Report

Hostel's & OTA's

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

Chris Piazza started this discussion 12 years 1 month ago

Hi all,

This topic is to continue the discussion that was started here http://www.hostelmanagement.com/forums/hostelbookers-not-making-arrival-... about the current OTA's and how things can be done better.

What are your top concerns with what HW, HB, etc? What can be done to make your experiences w/ OTA's better?

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ACBBPatrick

12 years

How can wehostels be better than our current OTA's when you use the same database provided through the HW API? 1st concern: If you are called wehostels why are you promoting motels, b&b's, hotels, university dorms, apartments, campsites etc etc? 2nd concern: HW's sorting is based on an HW "in house conversion/quality score" they have devised not solely on guest review score, bed availability or even if the property is a hostel. You cannot filter this using their API results. That would put you at a competitive advantage to them. Under the terms of the API agreement they will not allow it. 3rd concern: How will you keep your reviews distinct from the reviews generated by HW? Especially if you are concerned about extra fields that help hostels such as arrival times. 4th concern: How can you launch with out an Android platform?

The biggest problem is the OTA's have no responsibility to hostels. They tell us that bookers are, their customers, not ours. If you are a "proud partner" with an OTA, as you state on your website, then you are the same as hostels, at their mercy.

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ChrisWeHostels

12 years

To address your first concern, yes we are called WeHostels and we don't promote hotels, motels, bnbs, etc. We promote only hostels. If you check out our new homepage, we give examples of the hostels that are listed in our app (http://wehostels.com/). On our relaunched blog, we have posts that discuss topics that are relative to hostel travelers, (http://blog.wehostels.com/). We have rented out a whole hostel in Austin for SXSW, yes to promote our app in the tech scene, but to also promote hostelling in the US.

Also, we absolutely can sort the HW search results in our app by accommodation type and then by hostel rating. We are doing it now. I also just went over our agreement w/ Hostelworld and it doesn't give us any restrictions on how we display the search results. I am not the tech guy, but how I understand it works is we pull the raw data from the HW API and we display the data within our app. You also book within our app. At no point are you redirected to a hw site. We are just getting raw data from HW and we are displaying it how we see fit. In the data we get, each listing has an accommodation type and a rating associated with it. When we display our search results, we just sort it by type and then by rating.

We do have hotels, bnb's, etc listed in our app, because the fact of the matter is, some people prefer hotels, and if a young traveler wants to stay in a hotel, we would rather have them book through our app then go somewhere else. But as I mentioned, we don't promote hotels and they are only listed at after hostels.

As for our proprietary ratings, honestly, we have to figure out the best way to do it. We can only pull the HW total rating through the API, not the actual review (that would solve a lot of problems if we could), so we have decided to let people leave reviews. So if you you guys have any suggestions on how we can implement it, we are all ears.

We have not launched an Android app because we have limited resources and we had to pic one platform to concentrate on. Developing for Android devices is very time intensive since there are a lot of different screen sizes and a lot of different versions of the operating system on the market. To develop for & test each one and still make a quality product is very time consuming. iOS has 2 screen sizes and a uniform operating system. With a small team, it is MUCH easier to develop for. We are not a big company, we have 4 developers and a designer working full time on this. They are awesome, but they are human. We don't have the unlimited resources that a HW or HB has. However, we do have an Android app on our product roadmap, and we hope to start the process sometime this year. In the meantime, we do have a mobile site that you can use to book. If you go to m.wehostels.com, you can book with any mobile device.

What are your biggest issues or complaints with the way that hostels are currently treated by OTA's?

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ACBBPatrick

12 years

So why is wehostels different?

HW's app does have reviews. HW is already on all platforms. Look, we need a strong alternative desperately. Your strategy places you guys as an also ran. Great that you are making HW money at SXSW, oops I mean promoting hostels in the USA. That is desperately needed, more new guests to hostels. Not cheap, price-war beds to the same customer volume. The OTA's have leveraged hostels to the point that their property aquisition/sign up strategies in North America are serving to waterdown the value added nature of hostels and create ridiculous prices wars. How can you launch something that has a database pulled from your competitor/partner. Unless of course you are trying to build a site that HW or others will buy.

The space needs a mobile platform dedicated to putting travelers in hostels. Remember, that is how HW started. Tom Kennedy, a hostel owner, and Ray Nolan built something where no one else existed they worked with hostels to start the company. Other hostels saw the advantage and helped out, joined up and the customer base readily followed. In the old days the independent hostels touted outside YHA's and train stations. The guests took the scraps that didn't like the old guard/guide book centric way of finding accommodations. Try to do something unique. The space is desperate for it. The opportunity is huge. Airbnb shot past the OTA's when they were busily signing up motels and celebrating their good fortune. How will today's OTA's increase their revenue?

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ChrisWeHostels

12 years

What makes us different? Download our app https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wehostels/id545679170?mt=8. In my totally biased opinion, we built a beautiful app. Is it perfect? No, it is a work in progress. We need feedback from hostels and travelers to continue to improve our app. So please, download it, try to break it and give us brutally honest feedback. That is what we want.

Yes, we are partnered with HW. As I said, we are a small team with limited resources. We are trying to solve the mobile riddle (the next big frontier) and we can't fight a battle on all fronts. We need to concentrate on one thing and do it well. We decided to concentrate on getting people to use our beautiful app (new people in hostels).

As for our SXSW promotion, HW is making no money off it. Actually, neither are we. It is strictly a promotion we are running with the Firehouse Hostel in Austin to, as I said, promote our app as well as hostelling in the US.

We both want the same thing, to get new people in hostels. We would love to work with you on trying to make that happen.

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Rucksack Brian

12 years

What are your top concerns with what HW, HB, etc? What can be done to make your experiences w/ OTA's better?

I also started a thread a while back asking hostels for Feedback for the Booking Sites to tell the OTAs exactly what we want them to change. Response has been minimal so far, but in time I think we can assemble a clear list of suggestions.

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ChrisWeHostels

12 years

Hi Brian,

There is some good stuff in there. Thanks for starting that. The more feedback like that we get, the better produce we can build.

-Chris

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