"Recession finally hits online travel bookings" - USA Today

[Hostels]

Recession finally hits online travel bookings
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/...-decline_N.htm

PhoCusWright said the value of online leisure and unmanaged business travel bookings would drop 3% this year to $93 billion. The company said it was the first time since PhoCusWright began tracking the marketplace in 1998 that online travel has fallen year over year.

I wonder if this mostly applies to hotels. How are your hostels doing this April compared to last? Is there any drop in online bookings compared to other booking sources?

[PatrickO`D]

It would be great if somebody monitored the bookings of all the lodgeing segments ( Hotels, Inns, B&Bs, Hostels, Resorts) and posted them online. Somebody could go to the website, click on their respective segment, Country or region and go from there.

[santa klaus]

Originally Posted by Hostels

I wonder if this mostly applies to hotels. How are your hostels doing this April compared to last? Is there any drop in online bookings compared to other booking sources?

April is wonderful compared to last year, but this might be explained with perfect weather and late Easter holidays this year (in 2008, Easter was in March).

[aboriginalhostel]

Originally Posted by santa klaus

April is wonderful compared to last year, but this might be explained with perfect weather and late Easter holidays this year (in 2008, Easter was in March).

IMHO the recession hits back around 20-25% comparing to last year. Budapest had no booking change in April comparing to last year (despite Easter which is usually brings +25%!). Previous months were also similar. It would be needed to have long term statistics and exact data to make any trends, just like Patrick mentioned.

We are still better off than 4-5 stars though!