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How important is the location for a HOSTEL ?

General Hostel Operations

LatestViking started this discussion 15 years 7 months ago

Recently a had a chat with some friends, regarding how important is the location, against other things like Security, Cleanliness, Character and Fun ?
Presuming that you have all of them with good ratings :

Security
Cleanliness
Character
Fun

If the location is good, but not very good, do you think will affect your bookings, ratings, etc.

PS: Considering that the Hostel could be a backpacker paradise...:)

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Josh Hostels

15 years

Recently a had a chat with some friends, regarding how important is the location, against other things like Security, Cleanliness, Character and Fun ?

"Location" could mean different things...

How easy is it to get to the hostel from the airport, bus station and train station?
How far away is public transportation?
How far away are the attractions, restaurants, and nightlife?
How safe/cool is the neighborhood?

If those are acceptable (not even "awesome") then I think the hostel can still get great ratings.

I think "staff" and "fun" are the most important. If security is only passable but the hostel is very fun, the security rating can go into the 90s%. I've been to a 200+ bed, big city hostel without lockers that gets over 90% security rating because of the fun. :)

In my opinion "character" seems the least important as long as "staff" and "fun" are top-notch.... but also an already-great hostel with a lot of character can push it into being one of the best (like Krumlov House Hostel).

There's also another thread with a discussion about hostel's location.

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Scotch Argus

15 years

Depending where you are location can be very subjective. If you're a hostel based in the "great outdoors" then some people will love the out of the way location. Others will hate it as there's not a nightclub around the corner. The same is true even of city - some people want to be in the centre of the action, others are happy to be in a quiet residential area. As it's one thing you can't really change, you just have to make the most of what you have.

Staff friendliness and Cleanliness are the most important in my opinion. If your place isn't clean you'll get bad reviews for all your catagories, same as if the staff are rude/ unhelpful.

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aboriginalhostel

15 years

If your location is within walking distance from the city center, you can still earn 80-85% of location ratings. There are some great hostels above 90% overall ratings even in the "outskirts", just like Sir Tobys in Prague or Backpack Guesthouse in Budapest. The staff and services weights their location over in these cases.

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PatrickO`D

15 years

Every HW survey has shown cleaniness as the most important category to the guest. A city center location will help with most guests, but there are hostels away from cc locations that have good rateings. You will never be able to make every guest happy all of the time. It starts with good management, good managers tend to hire the right staff and train them well.

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HostelOffice

15 years

You can have a great physical location but then waste it by not having a good online location. If people can't find your hostel online before they get to the city then they would have already booked elsewhere.

I did an experiment at the Riga Airport and spent around 10,000 euros to buy a 4 man Bobsleigh and set it up at the airport. With it was lots of Hostel and Tour information and over 12 months it made next to no impact with bookings.

This was because most people book in advance when booking a flight and they do the same with accommodation.

But the other experiment was to one year pay for Ryanair promotion via an agent and the next not pay. The result was that the cost of the promotion was too high and caused a loss. It also resulted in weekends being booked up with not so desirable customers. So considering that I ran at a loss. I could not put up prices on weekends because then the week day guests would not book when one of the days they wanted to stay fell on a weekend.

So the result was that I made a lot more profit by not promoting at airports and not with airlines. Let your competition make mistakes that are to your advantage. Same as the silly idea to give groups discounts. We would increase the price for groups and not decrease it.

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Nickognito

15 years

Location is unfortunately important for hostelworld ratings.

I will have to work in a hostel with a pretty amazing staff (91%) but the location is only 70%. Even if we would have an 89-90% rating in everything it
wouldn't be enough to stay in the first 10-15 hostels ordered by their rating on hostelworld.

It's very difficult to improve the location rating. You cannot move a building :), if you're out of town you are there...

There was a thread on 'how to improve location ratings' on this board, but I cannot find it at the moment. Anyway, you can try something, but I thing the bad rating on location is going to affect your global rating decisively, sometimes.

(maybe on of the reasons hostelworld ratings are nice, but not the Bible :))

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HostelOffice

15 years

Yes the hostels I opened I would not have done so if I had not first got the physical location I wanted. But some locations improve and you simply have to do your best to highlight all the attractions, services, transport links, cafes, restaurants, bars, shops etc around your hostel.

There are things you can do online to promote your hostels location as being a sought after location. This is what we do for hostels that use our software www.hosteloffice.com but you can search and probably find ideas as to what I am suggesting.

Have a look at this You Tube video I did for one of my small hostels to improve the location attraction even though it is not located in the most popular Old Town. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqkVSoTjYOs

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Josh Hostels

15 years