Report

Hostelworld Recommends

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

Rucksack Brian started this discussion 12 years 8 months ago

This is something new. In addition to guest reviews/ratings and the “Top Rated” banner, it appears that HW is now giving their own recommendations for hostels as well.

When you hover over the Hostelworld Recommends icon, the following text appears:

This hostel is recommended by Hostelworld. Recommended hostels offer exceptional service & quality, guaranteed bookings, and the best available rates. Based on this, plus feedback from customers, we highly recommend this hostel.

Is this icon really necessary? Aren’t all bookings through HW guaranteed? Don’t all hostels that are listed on HW offer the best available rates as mandated by the rate parity clause in their contract? If a hostel offers exceptional service and quality, won’t that already be reflected in the feedback from customers? Is this just an attempt to dupe backpackers into mistakenly thinking that HW is some kind of authority over the hostel industry? In addition to being unnecessary, the icon actually undermines the value of the real customer ratings because the recommended hostels are not necessarily the top rated.

I wonder how much this will influence the number of bookings for those hostels that are recommended vs. the ones that are not recommended. Could this open HW up to lawsuits for loss of business from non-recommended hostels? With the implementation of this icon HW would no longer be an impartial booking channel that hosts third-party reviews, but rather a provider of their own opinions on the properties listed within. The lack of this icon on any property’s listing would also indicate that “Hostelworld does NOT recommend this hostel.” That could be damaging to business, even if your hostel has a 90%+ rating (which some non-recommended hostels do!)

I have seen this icon showing up in Portugal, the UK, and Ireland. Are they using it in your city too?

Does anyone know what it takes to get an official recommendation from HW? Are they picking their personal favorites or is this a paid endorsement?

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Josh Hostels

12 years

They just published something about it here:
Introducing Hostelworld Recommends - discover the highest quality hostels in the world

So how does it work? Well, wherever you see the thumbs up of the ‘Hostelworld Recommends’ icon, this is a hostel where we personally guarantee an enhanced customer experience. These are the perfect hostels to ensure your stay over the coming months is an unforgettable one. These are hostels of the highest quality – they are the best managed, the most desirably located and the most popular hostels available anywhere.

Here are the 18 cities where the program is active:

Amsterdam
Barcelona
Brussels
Brussels
Dublin
Edinburgh
Florence
Hong Kong
Lisbon
London
Madrid
Miami
Paris
Rio de Janeiro
Rome
San Francisco
Shanghai
Stockholm
Sydney

In one city, Hostelworld recommends a hostel with a rating in the 70s% when there are four hostels rated over 90% by guests and another 10 rated over 80%. When I sort by ratings in other cities, hotels are being listed over hostels, even when there are many hostels in the city. In some cases, hostels that have high ratings are not being rewarded in Hostelworld's listings.

I think that the "Hostelworld Recommends" program is probably going to backfire once travelers figure out that these recommendations are not really based on whether a hostel is preferred by guests.

I think Hostelworld has been making two large mistakes recently:

Not putting hostels first on the website. Hostelworld has two sets of customers: travelers and accommodation providers. The hostels are what brings the travelers to Hostelworld, and the hostels are being betrayed in this case.
Abandoning the foundation of the website, which is that actual guests rate the hostels, not Hostelworld. The travelers are not seeing "top-rated" hostels at the top anymore.

If the people who bought Hostelworld purchased the company with the intention of exploiting hostels to sell hotels, I think it was a bad investment that is destined to fail. The hostel industry is very different than the hotel industry.

If anyone would like to share a private opinion, you could email your thoughts to [email protected] and your name will remain strictly confidential.

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Josh Hostels

12 years

I just saw this:
Hostelworld Recommends - great new feature

Choosing quality accommodation on the internet is a tough process, but especially so when on a tight budget. Photoshop can make any property look good, and often it is very hard to sort through the many peer reviews and ratings.

Hostelworld.com, one of the web's largest aggregators of budget accommodation options has launched a new site feature that provides travellers with 'recommended' properties. These properties have been reviewed by Hostelworld's own staff and allow travellers to better sort through the maze of options and make decisions with greater confidence.

Yeah, who needs to sort through all those pesky reviews and ratings. :rolleyes:

Aren't peer reviews and user-generated-content (UGC) the whole basis of Hostelworld?

These properties are not listed based on quality, because I've seen low-rated properties with "Hostelworld Recommends", and higher-rated properties not being recommended.

The comment is interesting:

This is yet another ridiculous move by a company which has lost it's roots.

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gordo

12 years

Oh c'mon.

Guys I'm no massive fan of HW, but this is getting tiresome. HW has been an incredibly successful business and WE need to remember that we approach this industry from massively different standpoints. They're looking out for themselves, of course they are. SO ARE WE. Lets face it, most of us here dont like HW because they dont operate directly in our favour, they look after themselves.

On one hand we complain about fake reviews (tripadvisor) and then when a company tries to do something about, all of a sudden it back on the reviews bandwagon? Lets face it, when on earth has any company EVER made money on the back of recommending certain businesses [/sarcasm]?

Stop pretending HW is our friend and start looking at them for what they are. A company that's lost its roots? ROOTS? It's a goddamn internet booking engine founded 11 years ago, what possible roots could it have?! That's like complaining about google losing it roots!

A company like HW will flourish or fail on the back of its product, like any. For the record I dont think this will backfire massively because as much as we all place our faith in reviews, travel guides still direct a HELL of a lot of traffic to hostels (and other businesses). They're just trying to get in on the action. And I can assure you, nobody would be complaining if they became one of the 'recommended hostels', NOBODY.

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Josh Hostels

12 years

Lets face it, most of us here dont like HW because they dont operate directly in our favour, they look after themselves.

I agree -- even though I post a lot of (constructive) criticism about Hostelworld I haven't been a "Hostelworld hater". Though I think that hostels cannot sit back and say "whatever Hostelworld does is okay."

I am starting to get a really negative impression at the moment, because I think they have definitely crossed the line with burying hostels under hotels. I think that this is a threat to hostels and a betrayal of the businesses that have made Hostelworld possible.

On one hand we complain about fake reviews (tripadvisor) and then when a company tries to do something about, all of a sudden it back on the reviews bandwagon?

The problem is that the recommendations aren't based on quality. :)
I think that peer reviews are a good thing, but that the fake reviews issue is separate from whether there should be peer reviews or not.

what possible roots could it have?! That's like complaining about google losing it roots!

The whole foundation of Hostelworld since the beginning is that it's about user-generated content and peer reviews. That is how I was reading "roots". :)

Example:

Hostelworld.com was one of the first websites to embrace user generated content and Web 2.0 principles and the new site design reflects this with featured members and user recommended hostels now getting more prominence. "Our users were the early adoptors of user generated content" says Ni Mhir. "Typically word of mouth recommendation was very prominent among independent travellers and this has easily transferred itself to the web with over 40% of bookers reviewing their stay and passing on advice to other travellers"

People do complain about Google "losing its roots" too, but that's another story. :)
(Regarding their motto: "Don't be evil", and that many of their products fail because they lost sight of their original mission of "organizing the world's knowledge".)

And I can assure you, nobody would be complaining if they became one of the 'recommended hostels', NOBODY.

If they were recommended based on quality, then it might be different, but I saw at least one recommended hostel that was in the 70s%...

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