What makes travel less exhausting?
On average, 60% of Americans travel domestically one to two times a year; and 1 out of 3 Americans travel internationally 1–2 every year. This number was decreased dramatically in the last two years with the presence of the coronavirus. As we are very close to the end of the pandemic, the demand and need for traveling tremendously increase. According to Google, search demand for travel is up 270% compared to May 2020 at the peak of the coronavirus crisis. Moreover, Google also identified keywords that are popular within Gen-Z, the next generation travelers, which are: “escape and relax” (52%), “budget-friendly” (38%), and “adventurous” (38%).
As I identified myself as a heavy traveler, the end of the pandemic is something very excited for me, especially when I can leave my house and go on a new cultural journey and meet new people. Traveling is always fun, but do you know what is exhausting? Spending hours and hours doing research, finding accommodations and activities for your trips. Savvy shoppers spend about 12–15 hours researching products before they make a purchase; and with my past experience with booking, organizing trips, oh man, don’t get me started on how tiring and draining the whole process is. With the advance of technology nowadays, all consumers just wanted to find a place where they can easily research and book their trips with useful, valuable, and simple tools.
Summer vacation is always a good way to end the school year and celebrate my birthday. I am familiar with all booking sites such as Expedia, TripAdvisor, or Booking.com; but this time, I wanted to try something new to plan my trip.
How does hostel travel sound?
What is hostel travel?
A Hostel is a low-budget accommodation that is shared among travelers. Unlike hotels where you book the entire room for yourself, booking at hostels usually means booking a bed, and you will share the room with other travelers. The hostel can have from two beds, four beds, or twenty beds in one room. Most of the time, you might not know who is your roommates; and with shared bathrooms across the floor, it sure does sound like a dorm.
You might be wondering: With no privacy or personal services like in a hotel, why would anyone want to stay at a hostel?
The reason is simple. Hostel traveling focuses on embracing the experience for the traveler with an inexpensive price point, opportunities to meet new people across the world and explore the local places. For me, hostels are adventurous and simply fun. From all the group activities hostels offer, to conversations of like-minded travelers, it will all leverage the traveling experience.
That’s why this time, to plan my summer traveling trip, I decided to go on HostelWorld.com to explore my options, and hope that the whole process is not exhausting.
The Inspiration
Login from my laptop, the very first appearance of HostelWorld on the website is very exciting and inspiring for me, with images of people gathering together, the tagline “Meet the World,” and the question “Where do you want to go?” As I was scrolling down, in the first 10 seconds, I can easily identify the main purpose of the site, which is not only restricted to helping people find accommodations, but provide insights and inspiration to help create a memorable traveling experience to viewers, as reflected in the content of their home page. The flow and structure of the home page are also very organized and I personally enjoy it a lot. From the search bar, on-going deals, to blogs for tips/advice, options to explore worldwide hostels, the company’s features, along with a couple of quick links, I think HostelWorld has done a great job in keeping the site simple, easy to understand, and easy to navigate, which are everything I needed to make the planning process not exhausting.
The Story
The choice of colors (which is orange and white), along with activities/people images throughout the website brought to me an energetic feel, which really excited and inspired me to go on more journeys to experience new cultures. These two factors play a very important role in telling HostelWorld’s story, which is reflected even deeper in their blog section.
Browsing around their blogs, I found quality content for advice, tips, and inspiration for travel. From blogs about how to avoid over-tourism, how to become a responsible traveler, to trending destinations to visit, or some best bars in Berlin, they all tell HostelWorld stories on how to embrace the traveling experience in the best way. I was hooked on all of their advice and stories. Thus, all the blogs are written with authors with their background, which create credibility for the site for me. Although the blogs are great resources with accessible features like filtering by tags, there is one thing about the blog that still bugging me. The blog section doesn’t get personalized, or generate new suggestion based on what I read before; also, new content doesn’t get updated on the main home page, which make it harder for me or any readers who want to read fresh content.
The experience
After getting used to the site and gathering some insights, I began my accommodation research journey. Typing in Los Angeles -where I wanted to spend my summer this year- in the search box, entering the date, adjusting the guest number, hitting enter, and voila! Within 2 seconds, HostelWorld gives me their full list of accommodation in LA that I can further filter down and sort. What I also enjoy on their site is the transparency. If the list is “sorted by organic, commission-free algorithm” or if the sort order “reflects your search criteria, property ratings/rates/availability and commission paid,” it will tell me right away. Another thing I enjoy from this search page is the fact that I can quickly browse images of each hostel without leaving the search page. How convenient is that!
Picking Samesun Venice Beach hostel and its aesthetics vibe, going into the page to get detailed information, I appreciate the simplicity and quality information the page has:
- Flexibility in adjusting dates and number of guests inside the page
- Best prices and Cancellation policy clearly stated
- Hostel score by reviews
- Reviews with reviewers demographics
- Features with icons to make it easier to understand
- Awards received due to its extraordinary work
- Real-time booking announced
- Clearly stated price for each room type
- Booking options with non-flexible versus flexible with fees
- Term and condition and Data protection notice are delivered transparency in an easy to read way
With useful, valuable, and credible information I found on the web, I was almost ready to complete my booking process. One thing I was missing, is to confirm everything with my travel buddy.
The Booking
The next morning, after talking to my friend and explaining all the features, experiences I found with HostelWorld, we are ready to complete our booking. I went to HostelWorld.com on my phone and quickly went through the booking process. The first thing I noticed was that they have a pop-up asking to download the app with exclusive deals; that’s a little frustrated since my phone’s screen is cracked and will be hard for me to close any pop-up. I also notice they have a shorter main page with only a search bar, deals, and Covi-19 information, which is very good for scanning on mobile devices and not overloading readers with too much information. But besides that, every other features and path on the web remain the same and consistent with my laptop browser, which makes it much easier to complete my booking. Filling in all the personal information, credit card number, and confirming my booking, all of that was done within three minutes. And I don’t even have to sign up for an account or sign in one!
For me, traveling is exhausting from the initial stage of planning and research from the website. However, HostelWorld and its website design have reduced my stress when it comes to travel planning this time. With a fascinating message about its Passion and Innovative way of traveling, HostelWorld has done a great job in capturing my attention and starting my travel planning process. Moreover, the ease, convenience, and quality information are all what I really appreciate from a website, and that would definitely make my travel less exhausting!
How about you? Is it time for you to plan your trip yet?
What would make your travel plan less exhausting?
