Wombats Hostels is a prominent hostel group that has been running for 17 years. The group boasts a total of 600+ rooms housed inside six properties in Berlin, Budapest, Munich, London and Vienna.
While Wombats Hostels welcomes guests from around the world every day, it had outgrown the previous way it was distributing rooms online.
A battle against the time-crunch
Managing online availability can be very complex and time-consuming in properties with up to 600+ beds. Posting a high number of reservations by hand means tonnes of hours of work for the team – which could be better used elsewhere around the properties.
“Manual entry of availability online and manual logging of reservations is inefficient and time-consuming,” explains Chris Maitz, Innovations & Project Manager for Wombats Hostels.
“We publish less availability in order to prevent overbookings. Guests thus have lower chances to find an available bed or room on the various OTAs,”
A solution found in the industry’s leading software
This is when Mr. Maitz contacted SiteMinder in search of a solution.
“The ease of use and seamless integration into our PMS of MEWS Systems, and of course the price and available support played a very important role in the decision-making process,” adds Chris.
After implementing SiteMinder’s channel manager at their first hostel the processes became much faster and smoother for each further property that was set live.
“We highly appreciate the efforts and help of the implementation team.”
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Undeniable results
“SiteMinder’s channel manager makes it very easy for us to always have our latest availability online in all the OTAs that we connect to. Furthermore, the automatic forwarding of incoming reservations directly to the PMS works well, and we are sent information updates via email, if necessary so that no reservation gets lost.”
Thanks to the channel manager’s automatic transfer of reservations, the Wombats Hostel Group was able to increase its average rate, since demand had risen significantly due to the optimised availability on all platforms.
Additionally, staff members are now able to spend more of their time servicing guests or focusing on other revenue-generating activities.
Chris adds: “We are absolutely satisfied with the support and the professional and very open cooperation with SiteMinder. For us, it is very important to work with partners who understand our business, particularly when it comes to the distinction between beds and rooms for hostels, as in our case. Additionally, an efficient and personal contact must be maintained in order to achieve the best results for both sides and to secure the satisfaction of employees.”