Should a Hostels Details be Included in a Website

I have just received an interesting email from an unnamed website requesting us to remove a hostels contact details from our content pages due to the fear of customers making direct bookings to a hostel.

Now I have to ask myself several questions:

• Do people really leave a website to make a booking directly with the hostel?
• Why would people leave a website unless they're having a bad experience or they thought that by ringing or emailing the hostel they could get a better deal?

Isn't it a matter of customer service that we enable our clients to have easy access to us enable them to contact us to change a booking, tell us they are going to be late or to ask us for directions rather than the customer having to struggle to find the relevant info?


There is no way that Plus will change our policy of adding contact details to web pages where appropriate.


Let me know what you think

Something Really Cool to Do in Dublin

Last week the Plus crew headed of to Dublin for the Hostelworld conference. The conference was up to the usual high standard you would expect. A great time was had by all. Congratulations to all the hoscar winners especially Jetpak in Berlin who seemed to scoop most of the major prizes (or was it one too many beers consumed by myself) they seemed to win everything. Well done to Grannie and her team for doing such agreat job.

While in Dublin Antonio, Rani and I cruised Dublin looking for cool stuff. I had a bit of a heads up, as I had arrived on Saturday and met up with a mate of mine and over a few beers he told me about this cool XBOX LIVE gaming centre. So on the Wednesday after the conference we decided to suss it out.

Wow, 2500 sq feet of gamer paradise. 50 plasma screens that can all be linked together, leather chairs and couches. You can play individually or as a team and you can play against players from anywhere in the world thanks to the net. They regualary hold leagues and competitions every night of the week infact.

Yep, we even got to play Battlefield 2 between our selves and Andrew who was showing us round. Well all that I can say is that I think that my generation slightly missed the boat and that Antinio has spent far too much time hunting birds in Madrid and whiling away time infront of a screen at home.
Thanks to the Manager Tony Murray and Andrew for showing us around. I think that i may have an idea for our Atomic bunker in our Prague hostel now.

Now all that I need to do is convince Katy to buy me an XBOX, I'm hooked.

What is it about Sunday Mornings

Well here we are again. It's Sunday morning and I am work again why Katy snoozes through a lazy Sunday morning lie in. I wasn't going to go to work. But as my PC at home for some reason doesn't want anything to do with blogging software and its such a nice morning. I thought that I might as well get organised for the week while sipping coffee over looking the chianti country side. Lifes not all that bad!

We have loads of stuff on at the present. We are just about to open our new hostel in Prague, so I am in the process of buiding a new website for that along with a major revamp of the Plus website
Both are due to go live before christmas. And I wonder what I am doing here on a Sunday again!

I was scanning through a few blogs last night and came across something that I had a chuckle about. Hostelworld is taking on Google!!!
If I had a Euro for everytime that I heard that Hostelworld was being bought,out taken over or getting out of hostel reservations I think that I may be rather rich! Me thinks that there may be quite a few people in the Irish IT indusry that have spent to much time kissing the Blarney stone. Mind you you never know- Ray needs a new Porsche soon.

For those in Florence over the next couple of weeks check out the Christmas Market- The Heidleberg markets in Piazza Santa Croce. The Hotdogs with Saurkraut are amazing!! Apparently there is also a Scottish market as well, so i will check those out next week.