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relying on domestic guests?

Promoting the Hostel Movement

Balkanero started this discussion 15 years 1 day ago

I'm working at the hostel in Zagreb,Croatia. It is the capitol of Croatia but far from destination exotic enough to attract a lot of foreigners (in my opinion,maybe the statistics would say differently) during the winter time.
Would like to know about experiences, if there were any, with the increasement of domestic guests.

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aboriginalhostel

14 years

I don't know which hostel you are working at but we are a backpacker hostel. We are focusing on our clientele as much as we don't have locals, students or any long termers in our hostel. And it works. Our guests know what they can get, security level is higher than otherwise, no thefts, no missed payments, etc. Not to mention that most Eastern Europeans don't get used to staying in hostels as staying in a shared accommodation is simply unbelieveable for most of them. So I think this is the wrong way, IMHO.

Zagreb has a major problem, same to Bratislava. Despite it's a capital, it is too small to stay there longer than a night. It's major advantage is everything else is too far away... Split, Venice, Budapest...

So instead of accepting domestic guests, I'd rather recommend you two options:

- Promote your hostel in the mentioned feeding cities,

- If your guests enjoy their stay, they will stay longer... so keep them busy! ;)

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Balkanero

14 years

Heh..

No one would be happier than us if we would work only with foreigners. We have never been tricked by either of them, only locals and Balkan (I'm referring to them as locals as well cause of similarities in mentality) guests tried to cross us over.
But currently, I don't see alternatives. Zagreb is not a popular place to go to in winter time for backpackers and there are at least 5 hostels closer to the city center than ours. We are not far from the center (15min by tram) and public traffic operates all night long but travelers rather book hostels closer to the city center.

Since we're the capitol of Croatia and the state is structured a bit centralistic, there should be enough of inner-state migrations consisted of population who doesn't require luxury of n-star hotel..maybe..

Nevertheless, there are many things we can work on in our hostel, to become more appealing to the guests even though we're not the closest one to the center.

Thanks for the feedback btw

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canhostel

14 years

For us we generally do about 60+% of guests are international in summer and drops to 40% in winter. We are very happy to have Canadians. But they cannot be from around our local metropolitan area and they must have valid government issue photo ID with address as well as real luggage or backpack. Garbage bags of clothes do not count for us. There is nothing wrong with getting students either. An example is medical students who come to our city for two to three week internships. As long as they are not from our city we will take them. You don't even see them much as they are at the hospital seemingly 15 hours a day. We also have a good relationship with our university so new students coming to our city stay with us for a few days before moving into their residences. Nice revenue in late December, early January.

We are also working hard on attracting groups in the offseasons. Can be school, sport, whatever. Especially being in a capital city and not in the centre it might be easier for you to offer bus parking as a perk. And of course making sure hostels in surrounding major cities have your brochures.

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Balkanero

14 years

Students are a good idea (the domestic ones i mean while they're in that in-between period). With the foreign ones we already do buissness.
thnx
That idea came to my mind, but to be honest, was to lasy to put it in motion. Don't enjoy in negotioations too much, always postpone them as much as possible :rolleyes:

Seems like a science fiction to me to be able to allow yourselves to be a ''backpacker only'' hostel!

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hostel sun

13 years

I think that that IS THE BIGGEST problem with Hostels in Croatia and Serbia. Our Sun Hostel is located in Belgrade, which happened to be twice bigger city than Zagreb, but still we experience the same problems, with our foreigners/domestic guests
ratio been 95/5.
Couple of months ago i had a meeting with president of Croatian Hostel Association, and he had couple of pretty good ideas.
First of all they created young traveler tourist offices in couple of cities in Croatia, where young people can get lot of info about hostels all around the world. As we all know young people in Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro are not aware (as much as we want) about Hostels and conditions in them. The goal is to move them from the mind state they have been last 10 years, and try to animate them to come to hostels in big cities.
Thing we did was hard campaign on facebook on college/high school groups of nearby cities, villages, etc. And if you have time, go there by yourself and try to get young people on the streets to take flyers and talk to them about your hostel and what it really is.
Second of all try to get in contact with high schools directors in other cities of Croatia, and try to negotiate with them to have organized excursions to Zagreb and hostels, something that Vienna managed, to have high school kids two times a year to sleep in hostels only.
Third, Zagreb is capital of Croatia, so i guess that lot of courses, etc.language schools, medical training, car shop courses...
If you need more advices you can contact us on : [email][email protected][/email]

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