behind the counter x Jason Noronha
Having set up the first Hostel in India, and successfully growing that into a chain of backpacker hostels, Jason Noronha was the perfect candidate for our series ‘behind the counter’. We captured Jason’s journey, from a financial consultant to a successful hostel owner and now as a co-founder at counter.
Tell us about a bit more about your transition from your previous life to your current life?
It seems like a decade ago when I worked as a Financial Consultant in Singapore. My job involved working with large banks in Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Over time, I felt like I couldn’t see any tangible impact from my work and I grew disillusioned by the thought of being another office worker climbing the never-ending ladder of middle management.
I decided to volunteer on a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, advising the Kenyan Government on their technology strategy. I then volunteered with a small NGO in Guyana, to help improve financial transparency and make this NGO eligible for UN and EU funding. After spending a year cumulatively in Kenya and Guyana, I realized that I wanted to work on real problems where the impact of my work was obvious (to me).
Entrepreneurship seemed to offer this possibility and with this in mind, I turned down an offer to continue as a management consultant in London and set off to backpack through South America.
I eventually made my way back to my hometown of Goa — a small beach destination in India, popular in the backpacker circuits for the warm sun, its laid back culture and cheap beer. I was staying at a $10 per night guest house with no wifi when I was attacked by a frog in the cold shower. That was my epiphany! Travel didn’t have to be this miserable. I scootered down the road, rented a building and together with my business partner, started India’s first backpacker hostel.
I remember when we opened our doors, our kitchen wasn’t fully set up. One of our first guests, Laura, happily volunteered to help out. The biggest reward from the hostel business was that Laura and I have been life partners and business partners ever since. Laura brought a fresh perspective to the business from her wide array of experiences of growing up in Germany, working in real estate in the US, fashion in Milan and Vienna and volunteering in India. Together, we were able to grow our hostel business into one of the largest in India delivering unique experiences and serving hundreds of thousands of guests.
What were the challenges in setting up a Hostel?
We faced many challenges from the scarcity of information relating to hostel operations to more serious financing decisions. One of the trickier problems was understanding license requirements and getting approvals from a corrupt government while being opposed to bribery as a principle. In addition, negotiations with irrational property owners was also complex.
What inspired the transition from running hostels to helping hostel owners worldwide to run theirs better?
Despite successfully running the hostels, we realized that we were still not equipped with effective tools and software to operate our business. Existing technology solutions were complicated and primarily designed for hotels (features and pricing). We had to repeatedly train staff whenever there was a new hire and this was quite frustrating because we were hiring for charisma and not for tech skills.
This pain point of complex, expensive software got us asking “what should running a hostel in 2024 feel like?”. This process inspired us to specialize and build our own tool — a property management system that would simplify hostel operations and allow staff to focus on creating unforgettable experiences with zero software training. We used our experience as hostel owners to design features that would automate hostel operations.
We launched counter at the Hostelworld conference in Dublin in Jan 2020 and have had a flood of hostels from around the world signing up to be our Beta testers.
What kind of positive impact would counter like to create for Hostel owners?
Most hostel owners focus on guest experiences and are continually trying to explore new ways to improve these experiences. What counter aims to do is provide the information, technology and the right tools, so that hostel owners and operators can focus on enhancing guest experiences without worrying about mundane repetitive tasks.
After successfully running hostels for eight years, our goal is to help grow the hostel industry as a whole. We intend to do so by democratizing the availability of information and technology. The COVID situation has affected the entire industry and forced us into a corner. At counter, we’re building a community of hostel owners so that we can share information, advice and help each other as we adapt our businesses to thrive in the future.
