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.

quote:

Originally posted by Eppyboy:
I must have confused the two, I apologize for that inference made in my post to your post.

No worries, good sir. No harm no foul. Just wanted to make sure my love for BnA came through clearly.

This sucks.

This is excellent. Very, very excellent, in fact.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww
You actually really just made my day. After a hard day too. Totally made it.

---see now that's what's good about BnA.

quote:

Originally posted by Prisa:

You actually really just made my day.

Just wait until Prisa figures out that the link posts to the public profile of whoever clicks it. Then you're totally screwed, Travis.

quote:

Originally posted by Continental Op:

quote:

Originally posted by Prisa:

You actually really just made my day.

Just wait until Prisa figures out that the link posts to the public profile of whoever clicks it. Then you're totally screwed, Travis.

I knew he was a whore...but I choose to love him anyway. Shame on me for that.
Shame on me indeed.

quote:

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

You guys rock, by the way. If it works out, I'm quite sure I'll have CoOp and Llalewyn's lobbying efforts to thank, so I'll owe you something... Drinks in Italy? My treat?

I'd like to put my 2c in as someone that doesn't consider herself a regular (but might be becoming one). I work at a .com when I can't be traveling. I'm pretty web savvy and when trying to plan a long trip I would skip all around the net to find out the answers I needed. I found the forums here to have info I found nowhere else, and I now type in this url first and search the community before going anywhere else.

I hardly ever hang out in forums, and never was a poster until I finally signed up here a couple months ago. This forum is definitely unique and has a good thing going.

Everything outside the forum is sort of just okay. I think the rest of boots can be improved if you open it up to the community. Make it the wiki of travel.

One recommendation I have is taking a destination every month and getting a wealth of info from everyone on boots. Especially places that are big destinations for "the independent traveler" but less so for the regular traveler.

For insiders, I think if people simply list places they've been in the last 12 months, you could come up with a database where there names would show up and you could ask them for help.

2wanderers: here I am posting in the afternoon, to help with your complaint.