11 years
I have just been made aware that Hosteltimes does exactly what I stated in giving back 50 % to customers.
The ideal booking engine/site
Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories
Right, so given all the ruckus about the HW/HB merger and HWs new contract, if one were to start their own new booking engine, what exactly would it be like?
Broad question I know but hey.
Obviously low commissions, a lack of hotels, an open and easy to understand method of arranging properties in the list, lack of required parity and allocation, easy to integrate with a variety of PMS's... anything else?
Considering the dominance of HW (and assuming its takeover of HB), how would people here recommend taking on the big boys in terms of attracting guests? It'd be easy to get hostels to sign up by offering the above conditions but how would one get potential guests to actually book through the engine? It's unlikely that a startup would be able to beat HW/HB at SEO in the early days. Assuming therefore the hard work would have to be done 'on the ground' how many hostels would actually be willing to commit to promoting such an enterprise? I know more than a few people here are probably thinking to themselves: "Gomio much?" but given the increasing antagonism towards HW and their own stated desire to take on expedia etc, this could well be the time to try and make it happen.
For the record, I'm not offering my own services or anything to get this done (unless a brilliant idea arises) but I do hope that there's a few enterprising souls reading this who might be looking for a little encouragement, feedback and/or support.
- Comments
9 years
HW/HB abuse of their power due to their brand misleading customer with commissions described as "deposit" but in the end you talk to customers everyday and sometime to your competitors.
If hostel explained to customers the reality of the racket, start to offer a welcome drink for guest not booking via OTA and decided with other hostel of the city to drop all together at the same time, you could easily crash HW/HB one city at a time.
By the way, I'm thinking about building a listing more focused on the traveller (full info and direct link) and without the hassle of making booking and taking commissions but still need to figure out how to make some money for myself in the way.
9 years
As a hostel owner who was already unhappy about the 10% which Hostelworld charged years ago I have created my own website for to support my own website and websites of other hostels. Years ago after Hostelworld was taken over by an investment company it was already clear that Hostelworld will change its percentage in the future. If I think about the profit of Hostelworld and the amount of money this investment company has paid I am sure that they will rise the percentage in the future again.
In 2009 I started with a website called Hostelman on which each hostel could provide its information for free, like URL, Email, phone numbers, … the only thing I expected was a link back from hostel websites to Hostelman. I am wondering why just 100 hostels roughly have used Hostelman for to publish information for free. Instead many hostels set links from their websites to HW, HB,… to make free advertisement for these companies which charge them at the end up to 17%.
Today we are working on a newer version for to improve our service. A running version of this you will find at
At this site each hostel can add for free
- Title, description and address, even on a zoomable map
- Phone, mobile phone, fax, Skype, Toll-free numbers
- Email, website (as well as a link to your own booking sites)
- Integration of the Book Now application of MyAllocator.com is possible
- Links to your Facebook, Flickr, Google+, and Twitter pages
- Special offers for your guests
- Check-in and -out times
- Prices (in different currencies) for dorm, privates,…
- Upload your hostel photos
In the moment where all our features (more coming soon) will be online on Hostelman.uk we will update our
version to the newest version too.
So, if someone would like to maximize the income for your own website or to pay less to all the booking engines than Hostelman is a good choice.
Joachim
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