hostelspots.com - from backpackers, for backpackers

Hi Brain,

thank you for your positive feedback. We are happy to give you all information. 

We found of members are all from Berlin and are passionate backpackers ourselves. Martin our managing director had the idea for hostelspots.com. Until the end of 2014 he was the owner of Singer109 hostel (www.singer109.com). He made sure to work at the reception regularly to never lose direct contact to the guest and their wishes and requests. Sophie our marketing officer worked as his assistant in Singer109 and later on PangeaPeople hostel. (www.pangeapeople.de). All other colleagues have important experiences from diverse hostels too. Therefore we know all the processes and requirements on the hostel's and on the guest's side very well.

We also have an excellent and very fair relationship among each other. The chemistry is simply right.

I am sure you remember the discussion about the hangs of the hostelworld contracts three years ago, especially about the rise of the commission rates. Back then we have already read the discussions on your forum and took on all the suggestions and complaints. And of course we ourselves as hostel staff were not happy either with the OTA's. And at some point we thought it should be possible to make it better. So we started hostelspots.com.

A way to handle the commission rates fairly and sensible was very important for us and we had very long discussions about that topic. It should not be more than 10%, neither small not big hostels should be favored or discriminated by it and needed to be acceptable by the guests. Another important point for us was that no accommodation should be able to buy any advantages. - regarding the ranking - as for us small but great houses could have disadvantages by that, as they simply might not have the same financial possibilities.

But one thing all houses have in common: they are all responsible for their performances and thei acceptance towards guests. Nobody can do that for them. So for us it makes perfect sense to connect the commission rate to the rating of the guests. The better the rating the lower the commission. This is also good for the guests as the hostels are motivated to improve their quality and services. And believe me, it is so easy to make guests happy! 

Our next intention is to support the hostels with their improvements based on our own hostel experiences. This could be done by newsletters, online conferences, idea exchanges or workshops. We are planning all that already. 

Now the channel managers, a really complex topic.

Obviously they get daily connection request and are therefore rarely responding to these at all. Worldwide hostels are working with around 50 different channel managers. At the moment we are connected to the ASSD channel manager, as the Singer109 worked with them. Still we needed a year of work to convince them to work with us. We have been in contact with myallocator and siteminder for more than 1,5 years now. Slowly things seem to start working with myallocator. Though site minder told us that at least 200 site minder hostels need to be registered with us to even connect us. And honestly, why should a hostel register with us, of we cannot order the interface yet. The snake is biting its own tail. 

But we don't give up, because we are convinced of our concept and still think we can convince the channel managers too. It would surely be helpful if the hostels contacted their channel manager and let them know that they request the interfaces. That might help to speed things up. And of course channel managers are welcome to contact us too. 

The topic marketing plays of course a very important role, especially as we are working into two directions. We need a number of hostels to be attractive for the guests. Currently we are acquiring hostels that work with the Assd channel manager. We also have Portugal and Morocco where severa houses are already registered and a lot of accommodations are ha fling their quota manually. As soon as we have the interfaces to other channel managers we will also contact these houses.

The second marketing way regards the guests. There we concentrate on improving out site in order to be found easier in search engines. This is of course supported by Google Adwords. It is very important for us to never advertise with a hostel's name or use this name in keywords. If somebody searches for one hostel in particular, this hostel should have the opportunity to "get" this guest directly without paying a commission to a third party. There we differ from hostelworld, booking.com and all other booking websites. We are aware that we will make less revenues with this strategy, but we don't want to do the same things we were angry about as hostel staff ourselves. 

Social media is of course another important marketing way to get on touch with the guests. But we will also use cooperations with travel blogs, "friends recommend friends" campaigns and press releases. Moreover our marketing agency has one or two other things planned, which we don't tell yet. 

Additionally we will expand our website and improve it constantly. The search will be optimized and it will become (more) multilingual. Both, among nine other things, are already in work or in specific planning. 

A real and fair cooperation is very important to us. Therefore we are always open to new ideas and suggestions. It is time to make a change and together we can make that happen! 

We are available for any further information.

Your hostelspots team