14 years
A few ideas:
- Apply the tips in the Online Marketing for Hostels eBook to your website to get higher search engine visibility
- List your hostel online everywhere possible -- like here and here
- Monitor and improve online reviews to get higher visibility on booking engines. Higher satisfaction also should lead to more word-of-mouth recommendations. Hostels that manage to get Hostelworld "Hoscars" get a lot of extra media coverage from the news items covering the event
- Use online word-of-mouth social media tools like Twitter and Facebook to build online community. Twitter to network with travel industry people, hostels, and travel bloggers, and Facebook to feed daily content into your followers' Facebook feed (for name recognition so that your hostel's name will come to their mind when someone asked them for a recommendation on where to stay)
- Make connections with other hostels in places like HostelManagement.com, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. Exchange rack flyers. Invite their staff to visit your hostel.
I think word-of-mouth is important. A large part of word of mouth marketing comes from satisfied guest and online visibility.
If I name a few places, there are probably a few specific hostels that immediately come to mind: Amsterdam, Paris, San Francisco, Prague, Australia, Tokyo, Spain...
I think just getting the hostel's name out there among travelers is important to building that kind of instant association with a city's name and the hostels there. In the old days it was mostly done through rack flyers and Lonely Planet. Now travelers' eyes are on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs...
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