Hostel Marketing Blog
Welcome to the HostelManagement.com hostel marketing & development blog.
What's in a name? Discovering perception at Bounce Sydney
Submitted by cmloechl on 19 May 2013 - 5:12pmAfter my 15 hour near-luxury flight from LA (it's not often I end up with 2 seats to myself), I arrived at Sydney International Airport at the bright hour of 6am. I thought it might be a bit early to check in, so I scammed free wifi at the airport for a few hours before heading into the city to Bounce Sydney, my first hostel. The directions on the website seemed easy enough. The city train left straight from the airport, and only 4 stops later you are at Central Station, just across from the hostel.
New Staff Writer Seeks Best Industry Practices
Submitted by cmloechl on 16 May 2013 - 5:04amHello fellow hostel friends and enthusiasts! My name is Courtney Loechl, and I am the new staff writer for hostelmanagement.com. Over the coming months I will be continuously filling this space with blog posts about all sorts of hostel-related topics. My hope is that they will be interesting and informative, with a solid dose of fun in there too. But before I get into that, perhaps I shall introduce myself on the off chance that all 9,000 of you don't know me. (Can you believe hostelmanagement.com is already up to 9,000 members?? And growing!)
Video Panel Discussions
Submitted by Darren Overby on 15 January 2013 - 2:32pmGoogle has recently introduced a new feature called Google Hangouts On Air. We are really excited about this technology because it enables small groups of people to hold small video conferences that can be simultaneously streamed to YouTube and saved for future viewing. We would like to use this technology to host hostel industry panel discussions with experts from our community.
New HostelManagement.com Features in Development
Submitted by Hostels on 6 December 2012 - 2:26pmA common question that I receive is "How is HostelManagement.com funded?" The answer has always been that I've funded it myself by doing hostel consulting.
Over the past years, HostelManagement.com has grown into an online and offline community of over 9,000 hostel people around the world. There have been many difficulties with my ability to fund the project as it has grown in size. Since I am no longer doing hostel consulting and do not own a hostel, I've been looking for a solution for maintaining and expanding HostelManagement.com.
How to Visualize Hostel Data with Firefox and TableTools2
Submitted by Darren Overby on 6 December 2012 - 1:07pmI found a great way to visualize my hostels reviews over time so I can quickly spot trends in our customer service performance. It's called TableTools2 and it works with Firefox. The tool will create charts from data on any table on any website.
As hostel owners, we of course all know that reputation is vitally important to the success of our businesses. In this internet era, like it or not, the reputation of our hostel is largely affected the customer comments, and reviews found on various online review sites. Because of this, the success of our business depends on being attentive to online reviews and making in-hostel adjustments as quickly as possible.
How to Use Our Online Event Software
Submitted by Hostels on 31 May 2011 - 4:46amThis is a quick tutorial on how to use our webinar software, Go to Webinar.
Free (and Cheap) Productivity Tools for Hostels
Submitted by Hostels on 13 May 2010 - 2:24pmI wanted to share a few productivity tools that I've used that might be useful at some hostels. Here's the list:
Twitter Tip: What is Framejacking and Why is It Bad?
Submitted by Hostels on 2 April 2010 - 10:55amFramejacking refers to sending someone a link that hijacks the destination website with an HTML frame. The two most common ways that links are framejacked are with ow.ly (Hootsuite) and su.pr (Stumbleupon). Framejacking is considered annoying by many Twitter users -- here's why:
[UPDATE, May 8, 2010: Hootsuite has modified the program so that you can choose not to framejack your links. See this post.]
10 More Free Web Directories for Hostels
Submitted by Hostels on 23 May 2009 - 9:00pmIn a previous post I listed 10 free places to list or hostel online. Here are 10 more places to list your hostel online:
Free Photo Editing and Graphic Design Tools
Submitted by Hostels on 30 November 2008 - 4:38pmThis is the first part in a series on productivity software for hostels. Use these tools for creating marketing materials like flyers, posters and websites. Edit your hostel photos without having to buy expensive software like Adobe Photoshop ($699). All of the software on this page is free!
