Hello all,
We are working on launching a mid-size hostel in New York City by Spring 2010 (~150 beds).
I know that the lion's share of bookings for hostels here come from HostelWorld. When your business is relying on, what's essentially, a single company for so many of your bookings, I had a few concerns regarding it:
- How long does it typically take from the time you submit your application to them to the point where you get listed on there?
- Once you get listed on HW and other booking sites, assuming that you launch in mid-Spring (start of the season), that the property is in New York (or any other major tourist city) and that you offer heavily discounted price for the first 4-8 weeks, how long would it take before the reservations would start coming in?
Just wondering on what the dynamics of that relationship are. Any feedback and first-hand experiences would be very helpful!
15 years
Good question. We´ll have an opening a few months after you. Time to dig up old figures.
We opened our hostel in Berlin on Feb 15, 2008. Same strategy as yours, enter the market with brute force.
Number of bed nights booked on Hostelworld in -
Sep 2007: 13
Oct 2007: 128
Nov 2007: 375
Dec 2007: 387
Jan 2008: 2443
Feb 2008: 5005
Finding: Don´t panic. Not yet. ;)
15 years
Klaus,
Do you mean that you doubled your HW bookings the same month you opened in Berlin?
If you don't mind me asking, why were the HW numbers so low in '07?
15 years
Misunderstanding alert. Those bookings were made in those months, not for those months.
I made the beds available on Hostelworld for after February 15 (the openening date) in September already, but, as you see, almost nobody makes a booking 5 months ahead. Bookings only really started to roll in in January, a few weeks before the actual opening.
Hence, don´t panic. If you open in April, you don´t have to make beds available before February. Sign up with Hostelworld until three months before your opening date, that´s easily early enough. Maybe you have a few of your rooms already finished by then, so you can take and upload some pictures.
By the way, most of those 5005 bed nights booked in February were reservations for March and April. We already got less bookings in March than in February, simply because everything was booked up already. We sold all beds for 9 Euros for the first 8 weeks. That was probably too low, I guess we would have been just as full with 12 Euros per bed.
Suggestion: make the beds really, really cheap only for the first two weeks, just to be 100% sure you´re full right from day one and collect as many positive online reviews as possible. Increase rates slowly from then. If you have good ratings, you can be sure to fill up from June with the same rates as your competitors charge (they´re insanely high in NYC). The more cash you pick up in summer, the more you can molest your competitors with a little price war in the winter after it! :D
15 years
Wow, 5000 + HW reservations in one month. Geez I have to rejig my expectations as we are still in two digits and I am almost happy. There is hope. Just have to get hostels more well known out here in the great white north.
15 years
Wow, 5000 + HW reservations in one month.
5000 bed nights, not 5000 bookings. Still, we were overwhelmed. We opened in the middle of death season and didn´t expect to fill up until May. We were pretty full from day one though. But we didn´t hire enough staff from day one. Reception did quite well, because we had a few experienced guys and girls, they just were burned out after two months and two of them quit (one came back after a long holiday, fortunately). The cleaning staff drowned in chaos.
There is hope. Just have to get hostels more well known out here in the great white north.
IMHO, Swiss Backpackers does a great job in making their member hostels better known - and also in making them better.
In Austria - there is no such thing, and only one hostel outside Vienna and Salzburg. In Switzerland, there are hostels all over the country. That´s a strong hint that a good common marketing effort make a lot of sense, especially for rural hostels.
Related Pages
Log in to join discussion