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I have $3,000 cash! What initial items do I need to purchase before hostel opens next summer!

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Deidre Mathis started this discussion 8 years 4 months ago

Hello! My Houston hostel: Wanderlust Houston is opening next summer. I have 3k in cash and i need to start getting the word out about the hostel. I plan to use some of the funds to get a logo, website, hostel paraphenila, and a secured business credit card.

Anything else I need to look into purchasin or doing with the money?

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF...

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kooperg

8 years

That sounds like a bad idea.

Logo: ask someone on the internet for $10 (reddit)

Website: make a standard website for free

You don't need paraphenelia. At all. Not now, and probably never.

Credit Card: Why? Any real reason for it?

For promotion, simply have a starting period with good offers, so people will come. Be nice, clean and when needed, solve problems, then you get good reviews. With good reviews (and a good price, location, etc) your business will run well.

Sites like hostelworld, hostels, booking.com and other (airbnb, etc) are a LOT more important than your own website. You don't need a logo for that either. Just some good pictures.

I would say get a cheap DSLR camera with a fisheye lens, a good second hand one goes for less than $400 including some lenses! Make sure to put all your extras, like towels, soap, etc plus some flowers, etc in the pictures. Take lots of pictures of the social areas! Don't forget the extremely clean bathroom pictures!

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kooperg

8 years

what to do with the 2500 you have left over?

- Get a nice crowd on your facebook BUSINESS page! Make sure to ONLY target people that will actually come, and you can get thousands and thousands of likes for like 500 bucks.

- Get a few good signs to put all over your town. Even if they are small, and without a logo. just the name, the work hostel + an arrow! 500 bucks should get you at least 10 little signs of high quality plastic to put all over the place

- advertise on some specific hostel or traveling sites. another 500 bucks, well spend and researched, should get you some prime internet real-estate on some veyr high-traffic sites!

- probably not recommended: spend a few hundred on some fake reviews to get you started. First ask your friends and family to put a tripadvisor review (you can remove them after getting some real ones, if you feel bad about it!) Then, spend some $5 a few times via fivver dot com for more reviews. Then, make some bookings for your family to come, via the different sites such as booking.com. Pay their commision and you can leave a review! Be discreet about this tho, if you need it.

- make sure as many local TAXI and BUS drivers, local restaurants, fast food places, supermarkets and lots more know where you are! Pay them a commision, leave flyers or even just a phone number.

Keep the left over 1000 in your pocket for emergencies. Or a nice party ;) Don't do an opening party when you just opened up tho, do it 6 months later, when you already have a crowd of people! :)

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cmloechl

8 years

Hey Deidre, I'm with kooperg on some of his points. You definitely do not need to sink a lot of money into a logo or webiste while you're just getting started. Besides all the ways do get something done cheaply online (upwork, fiver, etc.), so much in life can be done on exchange with people in your network. My fiancee just had her business logo done by a graphic artist friend in exchange for some yoga classes. in general with things you need, think about what you could offer someone in exchange and keep your money whenever possible. There's a reason they say cash is king...you want liquid dough for the whatevers that come up.

There are tons of ways to make cheap (Wix, Squarespace), if not free (Wordpress) websites that also look awesome. I disagree with kooperg that your website doesn't matter nearly as much as the OTAs, but that doesn't mean spending a lot of money. You can always upgrade your site later. For now keep it simple, and with lots of great high res pics (like he said). However you don't need to buy your own DSLR unless you plan to do a lot of ongoing high res photography. Find a friend who has one (plenty of people do) and either borrow or do an exchange for them to shoot. Do keep in mind lighting- it's often worth the money to have a good flash on the camera, or set up lots of extra lighting. An 'atmospheric' room in real life can look really dim in photos.

As far as ongoing photos and video, these days a recent smartphone (iPhone 6/Galaxy 6 or 7) can get you really amazing quality. If you don't have one yourself, consider borrowing if you need to update your pics, but also keep in mind that regular content on your social medias is important. That being said, no one expects high res amazing pics on social media. Throw up some fun stuff on your IG and call it a day. The most important thing with social media is not the quality of the pics themselves, but the quality and consistency of the content.

I don't think paraphenelia is a bad idea in itself (some of my favorite travel tees are from hostels) but I wouldn't say it's a necessity when you are starting out and low on cash. Let the place build a rep first. You can always sell stuff online if you get a big following, for guests who stayed in the past.

Good reviews: yes, super improtant. While there's some grey area with friends making reservations on OTAs and then leaving a review, in my opinion fake reviews are a horrible idea. TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc takes stuff like that pretty seriously and the last thing you want to do is jeapordize a relationship with them early on. Run a great place, that's super clean, and with amazing atmosphere and the reviews will follow.

As far as getting the word out there, figure out where your guests are coming from and why they are coming. Are there big conferences in town? Try to get yourself listed on the conference website as an accommodation provider and offer a discount. Are they doing road trips through the south? Call and personally introduce yourself to all the hostels you can find in your feeder cities. Make sure they know about you, your hostel, and that you are interested in passing guests back and forth. Ask if you can mail them your flyers/rack cards (rack cards aren't as important anymore with the internet, but still a good idea to have something) and offer to display theirs. Sadly guests don't talk to reception nearly as much any more about where to stay, as everyone has things booked already online but when they do, you will be more likely to be recommended by other hostels if they know you and know you are doing it in return.

Hope that helps! Good luck :)

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Drunk Traveler

8 years

Hi, Diedre,

Congratulations on opening a hostel! I wish you the utmost of success. I'm in Texas and looking to fund a hostel of my own in the next two years. The more there are in this great state, the better for us all.

That being said: I am in complete agreement with cmloechl on her last point. In my own research, many travelers that come through our anchor cities (SAT, HOU, DAL/FTW) are usuaually road tripping and not neccesarily "backpacking". Have you considered contacting the hostels in Austin and introducing yourself? Thier scence is really starting to bloom. We don't have many hostels in the state so I am sure that they would be happy to have a relationship with another hostel in the state they could direct people to. Best of all, the building of that realtionship costs you nothing but time. Some ot the best hostels that I have stayed in came throught the recommendation of another hostel that I had stayed at.

Second: Website. This is often neglected and you ignore this at your peril. This extends to all your digital properties (your Insta is pretty lit, FWIW). You don't need to spend alot of money on your website. But you do need to have a nice looking, simple one. Preferably one that displays well on mobile. Seo the heck out of it. In a state as large as ours, people need to know you before they hop in a car/Greyhound/Megabus for 4-8 hours. Side note, taking care of your digital proberties, before openng, gives people a lead time to see your progress and plan for a trip to your hostel IN ADVANCE Not doing this is leaving money on the table. I work in tourism in my city and can tell you first hand web prescence is the top thing people reference about when looking to visit.

Third: Rack cards. I don't think you will need them, neccessarily. With the smallish community that is here and lack of hostels, it seems like it is redundant if you are doing the first two things. And to be honest, outside of other hostels, where would you put them?

Logo: I say absolutely. Impression is key since the hostel market isn't as large as in other countries where there are tons of hostels. People who travel know what a hostel is. Intenational travelers don't need logos and such to know a good hostel. However, in your domestic market, you will get interest from people traveling solo or in small groups for conferences, conventions and your tech scence as well. Making that impression, in advance of them coming, speaks to them. Do you see what I mean?

Anyway, that is my two cents. Good luck. And good job on that funraising. I rooting for you.

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