For those of you who attended the 2016 Hostelworld Conference, what were your impressions?
For my own part, I felt like this year’s conference was one of their best that I have attended.
As in previous years, most of the presentations were interesting but offered too little practical advice that we could take home and apply in our hostels. I would love to see more practical presentations. There was also a missed opportunity to assemble a panel discussion comprised of hostel operators from a variety of hostel models (perhaps HOSCAR winners from different categories with different sizes, target clientele, geographic locations, etc?) to discuss trends in the industry and how they affect each type of hostel.
The most significant thing I took away from the conference was the direction that HW is taking regarding their marketing this year. The last few years have been all about buying hostel names and other hostel keywords for PPC marketing in order to poach our business out from under us and sell it back with higher commissions. Obviously that approach did not sit well with hostel operators and it damaged our relationship with HW.
Now things are changing. Recently they did some market research in collaboration with PhocusWright and found out that there are a lot of people who stay in other accommodation types and don’t consider hostels as an option simply because they don’t know what hostels are all about or have misconceptions about hostels.
The survey results indicated that there are 15% of travelers who are already loyal to hostels. Another 30% are not interested in hostels and aren’t going to become interested, so they’re a lost cause. That leaves 55% of travelers who aren’t currently using hostels but who have the potential to be converted with a bit of persuasion.
This year HW’s goal is to go after that 55% of travelers and try to seduce them over to the hostel side, (or at least the hostel booking website side) which could result in a significant increase in bookings for all of us. By targeting this traditionally non-hostel crowd their goal is to generate NEW business for the hostel product, which in theory is what we have been paying them for all along. I’m pretty happy about that! It’s a huge step in the right direction, both for boosting the hostel market and for repairing the previous damage to industry relations.
For the other attendees, what were your impressions of the conference? What did you find most interesting or useful?
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