BootsnAll Travel Community

Previously, I restricted my remarks to comments regarding the EVE community board that is the heart of this site. But what the hell. You asked for honesty, and I'm taking a break soon anyway...

quote:

Originally posted by Sean:
I want to be a part of, and help build a community that is "the best" English Language independent travel resource and community on the web.

I believe you. And, as a fella who's first business was a dot com, I appreciate how long you guys have been at it and the culture of net friendliness and accessibility you've adhered to. But...

In order to accomplish the above goal, you're going to have to completely re-haul your approach, reshaping this site around the community and trimming the unused excess that litters the navigation at the top of the page. Honestly, I never leave BnA's EVE forums, as the rest of the site looks more like a hodgepodge of adverts rather than a community-driven portal. Perhaps your page hits data shows otherwise, but I imagine others feel the same.

Travel insurance? Hostel/hotel booking? Come on. Drop that nonsense. Hostel, hotel, insurance guides and reviews are one thing, booking is another. There are a dozen more entertaining databases that BnA could host that would 1.) naturally precede from the community and 2.) bring in a larger share of ad revenue.

The site needs to be simplified. And I'm not talking about the forum structure. There is a saturation point for side bar navigation, and there is such a thing as overkill when it comes to multi-column navigation. It lacks unity of design (a design that should, again, precede from the forum design.) Click on the "Hostels" tab. Now click on the "International Airfare" tab. See what I mean? The current structure is, I'm afraid, reflective of the site's somewhat schizophrenic atmosphere.

Are you building a community portal centering around the free exchange of travel information (which counts on ad revenue and the occasional promotion for income) or are you building a hub for travel-related goods and services? It looks like you're trying to do both, but I'd submit that you have to choose between the two.

If a brand stands for everything then it stands for nothing. You need to limit what goes beneath the "BootsnAll" branding, and, in my opinion, drop the goods & services angle or continue such offerings under a different brand.


/End screed.


Oh, and while you're at it, find a Czech wife (or nanny) for Static. Someone who would really rule it over him. This would do nothing for BnA, but it would please me immensely.

I've been using bna for what seems like forever (ok, almost 4 years) and I have to say my MOST favorite feature is: if you post a travel question on the boards, you WILL get a response. Period.

Best members: Not condescending/judgemental to other posters.

Keep up the great work.

I agree with several other posters - there are too many individual forums, they need to be combined a little...

I do however disagree that the Hostel Booking side of things needs to be scrapped - I use that all the time and find it much easier to use than other Sites that I've tried...so please don't get rid of that!!

I find this place one of the friendliest forums around...and I know if I post a question or a comment I'll get a reply, and that's nice to know!!

My only gripe is that I haven't managed to get over to the BnA Office for a coffee with all you guys!!

quote:

Originally posted by DreamerHelen:
I do however disagree that the Hostel Booking side of things needs to be scrapped - I use that all the time and find it much easier to use than other Sites that I've tried...so please don't get rid of that!!

It's a third party service, which is one of the reasons I don't care for it. Incidentally, it's the same system used by Hostels.com and a hundred and one others. So if BnA ceased using it, you'd be able to find it elsewhere.

Here's the system unfettered by third party logos.

I'm all for grabbing revenue from wherever one can, but in this case I think such services detract from BnA's branding as a community-driven portal. The reviews and search results are not informed by or the result of this community's collective recommendations. If they were, and booking was offered as a supplemental option, that would be a different story. As it is now, however, the system is wholly unrelated to BnA's community.

Tickles and Helen - Glad you like what we are up to and appreciate our booking services. Please do come by for a coffee sometime.

Continental Ops - thanks for your comments.

- Navigation - yes - we can use way better UI and integrate the community components of BootsnAll. Lots of improvements to be had.

- Booking services - Well - you are right and you are wrong on that one. It is a significant revenue source for us and if we shut that down, we'd have to shut down BootsnAll most likely or not have any employees cuz we'd be able to pay no one.

As for it being the same as Hostels.com - that is not true either. Yes - we are a partner with them, but we are also a partner with other booking engines and list more than just the inventory on the site you mentioned.

As for not providing any extra value, I disagree with that as well. We have unique parts of our hostel section that don't exist on partner sites, plus the booking section is right here on BootsnAll so lotsa travellers use it - so folks that are familiar with BootsnAll - and want to support this community - we appreciate you using our hostel booking system.

COps - If you are really in Prisa's basement (Is that still Seattle - not sure where she)), why don't you come down to our Holiday Party on December 1st? I'd love to buy you a beer or 2 and talk more about this and other things. Your thoughts and opinions are interesting.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. It is awesome to learn from you, as well as talk about an action plane to evole. If you are still lurking and want to drop a compliment or a bomb....go for it!

quote:

Originally posted by Sean:
COps - If you are really in Prisa's basement (Is that still Seattle - not sure where she)), why don't you come down to our Holiday Party on December 1st? I'd love to buy you a beer or 2 and talk more about this and other things. Your thoughts and opinions are interesting.

I appreciate the offer, but she rarely lets me out for the evenings. I have to yell until my throat goes horse just to get a pail of water lowered down to me.

So Piecar and I aren't invited for coffee? Guess we're supposed to stick to the excellent stuff rather than the not as excellent, eh?

Julie,

Not at all - you of course are invited as well. Didn't mean to exclude anyone - she just mentioned it.

Aww, thanks Sean. I'll definitely see you at the party.

Well, figured i'd throw my 2 Cents worth in....

The good:

The forum users. There is very mucha community atmosphere, a friendly, tolerant nature among those that post here. People help when they can and 99% of the time teh advice is sound. I've had the pleasure of meeting fellow Booties over here in the UK, The US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia and I'm always in awe of how wonderful these folk are.

I feel like I can have a go at answering questions without being shot down if others dont agree with what I say. I like that I have time to think of a decent answer and it not be lost under a pile of one line meanngless crap (Yes, TT I'm talking about you).

I like the fact there is a strong sense of community here and maybe that should be played up more. People WILL go out of their way to meet you, do want to get together for a drink and most of all LOVE to talk travel with people who are actually interested!

The Bad:

I agree with others about increasing the number of members here. Sometiems I'm lloking for a good discussion on a topic here and the thread may only have 3 posts in 3 days and quickly dies a death.

There's certainly a good deal of knowledge here but its quite confined. As you point out, RTW travel seems to be the hot topic. An area where there is experience among the members and would be rtwers come searching for advice. Maybe its an area that could be highlighted or exanded?

Way too many forums onteh discussion boards. I feel like I get lost sometimes wading through and forget the some of them even exist. Personally I think that having just a few strong,w ell frequented forums works best for ewveryone. Heck, I hardly even check half teh forums and I might be able to answer the odd question in them - It must be frustrating to ask questions and have so few people even look at them let alone answer!

I certainly tried to spread the word about Boots where I could whilst on my travels. You guys gave me a load of business styled cards where I could just write down my details to give to otehrs I met while travelling - I must have given out a tonne of those cards, I'm not sure anyone would have looked up the sight from them but it certainly seemed like a great way to promote the sight and community while I was away - I'm sure others wouldnt mind having a few of these to hand out while on a rtw and its a great way to spread the word about the site.


Hostel Booking

My biggest concern about teh hoste booking part of teh site is taht there's so few reviews of the hostels that I find myself going elsewehere for the info. The result of that is when I want to post a link to a hostel, I tend to use other sites where those looking can geta feel for teh place and how others felt about it quickly and easily.

BnA outside BnA

Maybe you guys could do more with the resources available outside of the site itself. How many people are aware there is a BnA Flickr group out there? There's a Facebook group that if someone from the company wante dto get involved with I'm sure coud do something constructive with it. Maybe there could be some more integration with Flickr and Whygo? There seems to be a tool there that isnt being used to its ful effect. Maybe even the BnA parties could be utilised more especially in attracting newish members to stick around more, afterall, its the community aspect that Boots prides itself on - Sell it!

I think you guys are doing a great job. Here are some of my thoughts.

1) I don't think there are enough hostel reviews in the hostel booking portion that is linked with the booking site. There is plenty of info and reviews on various hostels in the boards but not in the actual hostel review page. It might be helpful to find a way to get more people to add reviews on the hostel site. (I know, I know, not as easy as it sounds)

2) I think the opening page is a little busy. You have alot of links and options on the front page. I think maybe reducing the amount of internal links might make the opening page a little less intimidating for prospective new members.

3) I also think the insider items are a little weak. Try to get more insiders or get more active people. There is alot of knowledge on the boards so I am sure there are people out there that would make excellent insiders.

4) I think the forum manager should be more active in the boards. She might be better at that if she were based, maybe, in Italy. (Ok, had to try)

All in all I think y'all are doing a tremendous job and have built a really good community. Those are just my thoughts. Of course, being an accountant I don't know much about this website thingie.

quote:

Originally posted by Llalewyn:
4) I think the forum manager should be more active in the boards. She might be better at that if she were based, maybe, in Italy. (Ok, had to try)

That's two votes for moving Jessie to Italy. Motion carried?

Re: Hostel booking

I'm all for keeping the hostel booking simply for its revenue generation (and it is probably the only way I directly contribute to your bottom line), but I think CoOp's right about better community tie-in. A few years back, you put reviews on, but it's never been well promoted, nor very well integrated with the interface (as in...if I search for hotels on certain dates, I can't see or contribute to the reviews). As a result, although I usually come back here to book - since I use a lot of your bandwidth - I always do my searching using hostelworld. I have a suspicion that people less involved in the community would not bother.

I think you're trying to do this with your "world's best hostels" thing, but I'm not sure what happened with that, and the duplication is going to add more confusion. Integrate the ratings, and then get more of them; every time someone books with you, send them an email asking for a review.

Thanks for the offer Sean....but it's an awful long way from London to Portland...

But next time I'm in the USA I'll certainly try to make it over for a Coffee and natter...

I am going to try and keep my comments independant from other posts, but it is hard because everyone has two cents about everything:

Good: I love this site...I spend hours and hours a week on it...posting, reading, laughing, killing time etc...it is my home away from home, my break from reality to drift in to a world far away from here. I enjoy reading about other people's stories (travel writing), and I love to help people whenever I can. Sure the questions are redundant, but what can you do.

I happen to strongly disagree with comments that question the motives of boots in terms of bookings. I mean come on. Sure this is supposed to be a community environment and access to free travel information from all over the world, but you gotta make a few bucks along the way. I happen to think that the booking parts of Boots are their best sections of the website second to the forums of course. And I feel that the only way boots will become a major site is to dramatically increase traffic through these booking sites. Get people on the site to book and have them peruse the forum's. It seems like reverse logic since the website seemed to be created for people to exchange travel information, but all companies and businesses go through transitions.

I have personally used the booking sections to book travel insurance and hostels. Part of me did it to contribute to boots in anyway I could, and figured this would an easy way. Dave was extremely helpful with my travel insurance and in terms of hostel booking, I did have a few issues with the hostel itself receiving my booking from the website(sean I almost got seriously stranded I hope this isn't a common theme), but I spend hours calculating possibly tickets on the RTW airtrek's planner, its fun.


Overall the site has room for improvement and will improve ever year. I would say that this is the best site people have never heard of. We have many members, but should have many, many more. And I read that you have business cards to hand out to people, send some my way. I study at barnes and noble 4-6 days a week for school and am always looking through the travel section, I could hand them out daily to a few people, and it would add up.

Bad:

For the record I'm an Australian Insider, I spent 7 months there in 2004, I lived there like a regular Joe for several months and I got a few emails in 2005 and it stopped after that. I would love to get more involved with being an insider I just don't get any traffic my way. I am not sure if this is a common theme among other insiders, but our knowledge and willingness should be utilized and I think Boots needs to go out of their way more to use the insiders and direct more traffic to us which would direct more to the site.

Searh function: I rarely use this, and personally find this useless. It is a harsh criticism but to me a harsh reality. I can't find anything using the search function, and when I do search for a city or a phrase, I get 25 threads, most of them containing just the city or phrase, but in terms of a game, or a list and not substantive information that I really need.

Hostel booking: I think the list of hostels is great, it is not the end all be all by any means and I feel that because of the lack of reviews and comments, that through whatever third party site is used, they put the worst hostel on top. They are usually the cheapest, but definitely not the best. I often, almost always find the hostel on boots and go to another site to check reviews (this is not really a complete knock because I do several sites to try and find multiple opinions on one hostel, unless I have received a high recommendation). I would at least a few for some of the hostels and most seem to have zero.

Airplane booking: Your "deals section" is misleading. I have called numerous times, filled out the inquiry form and have not been pleased. Inquiry form - I'm sure you get plenty but if you aren't going to respond don't bother having this as an option (no one has ever gotten back to me after I have filled one of these out).

Calling - sure the deal might have been alright, but I didn't appreciate the service much and it was hard to understand the dude I was talking too (was this outsourced to another country?) Also the deal included many stops, I guess just wasn't to my liking.

ADVERTISE - get your name out there please!!!!!! I am telling you if you build it they will come!!!! you are all the makings of a great revenue producing site...There is no reason people can't come here to book tickets and trips like expedia, travelocity, kayak etc...You recently upgraded to include numerous search engines with varying prices and flights which is great, but how many people really know about it!

Take some cash and advertise at local colleges in Portland and in Oregon and the surrounding area. Sponsor local events dealing with travel...Give away a free ticket at a Trailblazers or local college basketball game. Call up portland state, ask them to do a half time shot for a free ticket (you can get insurance on this based on the possibility of someone making a shot, and from what I studied in college (sport management degree) it is not that much money. How do you think these companies sponsor giving away a car? They might pay 2,000 or whatever to give away a 25,000 car caused its all based on probability.

I think advertising is your best chance, both in live communities and online.

I think that is all I got for my rant...I love the site, give me business cards when I come to the party, and anything else to help advertise and get the word out...heck the other day, I even took a piece of paper wrote down your website and randomly handed to a couple in Barnes and Noble, I don't care, people appreciate the help...

See you all at the party in a few weeks, first beer is on me!

Thanks for all this Josh. I agree with your thoughts. Lotsa good things and lotsa room for improvement.

If anyone wants 50 business cards, please email dave (at) bootsnall dot com with your ScreenName, and mailing address and we'll mail them out to you.

2nd beer is on me Mr. Eppyboy.

quote:

Originally posted by Eppyboy:
I happen to strongly disagree with comments that question the motives of boots in terms of bookings.

Uhm...no. Don't want to monopolize this thread (which I initially planned to stay out of altogether), but...

For the record, no one questioned the BnA crew's motives.

I take it for granted that Sean and the gang are simply looking for perfectly honest ways to generate revenue in order to keep the community going. I assume that everyone here has the best intentions, except Jester, and never implied otherwise.

What I questioned was the focus on services-generated revenue vs. ad-generated revenue, and the effect the former might have on BnA's branding. Which is a debate that comes up frequently when structuring any for-profit website.

Don't confuse the two.

I must have confused the two, I apologize for that inference made in my post to your post.