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Hostel Rocket drops listing fees

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

Rucksack Brian started this discussion 9 years 7 months ago

Following the announcement in March that HostelRocket would begin charging a flat rate of $17 / month for their services, they have recently announced that listing will once again be free for hostels.

Some hostels recently received this email:

Dear ,

First, we want to say how awesome you are for being an early supporter of Hostel Rocket. Your willingness to work with us as a new company is a great motivator. In the past couple of months, we know we have not been as clear about our business plans and pricing model as you have every right to expect.

Which is why, as of today, listing your hostel on Hostel Rocket is FREE! Completely, entirely free. No monthly subscriptions. No commissions. Those of you who have already paid a monthly fee have already been refunded. In the future, when we ask you to pay for something, it will be very clear what you are getting for your money.

Reaching hostels and helping hostels reach travelers is our main goal. We absolutely believe that there are ways to keep hosteling affordable for everyone, help you attract the right guests to your hostel, communicate directly with your guests, and grow the worldwide hosteling community. In the next few days and weeks, we may reach out to you to get your thoughts on what the hostel industry needs, but, if you have a suggestion you think we need to hear, please email us at [email protected] and let us know.

The Hostel Rocket Team

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slushysnow

9 years

I'm very glad about this - we didn't get an email about it, but I was just going to go on and pay the listing fee and noticed the option was no longer there!

I actually had no problem paying this fee, let's be honest it's very cheap relative to commission amounts. I also think they shouldn't have any qualms about charging a small listing fee in the future.

However, I think it's very important that we are able to see some analytics before signing up. For example our listing has been live for a couple of months, but I have no idea how many people have seen our listing, clicked our link etc. Some of this we can obviously see from our own analytics, but a dashboard of some kind would be very useful.

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John Moriarty

9 years

I think this is a good move by them. They have to get a lot more inventory and also start showing hostels that they are sending bookings there way.

I am amazed they don't have analytics on there side showing how many visits your page is getting.

I have looked at my google analytics and I don't see Hostelrocket listed.

@Slushysnow - Do you know how it appears in your google analytics

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slushysnow

9 years

Actually John, you're right, it doesn't show up in analytics at all. I thought I'd seen it before but must have been mistaken.

So there we go, at the moment, as far as I know, there's no way to know how many people are coming to you through hostelrocket at all. (Either that or nobody has clicked through from hostelrocket onto our page).

Unless there's a way to add a step in, so the link goes to a different page which then redirects to your site... but I think that's maybe a step too far...

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John Moriarty

9 years

I think I have found the issue.

All hostel pages on hostelrocket use Https instead of Http

From this it tells google analytics that is is a direct link and not a referral.

I guess we should email hostelrocket and advise it is better for us to know how many clicks we are getting.

Even if they do it on their end and monitor the clicks for our website as well as the clicks for the book now.

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Uli

9 years

We use a counter on our website that counts the referrers - which link brought the visitors to our website. But I couldn't find Hostel Rocket at all. It's a pity as they seem to do a good job and the market could need some competition. But all travelers seem to use only the few big ones. Seems to be the "Google"-Effect: Once one or two websites have reached a certain dimension in the net there seems to be nothing else any more.

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Josh Hostels

9 years

All hostel pages on hostelrocket use Https instead of Http

Yes... that will prevent hostelrocket showing up as a referrer, unless you also use HTTPS/SSL on your own site.

I haven't tried it, but Cloudflare may have free SSL now:
https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl

An analytics dashboard would be a good idea, because it would encourage hostels to login to their system.

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bbjgm

9 years

This is a great move. HR should get all hostels to signup for with free booking integration and get their inventory on HostelRocket.com.
As Hostel Rocket use by travelers increases and hostels see value, hostels should have no problem paying a annual listing fee like a yellow pages ad for instance.

The power of the internet has been adulterated and commandeered by large OTAs taking 10%+ commissions and becoming advertising powerhouses. The promise of software and the internet should have caused advertising prices to drop instead of increase. A yearly listing fee is quite fair. Maybe all OTAs will be forced to switch to this model eventually if we drop inventory from them!

If all hostels don't give inventory to a non-commission site, we will never have any leverage against the large OTAs.
I think if every hostel in the world would one day drop all inventory from major OTAs and portals and only support one commission free price comparison site, Hostel Association OTA or benevolent OTA site... (HostelRocket? - Could this be your destiny?), users would quickly learn where to do their bookings. (of course its a dream at this point to get all hostels on board with this idea, but if its most savvy hostel's dream, then why not?)

So, as a hostel owner you need to consider what Ghandi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world"
If you don't like paying commission to OTAs, then don't give them inventory to sell.
We only sell rooms and beds on our own website and our local visitors center site. The price is always lowest on my website.
When I get MyAllocator integration shortly, I will happily join HostelRocket.com as well.
I may give inventory to hostelworld and booking.com, but I will add the commission to the base rate offered to those OTAs and work to educate guests on the costs and benefits of booking on different sites. If the guest enjoys the booking.com 'experience' enough to pay 15% more then that is great for everyone.

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