10 years
moving to black/white or b/w + 1 colour and thinner paper may help reduce costs. maybe even print it on a simple office printer on your desk when necessary.
Would you pay for a better quality of city map in your hostel?
Promoting the Hostel Movement
Hi,
I have recently made a backpacker map for Ottawa which is paper based. This is a map that is aimed specifically at backpackers and features recommendations from young locals. You can see what the map looks like here: http://thealternativetravelguide.org/digital-information/
What I would like to know is would you, as a hostel, pay for a better quality of map to be at your front desk? The reason I ask is because I am currently doing a crowdfunding campaign to cover the first year printing costs of the map but I know is not a sustainable source of funds. If the appetite is there, I would like to charge hostels a minimal amount to provide a better quality of map to their guests (I've had great feedback from travellers so far on it).
Any thoughts on this are much appreciated. Many people suggest simply moving the map to a digital version (and thus eliminate printing costs), but I would like to do a mix of both as I still realise the value of the printed map! (It's great when your battery runs out for example!)
Thanks for your help.
Cheers,
Katrina
- Comments
10 years
We are supplied with a variety of maps, some of which we pay for and some we get for free. With the ones we pay for, we don't pay so much for the maps, as to be featured on the map and then we usually get maps to give to our guests in return for this.
We also get free maps (which we are also featured on), targeted at backpackers, where backpacker hostels are featured on the map for free and other types of companies pay to advertise around the edges.
I wouldn't pay for just maps. We go through so many it's unreal. However, to be featured on the map, that is something I'll pay for, as these maps are quite widely distributed and, in Perth, are used by the WA visitor centre etc. (which helps push guests our way).
We get really, really good maps from the WA visitor centre - we pay for the listing but get tons of maps free and they're really good quality, in a tear-off pad format. Great to have on the desk so you can point out to people where they need to go.
I'm not a huge fan of just digital maps. Especially when you work in a backpackers it's nice to be able to mark points of interest on a map for a guest and mark specific things they may have asked for.
10 years
Thank you so much for the feedback so far. The map which I've produced features hostels and a blurb about these hostels...but I have not yet asked hostels to pay for being featured. So if I understand correctly, you would't pay for just a map (as you already get these from a variety of sources) but if you were featured you would pay for them?
With regards to printing in black and white or on thinner paper, it's an interesting idea but I would like to produce a high quality map which should last for at least 3 days and would prefer not to go down this route.
Cheers,
Katrina
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