Hostel managers' FAQ

How can I get my hostel listed on BUG?

Email us with your hostel's details, including the hostel's name, address, telephone and fax numbers and details of prices and reception hours. We will then post these details on the hostel review section of the BUG website and we will conduct a more indepth review when we are next in your area.

Can you list my hotel, motel, hostal or resort on BUG?

BUG only lists and reviews hostels - no hotels, B&Bs, hostals, pensiones, apartments or resorts - just hostels!

To qualify as a hostel you must offer accommodation for independent travellers in shared dormitory-style rooms. We do not list places that cater only to groups or places where you have to book the entire room.

BUG has details about every hostel in each destination covered by our guide and will never lose our focus on backpackers by reviewing other types of accommodation.

Does it cost me anything to have my hostel reviewed?

No, this is a free service.

Can I advertise on BUG?

The integrity of our hostel reviews is extremely important to us. In order to retain the honesty and integrity of our hostel reviews we prohibit hostels from advertising on BUG's websites.

How often do you update your reviews?

All hostel reviews, written by a representative from BUG, on the BUG Australia, BUG Europe and BUG Pacific websites are revisited and updated around every two years. In years when we don't visit a hostel we will still contact you to make sure the prices and contact information is correct.

We will shortly begin reviewing and rating hostels in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Hostels that appear in the Destinations section of the website will be included in our hostel review programme, however hostels that only appear in the Hostels section of the website may not be reviewed by a reviewer from BUG.

What can I do if my information is incorrect?

If opening hours, prices or phone numbers are incorrect or have changed you may email us and we will update the information on your review. However we cannot make changes to the body of the review until we next vist your hostel.

Can I link to you from my website?

You may link to any page on any website on the BUG network of websites including your hostel review page. If you like we can supply graphics and code for you to put on your website. Email us for more details.

How can I offer online booking for my hostel?

Many hostels which we review offer online bookings through Hostelbookers. We will link to the booking page of your hostel if you offer this service. Online booking is a low cost way to boost your occupancy level and is well worth considering, particularly if you have empty beds. Check the following link for more information: www.hostelbookers.com/join/

Some travellers have written bad things about my hostel. Can you remove this from the website?

We publish independent travel advice and are not a free advertising service for hostels. So in most cases we will not remove any bad reviews although there are several cases noted below when we may do this. Running a good hostel is the best way to ensure to ensure that travellers using the BUG websites post good reviews.

Just as a hostel provides a common room where backpackers can talk among themselves about other hostels, we also provide a forum for travellers to air their views about hostels. It would be unreasonable for a hostel owner to step in and disrupt this free speech, it would be equally unreasonable for us to remove anything that is not complimentary to a hostel. We exist to help backpackers make an informed opinion about a place, to do this we need to provide all possible opinions about a place. We publish independent information about backpackers accommodation - we are not a tourist brochure that exists to promote tourism or an advertising supported publication that only writes nice things.

The reviews posted by other travellers can be brutally honest and many hostel owners sometimes get upset about this and demand the reviews to be removed.

Some hostel owners have an opinion that they have the best hostel in town and are shocked to find that not everyone shares this opinion. If this is the case perhaps you should take advice from the reviews and make improvements to your hostel. You'll find that more positive reviews are added that reflect these changes.

Many hostel owners are concerned that someone from another hostel may add an uncomplimentary review about a competing hostel. This happens less often than most hostel managers would expect and we are vigilent about reducing the instances that this occurs. We normally cross-check the hostel reviewers' email address against the email addresses of other hostels in the area and reject any review submitted by an email address that we have on our files as belonging to another hostel. We will, however, allow a hostel owner to add a reply to a review about their own hostel as long as they email the reply to us to add under the relevant review.

If you think someone from another hostel has written a review about your hostel, let us know the email address of the person from another hostel that you suspect to have posted the review. We will check this against the email address that we have on record and if there is a match we will delete the offending review. In the majority of cases when a hostel manager suspects another hostel owner to have posted the review, it turns out to have been posted by a genuine backpacker.

There are several other cases when we may edit or delete a review. These are:

If the review contains exceptionally foul language (it has to be really bad to be edited).
If the review is a personal attack on hostel staff rather than the hostel itself AND the review is not relevant to travellers.
If the review makes accusations about criminal activity that has not yet been proved by the courts.
If the review reveals personal information that violates the right to privacy of hostel management, staff or other guests.
If the review is mistakenly posted about a different hostel.
If the person writing the review asks us to remove it.
If the review incites violence or racial hatred.
If the review is in no way related to the hostel (ie. if someone posts random characters, political propaganda or something else such as an ad for viagra or some sort of 'get rich quick' scheme).
We may also edit or delete a review if we have legal advice to do so.

If you believe that a review of your hostel matches one of the above criteria feel free to email us and we will consider editing or removing it.

It is important that travellers have the opportunity to inform other travellers about their experience staying in hostels. Rather than delete a review, we will usually edit it to comply with our guidelines, as long as editing the review does not alter the substance of the original review.

In most other cases there are better ways to ensure a good review. These include:

Cleaning daily.
Continually keeping everything well maintained.
Being polite and courteous to all guests.
Having a toilet/shower to guest ratio of 1:10 or better.
Taking steps to keep pests (spiders, cockroaches, bed bugs) out of the hostel.
If you have carpet, have it steam cleaned every year and replaced every five years.
Replace mattresses every five years, replace every two years if they are foam mattresses, replace pillows annually.
Buy new linen and duvets and replace them regularly.
Few things look worse than old ratty furnishings. Buy new furniture unless you're trying to create an old world charm in which case you should keep everything well maintained and re-upholster anything before it has a chance to fall apart.
Have reasonable reception hours and don't have a curfew or lockout.
It is good to encourage social interaction and a party atmosphere but don't force it on your guests. If you have a noisy bar or common room try to keep the sound away from the dorms.
Don't pipe music through the whole building, not everyone has your taste in music.
Don't force people to buy tours from you. Remember that backpackers are independent travellers not tourists.
Make sure that your place is secure. A locker for each bed is a great idea. All guests should have a key to their room.
Never charge more than your advertised price. Hostels that advertise prices "from $XX" (without quoting the maximum price), who advertise a price exclusive of tax (without mentioning how much the tax is) or who advertise a members-only price (without also quoting the non-member's price) are deceiving their customers and are just plain dishonest. Taxes should be included in the total price just like any other business expense. If you swindle and rip off your customers with deceptive advertising you deserve all the bad reviews you get!
Respect your guests. Don't treat them like children.

It isn't possible to please everyone and you may still get the odd bad review but you will also get lots of good reviews if you follow the above suggestions. Backpackers are smart enough to read between the lines and dismiss the odd bad review, particularly if there are also plenty of good reviews about a hostel. Also every backpacker has their own priorities and what one traveller loves about your hostel may not be a positive aspect for another. By reading different opinions about a place, travellers can make an informed decision and choose a place that appeals to them. In this case your hostel will attract the type of person that likes your style of place and who subsequently writes more good reviews.

There are some reviews about my hostel that were written years ago. Can you remove them?

No. We used to have a policy of removing reviews that were several years old. At the time we believed that this kept everything more up-to-date, however we now keep all reviews as many travellers like to see how a hostel has changed over time.

Removing old reviews made sense when we were the only review website, however now there are a lot of copycat sites and several of them now claim to have many more reviews than BUG, even though they are much newer sites. In this competitive environment, deleting any reviews puts us at a disadvantage.

However we understand that you may be concerned that old reviews may influence your hostel's rating on BUG even though your services may have improved since the reviews were originally written. We have asked our programmer to modify our software to give greater weight to newer reviews (and less weight to old reviews) when calculating your hostel's overall rating.

Is is okay to write reviews of my own hostel

Absolutely not! Hostel owners, managers and staff and friends of hostel staff are not permitted to write hostel reviews. This is to ensure that the reviews on BUG are independent and unbiased. The integrity of BUG's reviews is very important and we will not tolerate hostel managers who abuse the system.

The software that drives the hostel review system is very good at checking for fraud and this is backed up by staff that manually check the authenticity of every review. We will not allow any fradulent review to be posted on our system.

When a fradulent review is detected we will contact the hostel and tell them that these fradulent practices are not tolerated. If this sort of fraudulent activity occurs again. We will post the following message in a prominent position on your hostel's review page: "This hostel has been found trying to post fraudent reviews. Fortunately our review system is very good at detecting fradulent reviews and these reviews were not allowed on our website. However in some cases this sort of deceptive activity may indicate other not so honest business practices and all travellers are urged to take this into account when choosing their accommodation." This message will stay on the website for up to one month each time a bogus review is detected for that hostel.

BUG is a forum for genuine reviews from real travellers and it is no place for fights between rival hostels. Other review websites may be less picky, however we value the integrity of our reviews and will seriously act on any fradulent reviews. Our goal is to have 100% of the reviews on BUG submitted by genuine travellers.

I have just bought a hostel, closed it for renovation and reopened it under a new name; can you remove the old reviews?

No. In the past there have been hostel owners that have abused the review system by emailing us with notice of new management and a change of name with the sole intent of having their old reviews removed. If you have bought a business you are also buying its reputation and it is up to you to run the place properly to achieve positive reviews. We are fair about this and will allow you to submit a reply for each review stating that the hostel is under new management and that the review refers to the old management.

There is one instance when we will remove the old reviews. This is when the old hostel has been completely demolished and replaced with a brand new building. This will have to be witnessed by a representative from BUG or you can provide proof in the form of photographs, council planning documentation and newspaper reports.

Can I add a reply to a review about my hostel?

Certainly. Travellers value your opinion and will take your comments on a bad review into consideration when choosing a place to stay. Rather than posting your own review you should mail us at stating which review you would like the response added to along with the text of the reply. We will make sure that your reply is added under the relevant review.

I keep getting bad reviews, can you remove my hostel from your website?

No. We are a consumer advice website that needs to show the bad along with the good and our aim is to list every hostel in each destination. The only way to have your hostel removed is to close down or stop offering hostel accommodation.

In response to hostels abusing our review system and falsely claiming to have closed down in order to have their property removed from BUG, a representative from BUG will verify any hostel claiming to have closed down.

BUG Travel Publishing Ltd
2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY, United Kingdom
Tel (020) 3286 2828, international +44 20 3286 2828
Fax (020) 3292 9370, international +44 20 3292 9370

Email

bug.co.uk

Hostel reviews > Hostel managers' FAQ