15 years
..we use hostelsclub.com as well...
It is pretty strong in the south european market...mainly used by customers from Spain or Italy...
Worthwhile booking engines.
General Hostel Operations
Currently I am with HW, HB and GOMIO (because they deserve our support). Being a relatively small hostel and having to manage bookings and allocations manually I feel that these three are enough.
However, there are many other booking engines out there that are vying for our support. Are any of them worthwhile? I include amongst these TripAdvisor and StudentUniverse.
Your advice would be appreciated.
- Comments
15 years
I have created an online petition against HostelsClub due to their theft of the HostelPower software. Please visit it and read the details: http://www.boycotthostelsclub.com
Thank you for your time,
Kevin
15 years
I think it depends on your location. For us, hostelsclub is laughable. I think in the last four years we've gotten one booking from them. But we get a lot of business from HW and HB. Some smaller booking engines like minihostels.com are coming along as well. We use Gomio too, but don't see a lot of bookings from them.
15 years
kind of a random question, but do any of these booking utilities allow you to specify single-sex rooms?
15 years
We (Plus Prague) are on HW, HB, LM and HC (because they are Italian :D ) when it comes to hostel. Hotel is being offered on Laterooms, LM, Orbitz and Rates to go.
However number one in terms of bookins is of course HW (surprise! :D )
15 years
another question is how much commission do these guys take? I believe we'll be getting most of our customers from car traffic because when the ski resorts are open we can get anywhere from hundreds to thousands of cars driving by. I don't want to have to use something that takes 10% right off the bat.
15 years
You can always put the minimum amount of beds available during the heavy season and then up the amount in slow periods. Although myself I prefer advance reservations versus just walk ins. Gives you more of an idea how much staff to put on.
Even if you are not open for a couple of months you can get onto HW and HB and put some available beds for later on. At least for future periods people will know that you exist.
15 years
You can always put the minimum amount of beds available during the heavy season and then up the amount in slow periods. Although myself I prefer advance reservations versus just walk ins. Gives you more of an idea how much staff to put on.
Even if you are not open for a couple of months you can get onto HW and HB and put some available beds for later on. At least for future periods people will know that you exist.
Would we have to reserve those beds for HW only? I'm sure we won't be getting a ton of traffic from them because not a lot of Americans use HW (unless they are traveling to Europe) and I would hate to have to turn someone away because of the reserved beds.
15 years
Would we have to reserve those beds for HW only? I'm sure we won't be getting a ton of traffic from them because not a lot of Americans use HW (unless they are traveling to Europe) and I would hate to have to turn someone away because of the reserved beds.
Nope you can put one bed if you wanted on each of the sites. Just remember that if you are full for a later date to remove the bed availability for that period or else you can be setting yourself up for overbooking and nasty encounters with tired guests without a bed available.
Well you can always overbook like hotels if you choose who assume a % will not show up. Kind of sucks for staff though when everyone does show up.
What you have to remember is a reservation on the books is more of a sure thing then a possible walk in. But if your market has tons of walk ins maybe you can get a way with it. But many travellers like booking long way in advance. Heck we have bookings for March already that were made in July.
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