Ray Nolan in the news

[Hostels]

An article about Ray Nolan (WRI, Hostelworld) about a potential €100m when they float on the stock exchange -- an Internet success story:

He's the Irish software millionaire most of us had never heard of. Just nine years after he and his partner Tom Kennedy founded WRI, Ray Nolan will end up with shares worth up to €100m when the online accommodation booking company floats on the stock exchange.

[...]

Nolan himself still has a near-25pc stake in WRI. If the company achieves its planned valuation of €450m in its forthcoming flotation, then Nolan's shareholding will be worth well in excess of €100m.

[santa klaus]

They´re goining to the stock exchange? Bad news.

[Plakian]

Hey Santa
Better than being bought by the BBC me thinks.

[santa klaus]

...... why?

[Plakian]

Just look what the BBC has done to Lonely Planet; taken it up market and out of the reach of OUR people.
OUR people are about 25% of world tourism. We need to get this message across!

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by Plakian

Just look what the BBC has done to Lonely Planet

Good point -- LP recently turned their Haystack booking engine into "Lonely Planet Hotels". (not hostels)

(I just checked it and it still defaults to hotels.)

I wonder what changes WRI will go through (if any).

Any predictions?

[Plakian]

If it works don't fix it!!
WRI works and . . . like Guinness . . . does us good.

[santa klaus]

Good point Plakian, there is a difference between LP and WRI though.

Printing guidebooks is a doomed business model. Especially "OUR people" do their research online now. LP would have had to change their strategy to win new customer groups with or without new owners. Haystack was a total failure, so I´m surprised they try it again under a different name instead of skipping it.

WRI on the other hand works nicely, as you observe correctly, so I wonder what the stock exchange plan is all about. If raising some money was the only goal, I wonder why they haven´d had the idea to ask the hostels to invest in WRI. So: I figure there´s more behind it. WRI will merge. The questions are only: will they swallow or be swallowed, and WHO will they merge with to do WHAT?

I know they read this humble forum so I hope they´ll whisper something to me!

[santa klaus]

Originally Posted by Plakian

If it works don't fix it!!
WRI works and . . . like Guinness . . . does us good.

I´ll explain why I think this is bad news.

If I had a few millions to invest in WRI stocks I´d be looking forward for my seat in the board of directors. I would tell them to make more profit to increase the price of WRI shares. I´m an investor, after all, not the salvation army!

I would tell them:
* WRI is overstaffed (investors always say that). Fire staff.
* Staff in Dublin is too expensive anyway. Move the headquarters to Bangalore.

Now some bad news for the hostels:
* why only 10% commission? Hotel booking sites usually charge 20%.
* make hostels pay to appear higher in the city listings (like on hostels.com).
* make them pay for good ratings (not unheard of in the industry).

[Hostels]

Originally Posted by santa klaus

Haystack was a total failure, so I´m surprised they try it again under a different name instead of skipping it.

My take on Haystack:
Booking engines rely on search engine rankings. If the site doesn't come up when backpackers search for a keyword like "london hostels", the booking engine doesn't get traffic and doesn't send bookings to the hostels. There is no reason for hostels to allocate beds to a booking engine that can't send bookings.

The reason that Hostelworld and Hostelbookers are the largest booking engines is because they have very aggressive search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns. LP wasn't focusing on that. They made some changes and might do better in the future, but too bad they decided to focus on hotels. Will backpackers become repeat users of a hotels-themed booking site?