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Starting on the wrong foot (bad reviews)

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

Josh started this discussion 15 years 8 months ago

Here are some ratings from a new hostel that just opened. From their first 3 Hostelworld.com reviews their rating is just 57%. It's hard to believe a hostel wouldn't be working hard to make sure their first guests were very happy. 40% staff rating and 53% cleanliness right after opening?

Is it just bad luck or maybe a few mistakes in the beginning?

IMAGE(http://www.hostelmanagement.com/forum/attachments/f11/365d1238928207-starting-wrong-foot-bad-reviews-bad-reviews.png)

Santa Klaus mentioned something interesting a couple of days ago -- hostels that get abysmal reviews are bad for hostels in general because the person might not stay in hostels again and might tell their friends that hostels are bad in general.

One example is the person(s) who keeps trying to add this photo of a dirty hostel dorm room to the Wikipedia page about hostels saying that photos of dirty hostels are more realistic than the current photos. (I had added photos of clean hostels to the Wikipedia page and deleted the photos of dirty hostels.)

Another example is angry reviews that say things like "stay away from hostels period".

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santa klaus

15 years

Rather than spelling out every situation that could possibly arise, I simply make it clear to all of my staff that I have hand picked them because I am confident in their abilities and instincts. I tell all of them that I want them to take ownership of the hostel, that they are empowered to make any decision that needs to be made during their shift, and that I will back them up on anything they decide. (If they make a bad call, then we'll deal with it later, but I applaud them for taking the initiative and handling the situation as they see fit) So far, it hasnt come back to bite me yet!

^^^^^
spot on.

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GirlScoutFWB

15 years

:-) looks like there is a good people manager

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YannusHost

15 years

Concerning this new hostel it would be interesting to have a look at the hostelbookers or other websites ratings to compare with the HW's one. The results could be different. And hopefully this hostel is not lost because of few unhappy HW's guests, we're all aware there's also other channels to sell/promote a hostel.
Something comes up immediately in this rating, it's the location, that seems to be perfect, with a good HK team and a nice front desk staff I'm sure it could be close to become a success!

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