OPENING PRESENTATION
Hospitality in Hostels
Tobias de Pessemier from USE-it reminded the audience of how important hospitality is for hostels this time and what exactly it means. With the help of Kristof Dams – researcher at USE-it – he analysed young travellers and what they need more than sleep. Hospitality! And the best example is USE-it demonstrated by their different maps.
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Contact Tobias de Pessemier at info@use-it.be
WORKSHOP ROUND I
Financial Management for Hostels
Michael Tumminia and Chris Syvertsen offered a clear overview of the financial structure of a hostel company. The combination of great simplicity and economical theory with real situations, pointing out the importance of a budget for a company, not only for internal control but also for external institutions, is a key point when trying to renew your property or expand your business investing big amounts of money. They identified and summarised the cost structure for hostels introducing easy steps to set up a yearly budget. It was a very useful content for all those who want to grow up in this sector.
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Contact Michael Tumminia at Michael@212partners.com and Chris Syvertsen at chris@czech-inn.cz
Difficulties encountered by regional hostels in the Face of bad Publicity
Robert, Sveta and Soph discussed different difficulties you may have by bad publicity and clichés. They tried to provide solutions for certain topics and polish hostels images.
All of them presented their own situations and showed problems they have to deal with and what they are trying to do about it to have a successful business.
It was a vibrant discussion with a few ideas for all hostel owners attending this workshop.
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Contact the presenters Soph: sofializzio@yahoo.com, Sveta: info@envoyhostel.com and Robert: robert@agorahostel.com
‘Pay per Click’ and ‘Search Engine Ranking’ are no longer the only opportunities for Internet sales in the tourism sector
New ways of promoting a company or a service are appearing every day in the market. The use of internet is making this process every day more dynamic and is increasing the number of channels where companies can improve their brand awareness.
The most powerful tool at the moment is GoogleAds and pay-per-click. It allows company to reach more and more customers worldwide. But it’s the only way to improve the brand awareness?
Soraya Garcia, CEO and founder of Internet Advantage Co., showed that there are several and less expensive ways to let customers know a brand. The newest trends are blogging, microblogging and viral marketing.
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Contact Soraya Garcia at soraya@internetadvantage.org
WORKSHOP ROUND II
Green Hostels
Matthias Schwender from Sir Toby’s and two energy consultants Urs Grossenbacher and Markus Werren presented their way of saving money with a smart use of energy and water in a time where it is very important to be mentioned. After showing some statistics and numbers, the audience was shocked about how much you can change with a small step. They gave useful hints, so that after all everyone knew how to improve their business without loosing comfort. One small step for hostel owners, one giant leap for human beings!
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Contact Urs Grossenbacher at admin@eb-g.ch
Get Connected
Guy Verlinde and Koen Demeulemeester from Inside-Out in Bruges/Belgium welcomed us to this workshop to experience new ways of cooperating, networking and communicating for hostels. They pointed out the importance of local networking and from there on moved to ideas for cooperation by identity, style or philosophy as for example eco hostels, sports hostels or rural hostels.
The linchpin for all this is communication! Therefore they created a website www.myhostelservices.com, which will be a collaboration suite, a B2B platform or whatever the hostels want it to be!
Their advice on how to start cooperation: get drunk at the conference party and talk!
As it seems many participants took this advice to heart and cooperated the whole night…
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Contact Guy Verlinde at guy@in-side-out.eu
Travel web 2.0, User created content
Frank Hinrichs and Travis Pittman showed a quick overview about the opportunities the hostel owners have with using certain other websites. They gave great examples for cooperating with different portals. Frank presented his website mydaytrip.com and Travis of bugbitten.com. Both websites stand for an amazing opportunity for hostel owners and the customers to communicate and get to know each others point of views better.
Travel web 2.0 is an upcoming possibility for Hostels to attract more travellers.
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Contact Travis at travis@bugbitten.com and Frank at frank@mydaytrip.com
WORKSHOP ROUND III
Associations Meeting
Quite an audience gathered in the largest conference Hall, the Sala Gaudi, at the Casa Convalescència. Delegates from different Hostel Networks and associations sat together discussing the idea of international networking. Lloyd from the Backpackers Canada and Helga from the Backpacker Network Germany started up the discussion by introducing the networks they were representing touching points as making ‘independent hostels’ better known and how a network can encourage newcomers to start their own hostels. It also emerged how divers the existing networks are: marketing platform, representation of interests, hallmark for quality or a combination of them all.
An interest to work on an international level was clearly to be found amongst the participants even though it showed that it’s still a long way to go.
The audience agreed to Lloyds offer on researching networks world wide and accepted his offer to present the results at next year’s meeting in Dresden/Germany.
Thank you Lloyd and Helga, we’re looking forward!
Contact Helga at helga@gomio.com and Lloyd at longhouse@tbaytel.net
WORKSHOP ROUND IV
GOMIO.COM
Peter Weißbach as the managing director of the European Hostel Cooperation gave an insight on the recent developments of the platform www.gomio.com. He pointed out and introduced the relaunch of the portal and explained what exactly will change and how this will influence the booking behavior of travelers. He made everyone exited to see the first steps and now all delegates are looking forward to the relaunch!
He also showed some positive effects caused by business modell change. Afterwards David Buehler presented the GOMIO.COM International Phonecard which you can buy and sell to your guests to offer another service point.
Contact Peter at peter@gomio.com
Stimulate more revenue via ancillary products & partnerships
Michael Hughes from Consultants Collective showed us how the revenue coming from your website can be increased. Most important: Take your time to choose the right partner! Preferred should be partners from related businesses as travel insurances, car hire or airlines. He provided numbers and put them in context to the present audience.
An extra was the price draw at the end of his performance. Michelle from Sleepzone in Galway won the one week car hire! Congratulations and have fun with it!
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Contact Michael Hughes at michael@consultantscollective.com
Hottest trends in Hostels IT technology & online travel
Which are the newest trends in IT technology? And how does IT affect the tourism business? And which are the facts companies have to considerate when introducing a new IT system?
Vladimir Díaz gave an answer to all this questions. A new program for managing a business dedicated to tourism is not the only thing to considerate: a manager has always to look behind the simple program and consider all the relations between the program itself and IT technologies. Combination of two essential parts of a software solution is the winning strategy to improve effectiveness in a business, especially in tourism where new technologies are the key point of increasing volumes and revenues.
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Contact the presenter at gmoral@sulcus.es