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should I have both Hostelworld and hostelbookers?

The Ideal Hostel

hermanmern started this discussion 13 years 11 months ago

Hi,

First of all hello to everyone. I am sorry if I post this in the wrong forum. second of all, sorry for my bad english.

I just want to ask if it is practical to have both hostelworld and hostelbookers for my reservation booking? Or should I just stick with the most popular?

I have both because I thought that some tourist might not know hostelbookers and some might not know hostelworld. But the problem is I have to split my rooms into 2.

please let me know what you guys think. Thank you.

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soi1david

13 years

"I have to split my rooms into 2"

If I understand you correctly..... The answer would be to list your beds on both sites and update the availability of the beds on both sites when you recieve a booking for them.
For instance, when you get a booking on hostelworld, You would then log in to your hostelbookers backoffice and remove the ability for them to sell a bed that hostelworld has sold for you, so as not to get a double booking.
After doing it a bit it will be very easy.
Good Luck.

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ACBBPatrick

13 years

This depends on a couple factors. If you have a limited number of hostels in your city then its is not as big a need to have more than one. But if there is competition then being listed on other sites can be a big positive. But being on more than one depends on your back office/room allocation system. There are quite a few companies that will try and sell you a system that will automatically update your availability across booking engines, phone bookings and walk ups. BE CAREFUL.

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graflo

13 years

Im having the same problem... Im worried that if I update the availabilty manually like the example soi1david said I could be overbooked. Is there any solution to this?

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ACBBPatrick

13 years

Im having the same problem... Im worried that if I update the availabilty manually like the example soi1david said I could be overbooked. Is there any solution to this?

Many software solutions for this challenge have been discussed in depth on other threads in the forum. It has been very well discussed here. Give those a thorough reading and keep an open mind as there are many software products being discussed/promoted on this site. Some solutions are very expensive, some are clumsy and some are are free. No matter what you will need the flexibility to manually input bookings.

Try and find a couple options you think might work for you, your staff, your hostel and even your back office needs in these forums and then ask again. There is a lot of experience on the forum.

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hermanmern

13 years

thank you guys!

one thing cross my mind is when big group want to make a reservation. let say I have 10 beds in a dorm room, I have to split 5 beds in hostelworld and 5 beds in hostelbookers. If the group have 7-8 people then it will be disadvantage for me am I right? Coz, they wouldn't know how many bed I actually have. At the same time, I have to balance it for walk in guest. :(

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soi1david

13 years

@graflo How would you be over booked if you remove the bed availability from the other site? you May get 2 booking for the same room at the same time, Has happened once to me. But If you regularly check you e-mail and stay on top of availability this would be rare.

@ hermanmern - Why divide your beds?... say you have a 10 bed dorm, On HW you put availability at 10, on hostelbookers you put your availability at 10. when HW sends you a booking for 8 people, you simply go to hostelbookers and remove 8 beds from availability there. that will leave 2 beds available. If HB then send you a booking for 2 beds , you then go to HW and delete the availability of those 2 beds.

Am I not understanding your question correctly? I don't use a "software solution" ( please don't try to sell me one now that you know.) with 45 beds I'm pretty hands on and handle it quite well.

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ACBBPatrick

13 years

@soi We use one of the free tools out there for bed/room allocating and it is awesome from our point of view, very easy to use. We are able to use our smart phones to check, update, make new bookings and analyse reports etc as needed believe it or not from our phones. Including historical reports and financial reports. Free, as in absolutely free. (please don't try and sell us one either lol, I'm sure they work but..)

I should also note that we have two hostels with over 100 beds total and this is all easily managed by one person. I am absolutely convinced that as we grow we will continue with this system. Oh yeah all the data is kept in the cloud and as such we have no hassles re data security, system crashes or uptime.

I am very leary of automatic systems. Because when something goes wrong you may not know. Like Soi we are very very on top of our bookings and the sites we are on. Including allocations, availabilities and even booker demographics. The "software solutions" are advertised as time savers etc. But like I said in my first post BE CAREFUL. When they go wrong you may end up spending many long hours fixing the problems created or worse yet, not getting bookings.

An easy solution of the allocating problem is to allocate way less beds to the booking engine that provides you the least guests.

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