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Should i work with hostelworld

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licinio started this discussion 15 years 7 months ago

i am about to open a hostel in Portugal. Initially should i sign up 90% of beds to hostelworld¿ in order to ensure high occupancy rate¿ does anyone knows the conditions to work with Hostelworld¿ can i change the amounts of bed assigned to hostelworld anytime¿

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HostelsClub

15 years

I'm not sure how BackPack online works and it seems that if you still have to manage the back office for Hostelbookers, than I don't know what the advantages are. Basically to get the most bookings, I feel that you have to get the most exposure possible which means using at least 2 booking engines. HW, HB and HostelsClubs are probably the largest out there. It can't hurt to have beds on all three sites if you have to manage the backoffices separately. From my understanding, HostelPower, makes it so you have one interface and when you get a booking from any other site they work with, it automatically updates that availability so you don't have to log in to the back office every time to manually update the availability. Hostelworld is doing great with that many bookings a day, but again, I always recommend using more than two. I don't know many hostels that only work with one site anymore...

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santa klaus

15 years

As to whether HW will "go crazy and screw us all over", that's certainly a possibility, markets tend to operate like that. If they did though I could see others coming up. I think they realise that - if owners are totally dissatisfied they can move their business away from HW.

Well... there are many hostels which would not even exist without HW. There are several of those here in Vienna.
HW takes 10% commission - that is not much compared to most hotel booking sites, and they have competitors.
Imagine HB and HC are gone and some vulture funds buys up HW. These guys usually want ROI really fast and don´t care if that ruins their business in the long run (when they have already pocketed their bonus). So why not take 20%? and sack half of the staff at the same time? There are a lot of hostels which desperately depend on HW, so they would play along and HW is such a well-known brand that it would take years until others come up to replace it.

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HostelsClub

15 years

Yeah, I feel you. Who knows what the future will hold as far as bookings engines...HostelsClub, though, also only takes 10% commission.

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Scotch Argus

15 years

I'm not sure how BackPack online works and it seems that if you still have to manage the back office for Hostelbookers, than I don't know what the advantages are.

The main advantage for most, especially small hostels is that its free. It gives you a perfectly servicable computerised bed management system made for hostels. The prices for the commercial software like charts is out of the reach of smaller places. Some are happy with paper based systems, but I've got used to electronic systems. Obviously if you can combine it with your web booking portal where you get the commission back, that's another advantage.

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Scotch Argus

15 years

Well... there are many hostels which would not even exist without HW. There are several of those here in Vienna.
HW takes 10% commission - that is not much compared to most hotel booking sites, and they have competitors.
Imagine HB and HC are gone and some vulture funds buys up HW. These guys usually want ROI really fast and don´t care if that ruins their business in the long run (when they have already pocketed their bonus). So why not take 20%? and sack half of the staff at the same time? There are a lot of hostels which desperately depend on HW, so they would play along and HW is such a well-known brand that it would take years until others come up to replace it.

I see what you're saying, but to me HW already have a de-facto monopoly - as you say, some hostels wouldn't exist without them. So the potential for them to abuse that power is already there. Because of the small size of the hostel industry (relative to hotels) I think it will probably usually gravitate to a few larger players. If you could get .5% of the hotel bookings through your booking engine for london in a year the comiision would be fantastic due to the size of the market. For hostels it would be small money.

I do think that if the armageddon scenario of a buy out asset stripper came about, hostels would abandon it - especially if they sacked the staff and the website was no good from the customers perspective.

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santa klaus

15 years

I do think that if the armageddon scenario of a buy out asset stripper came about, hostels would abandon it - especially if they sacked the staff and the website was no good from the customers perspective.

Sure some would do that, but as long as HW would deliver so many bookings, most hostels would have no choice, regardless of the commission.
It would take a newcomer some time to get to the point where HB and HC are now. Many travellers are used to HW and stick to it. Again, it would take time until they get used to something new.
So - we shouldn´t let them die. You´re right that HW has a quasi-monopoly, but everytime I talk to one of them, they seem well aware that there´s someone out there who wants to challenge them, so they know they can´t afford to get too lazy.

IMHO the "armageddon scenario" is not totally absurd. It happened to a lot of companies.

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