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Hostel reviews

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uktrail started this discussion 17 years 1 week ago

The Paris hostel that has been discussed in another thread in this section, was mentioned on another forum by someone who had seen 'good reviews' of it. I pointed out that I believed the reviews were suspect, because there are also some very bad reviews (such as this one). Respondents agreed that there were both very good and very bad reviews of this hostel.

I am an avid reader of hostel reviews, and this is one situation where one can be virtually certain that the good reviews are written by (or closely influenced by) the hostel management. There's more to it than that; the good reviews, in this case and others, have several common features. One such feature in this case is the use of a certain expression which would not normally be used by several independent guests.

I won't mention other clues, just in case some of you are avid writers of reviews (for your own hostel):eek:

I'm wondering how useful it would be for there to be a digest of reviews available on the net. The Hostelworld site now is good for this, since they stopped their policy of allowing bad reviews to be deleted (!). But numerous hostels are not on Hostelworld, especially many small hostels which deserve greater renown if, as many are, they are outstanding for sociability and friendliness.

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Josh Hostels

17 years

I'm wondering how useful it would be for there to be a digest of reviews available on the net.

Have you seen what Google is doing with their pulling of reviews from multiple sites?

Google Travel -- coming soon?

Here is an example where Google is scraping reviews from Hostelworld and Tripadvisor:
click here

Here is another example:
click here

(There is a related article about hostels and Google Maps/Local in the article section of this site.)

The smaller hostels are often at a disadvantage by not having as many reviews on those sites. I like the "small hostels" sites, but it looks like they are niche sites (small-hostels.com is for Europe and smallhostels.com is for Australia) and they don't seem to have reviews. I think it would be beneficial to small hostels everywhere if those two sites would expand coverage to the entire world and allow the posting of reviews...

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santa klaus

17 years

The Paris hostel that has been discussed in another thread in this section, was mentioned on another forum by someone who had seen 'good reviews' of it. I pointed out that I believed the reviews were suspect, because there are also some very bad reviews (such as this one). Respondents agreed that there were both very good and very bad reviews of this hostel.

I am an avid reader of hostel reviews, and this is one situation where one can be virtually certain that the good reviews are written by (or closely influenced by) the hostel management. There's more to it than that; the good reviews, in this case and others, have several common features. One such feature in this case is the use of a certain expression which would not normally be used by several independent guests.

I have read some suspicious reviews about this particular hostel on the Eurotrip.com forum. These posts come from various users who usually posted... once.
So - yes, that´s obviously a problem.
I remember i have once read about a software bug on Amazon.com which made it show the real names of users who posted book reviews instead of their nicknames. Apparently, it turned out that authors wrote favourable reviews about their own books and bad ones about authors they don´t like. If that isn´t a true story, it´s well invented.

However! If reviews aren´t consistently bad or good it´s not necessarily true that either are fake reviews. I know some hostels which give you reasons to love them AND hate them at the same time. The Kabul Hostel in Barcelona is a good example.
I absolutely loved it every time I went there for the good vibes from the other guests who stayed there, but (at least until 10 years ago) it was a pretty bad place by all other standards.
Different people have different opinions. It strikes me odd how somebody can still think Bush is a good president, but a few per cent of his electorate do exactly that. ;)

Have you seen what Google is doing with their pulling of reviews from multiple sites?

Google Travel -- coming soon?

INTERESTING! I didn´t see that before. Here is my "meta-booking-engine"-idea. I should have filed a patent! :cool:

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santa klaus

17 years

The large blue headline links go directly to the Web sites of the individual hostels. This has implications for booking engines like Hostelworld.com and Hostels.com who generally dominate the search engine results for hostel-related queries because it pushes Google's organic results lower and encourages clicks on the actual hostels' links in the local listings. I've seen these expanded local listings dramatically increase traffic to a hostel's Web site.

If you wouldn´t give that sort of gold nuggets away for free we would have to hire you! ;)

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Josh Hostels

17 years

INTERESTING! I didn´t see that before. Here is my "meta-booking-engine"-idea. I should have filed a patent! :cool:

I'm just thinking about it and wondering if it might be related to Google Base. Google Base allows sites to submit content, including reviews, directly to Google.

Some example hostel reviews that are directly on Google Base here. All of those sites are feeding their reviews directly into Google Base, which then probably adds them to Google Maps/Local.

Anyone can add content to Google Base, so it might be worth experimenting with. I've added content to Google Base, but not specifically with hostel reviews...

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santa klaus

17 years

Google = :eek:

Soon enough they´ll implant us chips which feed our thoughts directly into GoogleTHINK

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Josh Hostels

17 years

If you wouldn´t give that sort of gold nuggets away for free we would have to hire you! ;)

I do search engine marketing for a living, so more related articles on that subject are coming soon. I hope they will be useful...

Google recognizes that the keywords "munich hotels" should open a Google Map on the search engine results pages, but the map doesn't appear for "munich hostels". I think that will change as the Google Borg gets smarter. I think that it's best to submit to those listed resources early...

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santa klaus

17 years

I think that it's best to submit to those listed resources early...

I have already emailed our webdude. Cheers.

It wasn´t the first useful hint I found on your site. I guess we owe you something. You know who to PN when you need a room during Oktoberfest! ;)

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Josh Hostels

17 years

Google = :eek:

Soon enough they´ll implant us chips which feed our thoughts directly into GoogleTHINK

I wouldn't doubt it...

The "Google Chip" can't be that far away...

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santa klaus

17 years

Indeed...

If North Korea´s dictator reads this he will have a second thought about the ban ot the Internet in his country! :D

We should apologize to Uktrail though... he opened this thread in order not to hijack the "hostel chains" thread ans now we hijacked it!

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uktrail

17 years

(No, don't worry about the hijacking, most of these comments are right to the point -- which is that the big boys are dictating how we do things. In summary, my role as a source of hostel info is disappearing -- can I find another role?)

I have been running uktrail.com for some years. Its role is to have listings and reviews of nearly all hostels in Gt Britain, together with facilities to book online when possible. A special feature is that I personally visit as many of the hostels as possible. So from my experience plus reviews gathered from numerous sites I can give a pretty comprehensive picture. Take a look here to get an idea of what I have been offering.

http://www.uktrail.com/hostels/england/londbox.php#hostels

But now almost everyone goes straight to Hostelworld. Bookings through my site have dropped to virtually nil. So uktrail.com has, essentially, lost its role.

Where there might be a role, as you say, is in the 'niche market' of small hostels. Now I have taken over the ownership of small-hostels.com, I would like to explore that role.

I'd be delighted to include reviews, and to extend to other countries. But, while making a profit is not important, it is important to get sufficient funds, from booking commissions or otherwise, to make the effort feel worthwhile. Should we seek some sort of a system that would parallel Hostelworld but be more suited to small hostels, maybe using Gomio? Or should we seek to get quoted on Google?

Does Google have any financial arrangements with Hostelworld etc, as the quoted reviews could take people to Hostelworld to book? How does a hostel get into their lists -- simply sending a form to Google saying they exist and are a hostel?

If I ran a site with reviews, might I be able to get Google to look on that site for reviews? What if the reviews were my own 'digest of reviews'? I guess they would have to be laid out in a way that Google could recognise them as being reviews.

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