D

Maybe this guy was pulled off by something else... but at least you can take that at as a compliment for your staff! ;)

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