16 years
Priceline.com does list a few hostels like Smart City Hostels (Edinburgh), Brodies Hostel (Edinburgh), and Jacob's Inn (Dublin), but they are not a hostel booking site...
igougo.com, Sabre, Travelocity, and hostels
Hostel Trends and News
I noticed that igougo.com is listing hostels.
This is interesting because igougo.com is owned by Sabre, which I believe also owns 70% of Travelocity.
The code from their site shows that they are optimizing their site to come up in search engines for hostel-related queries:
The code that shows their intentions is:
</p>[COLOR=Red][B]San Francisco Hostels[/B][/COLOR] - IgoUgo
The site is currently ranking #34 in Google.com for san francisco hostels, and if they keep up their strategy, they will rank much higher for a lot of hostel-related keywords.
They don't offer any San Francisco Hostel bookings though. If you try to book a hostel after arriving on their site, you get this screen:
If you perform the search, you get a bait-and-switch where they show you only hotel booking options:
I think that the search engine bait-and-switch technique with hostels and hotels is going to becoming increasingly common.
- Comments
16 years
As mentioned above, if igougo.com keep up their current strategy, they are going to rank well for many hostel-related keywords.
Here is igougo.com ranking on the front page of Google for a significant hostel keyword:
When you try to book a hostel you get a bait-and-switch trick where you are only given the options to book through companies that don't offer hostels:
It's bad for hostels unless IgoUgo add hostel booking engines. Even then, it might not be good for hostels.
In the future igougo.com are going to rank for many "[city] hostels" keywords, and maybe even the name of your specific hostels.
Here is a Google search for the hostel shown above, with igougo.com in the top 10 even though you can't book it through igougo.com. The visitors will get redirected to hotels:
(igougo.com show #6 and #7 above when searching with 100 results per page, but they are #5 in Google for a regular search at 10 results per page)
16 years
I was searching around more and noticed another example of high rankings for a hostel's name:
I checked all of IgoUgo's booking engines for Circus Hostel and only one hostel (Generator) seemed to have allocated dorm beds through the hotel booking engines. Not a good deal for hostels if they are paying hotel booking engine commissions.
16 years
I work at IgoUgo and I think that the point that you raise is fair.
IgoUgo.com is built around user-generated travel content. Our goal is to make it easy for users to share their travel experiences (including stories, reviews and photos of hostels) and to organize all of this content so that we provide a great resource for people who are in the process of planning a trip.
With travel planning in mind, this past year we added a price comparison feature that allows users to search for hotel rates on various sites. The fact that the "Compare Rates" button shows up when viewing every lodging related business (including hostels and campgrounds) is an oversight that we need to correct.
We will update this and will also look to add hostel specific travel tools where appropriate.
Thanks for making me aware of this.
Pete Campion
IgoUgo
16 years
Pete,
Thanks for stopping by.
Here are some hostel booking engines that have affiliate programs:
I believe that all of them offer SOAP Web services for realtime affiliate integration.
The reason that hostels might worry about hotel booking engines is because the hotel commissions are too high for dorm beds which often go for as low as $7 to $25 per night. Hostels typically pay 5 to 10% commission on hostel bookings. I think it would be bad for the hostel industry for hostels to have to pay steep hotel commission rates in order to get bookings.
If you're going to integrate hostel-friendly features, feel free to send me a PM or ask questions here in the forum and I'm sure hostels will have some tips...
- Josh
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