Hostel-booking firm to double staff

An Irish company, which is the world leader in hostel bookings, is set to double in size to cope with demand, it emerged today.

Hostelworld.com receives around $1m (€831,400) in bookings every day from backpackers in 190 countries.

It is now planning to double its staff from 80 to around 160 in the next year and is moving to bigger offices in Dublin.

Chief executive and co-founder Ray Nolan said the company had grown by around 100% annually in the last few years.

“When the company was set up (in 1999), we did one booking and then it became 10, then 100, then 1,000 and then several thousand. To a degree we had first-mover advantage but even still our offer is better than most,” he said.

Hostelworld makes its money by taking a percentage of every booking made through its numerous sites, which include hostels.com and hosteleurope.com.

It also has around 1,100 affiliated websites such as Ryanair, Lonely Planet and Let’s Go, which all use its hostel booking system.

“Any time you’re booking with them you may not know it but you’re using our technology,” said Mr Nolan.

The company started with just 10 hostels in Ireland but now has 10,000 hostels worldwide on its books in cities as diverse as Buenos Aires, Beijing and Johannesburg.

However, there is now plenty of international competition from other websites.

“People are trying it right now, saying: ‘I’m going to put a website up there and give me 10 beds to sell,' but the reality is it’s not enough to do that. You’ve got to give the marketing and distribution that we have but you also have to help them,” said Mr Nolan.

Hostelworld provides an online hostel management system free of charge to its customers and runs an annual awards ceremony for them, known as the ‘Hoscars’.

For customers, it provides free city guides, competitions and a promise to donate part of their bookings to the children’s charity UNICEF.

It recently raised $100,000 (€83,100) in donations for the victims of last December's Asian tsunami.

Mr Nolan said hostels were still most popular with 18 to 30 year olds who appreciated the low cost and the different experience.

“You don’t arrive in a hotel and go down to the reception area and meet 20 people who all want to have a beer together and will tell you where the great restaurants are,” he said. “You arrive in a hotel and you sit on your own until its time to leave.”

Hostelworld provides an online rating system which only allows genuine customers to say what they think about a hostel and prevents competing hostels from damaging their rivals with fake reviews.

“We’ll rate the hostel on the last 50 ratings we’ve received so if a hostel was an awful dump, and puts some time and effort into cleaning itself up and making staff smile and putting in extra facilities, the rating can change very quickly. It happens all the time,” said Mr Nolan.

The company is due to move from its offices in Rathmines to larger ones in nearby Charlemont Exchange this week.