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The ideal booking engine/site

Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories

gordo started this discussion 11 years 4 months ago

Right, so given all the ruckus about the HW/HB merger and HWs new contract, if one were to start their own new booking engine, what exactly would it be like?

Broad question I know but hey.

Obviously low commissions, a lack of hotels, an open and easy to understand method of arranging properties in the list, lack of required parity and allocation, easy to integrate with a variety of PMS's... anything else?

Considering the dominance of HW (and assuming its takeover of HB), how would people here recommend taking on the big boys in terms of attracting guests? It'd be easy to get hostels to sign up by offering the above conditions but how would one get potential guests to actually book through the engine? It's unlikely that a startup would be able to beat HW/HB at SEO in the early days. Assuming therefore the hard work would have to be done 'on the ground' how many hostels would actually be willing to commit to promoting such an enterprise? I know more than a few people here are probably thinking to themselves: "Gomio much?" but given the increasing antagonism towards HW and their own stated desire to take on expedia etc, this could well be the time to try and make it happen.

For the record, I'm not offering my own services or anything to get this done (unless a brilliant idea arises) but I do hope that there's a few enterprising souls reading this who might be looking for a little encouragement, feedback and/or support.

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cmloechl

11 years

I'll be totally upfront that I have no real new ideas to add to Gordo's at this moment, but I wanted this topic bumped back up to the top because I think it's worth hearing from people. Anyone out there have not only ideas but the desire to really get something off the ground?

Gordo, my thoughts definitely went to 'Gomio much?' at first, but I wonder if instead of trying to recreate the wheel with an entire new system/site, Gomio got a facelift of sorts somewhow. Would that be any easier?

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uktrail

11 years

I agree that what we are suggesting is essentially what Gomio was about. Gomio failed to develop because HWorld etc developed rapidly and initially were well liked by hostels (apart from their reluctance to join in channel manager schemes).

Another route that I favour is having booking engines on your own website. I know of 2 systems -- Easy-bookings and Freetobook. If you use one of these, it is hard to use any other booking service as well because of updating each site whenever a booking is received on the other. I would favour a site produced by a non-profit group which lists all appropriate hostels and guides users to the hostel's own site if that has a booking facility, or takes bookings on behalf of hostels (like Gomio) if it hasn't.

Another aspect: Travellers are thoroughly familiar with HWorld and HBookers and use them for looking for hostel lists, reviews etc as well as for bookings. If we developed Gomio and/or own-site booking, we would need to have a big campaign directed to travellers to encourage their use. But if lots of hostels stopped being on HWorld, the value of HWorld to the traveller would decrease, and the greater would be the need for a site that listed most hostels (and nothing else!), with reviews, and not necessarily with booking facilities directly on the site.

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LDMT

11 years

Hostels that are not normally full year round, new hostels and sub-standard hostels are not the ones who would be hurt most by WRI's rate parity, availability parity and last-bed availability demands. Those hostels that are consistently full and yield-manage cleverly to achieve it are the ones who will see raw profit shifted directly from themselves to WRI.

Therefore maybe the way forward is to attract the most successful and popular hostels worldwide first. Ideally, a condition would be that they cannot be on WRI. If enough of the world's best hostels could be peeled away then WRI would eventually see its brand damaged as it would come to be known as the place to book a rubbish hostel. Advertising on all other OTA's would be permitted. Remember that WRI's commercial agreements are based on the predication that it has most hostels in its stable. This would unravel if large numbers start to come off.

If every participating hostel had a link to it on its website, and as I said in another post, all WRI sites are blocked from access by guests, then that would help with SEO and punish WRI's hip pocket. If you also blocked the sites of its commercial partners because of their agreements with WRI this would cause them more headaches.

How much would it cost to set up? If 500 hostels paid $200.00 each would USD$100,000 be enough to get it built. If instead of a deposit just a booking fee was taken which was used to pay the site manager, who would obviously want to see more join, and work towards that, as his profit would go up. We would own the site, and some lucky guy get's a cushy job.

Another possibility would be to convince one of the existing OTA's to drop the deposit to 5% on the condition you were not on WRI ( could have legal implications?? ). I'd come off WRI if HostelsClub offered me that.

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uktrail

11 years

For the hostel which I'm 99% sure I will be taking over in early October, I have looked at the two booking systems I mentioned above and found them not as convenient as they at first appeared. Among other things, their designs are both focused on the guest house model, which makes them just a bit awkward at catering for hostels. In one case the booking is sent by email to the manager's address, the manager then assesses it and then sends the confirmation to the guest. In many ways, this is good. For example, it reduces the risk of double booking. But it does require attention every day.

Anyway, I believe I can write a set of php/MySQL programs that will do nearly everything needed. It allows for availability to be seen by the guest before he/she books. Our distribution of rooms (only 4-bed and 2-bed rooms) makes certain things a lot easier, and I have decided to have a simple choice of 2 options: Beds in a 4-bed room or beds in 2-bed rooms (the latter at £1 more than the former). For special situations, eg families, there will be an option to just send a normal email. People will be allocated to specific rooms by the manager at 9am on their arrival day, when it should be possible to set a room to be female-only or male-only if anyone has requested this with their booking. Anyway, the setup can be altered by me if it needs tweaking, and it will be designed for my situation only, so it will not be complicated by loads of facilities that I will never need.

The one thing lacking in this is taking payment. But it is possible to install a credit Card service, or a PayPal service, on one's own website. I have looked on the web at some companies (probably including banks) who offer such a service, and the costs seem to be fairly modest. Has anyone here ever done this? If so, I'd be interested to hear about it.

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pepijn

11 years

I keep running in circles with regards to third party booking systems. In the end i just want to do it myself.

We have reservation software (Stratech) and booking software (holiday media) (the bookingsoftware also provides the payment software buckaroo) The reservation and bookingsoftware communicate rather well with eachother.

I have been looking into HW as a way to increase capacity during lowseason, and attracting new customers outside of our installed base.
However after reading some threads on this forum i have become rather sceptical of HW. I want to stay in control of my Brand, my rooms, my price.

what i would like of an booking site is to still make it easy for guests to compare places on price, location, facilities and price, but when they want to book, the guests are directed to the companies own website to make a booking. Also the communication between availabilty and companys reservationsoftware should be automized. I am not able to check mails twice a day therefor the risk of overbookings is too high.

When i have some time i am gonna read some more threads about online exposure, these next couple of months will be interesting, will keep you posted

ps, great forum, actually the first time i posted something instead of only consuming
thank you
pepijn

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SkWd

10 years

Hi, sorry, i just started a new thread about these. Anyone a part of this network? I read that they are focusing mostly on the south american market at first.

http://www.hostelmanagement.com/forums/opentravelexchangenet.html-0

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christ1

10 years

Would hostel owners/members here like to start (in the short term) our own co-operative? We could build a single central web site containing brief details on each co-operative member venue i.e. location, web site address, bed/room rates and simple booking button function(confirmation email sent to the appropriate hostel), the site could be paid for out of a one off joining fee, dependent of the Numbers who wish to join the fee could be minimal, the hosing costs would then be paid annually and again dependent on numbers this could be at a minimal cost. With all co-operative members marketing the booking engine it would quickly build a web presence (SEO) The longer term goal would be to build our own alternative to HW or negotiate from strength our terms and conditions with the likes of HW.
We for one would be willing to give it a whirl are there any other hostel owners who would like to take the idea further?

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SkWd

10 years

See my post above. These guys offer basically what you just proposed. The hostel just has to build its own network of affiliates and pay the site 2% of each booking.

I'm trying to get some first hand information about them from users on here because i think it's a great alternative. Maybe not a replacement for the bigger OTA's (i think they'll always be a necessary evil!), but definitely an good option for smaller properties with plenty of feeder destinations around them.

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No Limit Hostels

10 years

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John Moriarty

10 years

Gordo I have had the following idea for a while in regards creating a hostel booking site to get people to return to.

What happens is there is 10 % deposit taken like HW etc. from the customer.

But the difference is 5 % of the booking goes to the booking engine for running costs etc. while the other 5 % is held in the customers account in a credit system for there next booking.

This is my example

I plan on spending 3 nights in London and am looking for a hostel.

I am paying 20 euro per night so that is 60 euro for my 3 nights.

so I pay 10% deposit which is 6 euro.

3 euro goes to the booking engine and 3 euro is held in the customers profile for their next booking.

This entices the customer to return and use the credit by booking their next hostel on the website.

Now it still takes 10% from the hostel but as bookin.com is 15 % and HW are increasing to 12% I think they would be ok with that.

Does anyone have any questions about my idea?

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