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Hostelworld increase fee to 12%

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

JAY started this discussion 11 years 3 months ago

New contrat :

The change relates to clause 4 (HW’s Service Fees), 4.1 – from 27th February 2014 we are increasing your service fee rates from 10% to 12%. Your revised copy of the updated Standard Services Licence Agreement, are located in your HostelWorld Inbox system.

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slushysnow

11 years

I expected this to be honest - they took over their main competition and now are raising their rates, what a surprise.

This part made me laugh a bit - "competition from multiple channels have driven significantly higher cost per customer acquisition". Ok so I know booking.com, agoda, wotif all do hostels as well, but really? Their main competition is now part of their group? Some nerve to put that in there.

Interestingly the email only mentions Hostelworld, not Hostelbookers. Will we get a similar email from Hostelbookers shortly?

Is the deposit paid by a guest also automatically increasing to 12% to match the 12% service fee? Or are we going to receive invoices from Hostelworld from now on?

We already pay higher commissions than 10% on some sites so I'm not too fussed (although obviously lower commissions are better), but I find their reasons for this increase to be pretty lame.

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Hostel Times.com

11 years

John,

I think you're right on the money with making and sending a poster with Hostel Times services and discounts listed to all of our partners and even potential future partners. This is something we have discussed recently.

All feedback is welcomed as it's a means for us to constantly improve and better serve our customers and partners. And feedback like what you just mentioned is very valuable to us.

Hostel Times Team

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seematt

11 years

Hosteltimes doesn't get bookings to hostels because they don't have any cross marketing partners. Ie . There are so many places, takes bootsnall.com a backpacker site which offers to book hostels, which use the hostelworld enginge and provide a cut to bootsnall. Which sites are partnered with hosteltimes?

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Hostel Times.com

11 years

Hi Seematt,

We are genuinely appreciative of your suggestion. We will look into bootsnall and see if cross marketing is something that will be beneficial to both websites.

We have very loose affiliations with several websites. At the moment our biggest traction is in Asia. We continue to capitalize on this traction.

As of recent we are also gaining traction in other areas globally.

Hostel World makes an estimated 1.5 million dollars a month off of hostel owners (like you and myself). The real question is why are they being greedy? Don't they already take enough money out of our wallets?

Speaking as a hostel owner: If we all stand up and say "No" by switching to Hostel Times and or Hostels Club I think it would send a huge message to whoever the new big hostel engine may emerge that we won't tolerate being taken advantage of. Hostel World NEEDS us. The booking engines NEED the hostels. If hostels limit or remove their availability on those sites and there is supportive marketing to the customers of the booking-site switch/exodus then the customers will naturally switch to another booking site, especially one that saves them money.

Hostel Times Team

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blyth backpacke...

11 years

We do not have enough space in our rates to pay 12% . We need to work together to work with other booking agents and hostels. We are very lucky most of our traffic is walk in

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greekville

11 years

ok.

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