CEO Interview: Mobile Booking, Digital Marketing and the New Way to Sell Hostels
Photo Caption: Hostelworld CEO Feargal Mooney believes the company's future revolves around maintaining its focus on hostels and not branching out into being a budget accommodations provider in a big way. David Parry
Skift Take
Like many successful companies, Hostelworld resolves to win by maintaining its focus on what it does best: Selling hostels. Its big challenge is to generate more awareness about the modern and socially oriented hostel while larger players like Airbnb and Booking.com suck the air out of Google.
After executing an initial public offering and listing on the London and Dublin stock exchanges in November, Hostelworld, which previously had been majority-owned by a private equity firm, gained some autonomy and can now move a lot faster in a market that requires such flexibility.
That's the view of CEO Feargal Mooney, who joined the Hostelworld Group in 2002 as COO and CFO.
In recent years, Hostelworld, which also operates Hostels.com and HostelBookers.com, has eliminated consumer booking fees, raised based commissions to 12 percent, and embarked on campaigns to change often-ill-conceived notions about the value proposition of today's hostels for solo or duo-traveling guests.
Skift discussed Hostelworld's future plans with Mooney, who touched on the varied dynamics of competing against Airbnb and Booking.com, newly focused marketing campaigns and expansion in Asia.
An edited version of the interview follows:
Skift: You have mentioned that your management team gets a l
