Articles tagged “hostelworld”

Social travel is a trend on the rise and hostels are at the helm of the movement. Today that tribe is growing with reports showing that 35% of millennials are choosing a hostel based on the opportunity to meet other travelers.

If taking a year off to travel the world sounds too good to be true, it probably is. We don't doubt more people are interested or open to doing something like this than in the past, but for many people their bank accounts and bosses will keep standing in the way of this freedom.

Increasing higher-margin bookings and focusing on growing your strongest brand seems a sensible approach when you are competing in a crowded market.

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.

Hostelworld needed to automate the online booking of hostels because there just wasn't enough money in it if employees or call center agents had to handle bookings over the phone. The company gave away free software to attract owners and then came up with a business model that was midway between Expedia's prepay model and Booking.com's pay at the hotel formula.

While the number of Americans traveling abroad hasn't necessarily increased as quickly as the percentage of those visiting more than one country per trip, Americans are becoming more worldly and that means spending more on more expensive trips.

Although it is very much apples to oranges, the Hostelworld IPO might be viewed as a toe in the water for companies such as Airbnb and other alternative lodging/sharing-economy companies mulling their futures as public companies.