14 years
Right , I'm with ya now Hostels.
your a wiz .
so maybe you might know..(Off topic) what % of users of booking sites actually bother to make a review?
Price differences on booking engines
Hostel Trends and News
I saw the following item on another forum:
For every hostel I was looking at for my upcoming trip, Hostelbookers was always cheaper, at least by a few dollars. I ended up booking Astor Museum hostel for a pretty significantly cheaper price on HB than HW ($18/night vs $24/night). Castle Rock hostel was slightly cheaper also (around $18 vs $20-21 per night).
Assuming this was not a statistical chance, how can it happen? I thought the prices of beds were decided by the hostels and not by the booking engines. A hostel can, of course, choose to offer different prices on different engines, or might make a special deal and publicise it only on one engine. But the above quote suggests something more systematic.
Do any hostels vary their prices systematically between booking engines?
- Comments
14 years
I'm not sure about percentages. Maybe that would make a good survey topic.
Great find by uktrail... knowing this now makes it possible to see the real hostel prices...
14 years
Hey I just went to the other site to tell them about this correspondence -- Josh, you beat me to it!:o
14 years
Hey I just went to the other site to tell them about this correspondence -- Josh, you beat me to it!:o
Sorry, I didn't know you used that site until after I posted it and was browsing around :)
Excellent discovery... I wonder if it could have an effect on the currency that hostels choose to use as their default currency.
Santaklaus added on Facebook:
[INDENT]"It´s even more tricky than that: hostels can chose in which currency they set the prices on booking sites - and they don´t always chose their "home currency", but instead Dollars or Euros."[/INDENT]
Those choices might make them appear more expensive than their competition depending on the currency used to compare the properties...
14 years
A quick read of the HB study reveals that the price comparison is from one specific day back in 2009. This doesn't sound statistically significant.
Moreover, HB uses the study as the basis of their best price guarantee, which gives customers only 24 hours to produce a better price, a pretty unlikely outcome.
HostelTraveler.com, by comparison, offers the same guarantee, but gives guests 7 days to compare prices. Also, the HostelTraveler guarantee applies to the total amount paid by the guest, including booking fees, etc. The enhanced guarantee and lower prices are attributable, among other factors, to the fact that HostelTraveler charges only 8% commission to most hostels, unlike the 10% cost of most other services. Also, HostelTraveler's booking fee of $0.75 for hostels has been lower than HW for a long time.
Additionally, with regards to guarantees, HostelTraveler also guarantees the lowest cost to the hostel for a booking engine directly on the hostel website, often half the cost or better than the other services.
13 years
As an update to this post, we want introduce HostelTraveler.com's new policy of No Booking Fees for the vast majority of hostels and budget accommodation. You've read about HostelBookers "no booking fees", and even their advertising claim that they're cheaper than HostelWorld. If you manage a hostel or backpacker's youth accommodation, know that HostelTraveler.com will not be beat on cost, and are definitively cheaper than HostelBookers and HostelWorld in all cases. Yes, HostelTraveler.com is cheaper for both hostel and guest. Very simply, this is because HostelTraveler features:
- No Booking Fees for budget accommodation
- Only 8% commission rate to hostels
If you operate a hostel and are listed with HostelTraveler.com, and you see that your hostel still has booking fees, please contact us today for new pricing.
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