Opinions Needed! Booking Website that Funds Education in Your Hostel's Community.

Hello all,

I come to this community of current and future hostel owners to ask your opinions on some ideas intended to improve education throughout the countries we enjoy and work in.

Hopefully we, as travelers, want to give back to the people whose land we are privileged to visit and as hostel owners, to the land that sustains our businesses.

My intention is to work towards creating a system in which towns and cities which are home to popular or growing hostels might have the opportunity to contribute to the communities that helped them realize their success and happiness abroad.

I would be very greatful if anyone intrested in this idea could help by answering any and all of the following questions as they might apply to you. Please give me as much information as you feel comfortable with in the forum or within private message if you find it too personal. Any additional comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Where is your hostel located?

Are you a natural born citizen of your hostel’s host country or are you an expatriate?

How long have your doors been open?

Which booking service do you use for most of your reservations?

How have you found the relationship with your booking service?

What is the cost to you of booking through this service? Is it reasonable? Too high?

Do you feel that a hostel owner has any responsibility to the community in which they work? What are they?

Would you be willing to donate any percentage of your hostel profit to helping schools within your area improve?

Do you feel that your tax dollars alone are enough of a contribution?

How do you feel about your hostel’s host country’s government utilization of your tax dollars? Is it for the benefit of the community or do you see little of that?

In an ideal world, would a system in which hostels that are currently contributing a portion of their profit to education as mentioned above, receive more promotion and recommendations on a top booking website based solely on how big their community contribution (financially, local employees, other non financial contribution)?

Do you feel that this is unfair to hostels who cannot afford to donate a portion of their slim profits?

How many local employees do you have working at your hostel and how many are ex-pat travelers?

How do you pay various employees that work for you? Volunteer, Salary, Hourly?

Do you follow the minimum wages in your host country or do you self determine a higher pay?

Would you be willing to donate anything to your community that is not necessarily financial, but that your hostel might have a unique way of providing?

Would you be interested If these donations ended up turning into an overall increase in hostel traffic and thus profit increase overall?

On a scale of 1-10 how willing are you to be transparent about your finances and inner workings with a potential booking website if that transparency could lead to more foot traffic.

How would you describe your hostel’s “personality?” Party, Eco, Relaxed, Special Interest?

Do you also have a restaurant or bar within your hostel?

Does your occupancy fluctuate largely between low and high season or are they relatively level.

Please leave any additional comments as well.

Thank you very much for your responses.
It is of great help and I appreciate it very much.
Nomad Chris