Not sure how many of you are going traveling, but hostelworld is giving you a month of booking fee free travel. It always annoyed me how they slugged you $2 on a $10-$20 dorm room booking, so I'm happy to see it gone.
Sure its only $2, but if you book two rooms, that's a saving of $4. Enough for a bottle of coke or an ice cream.
I know you can book via hostelbookers.com for free, but I feel that its worth using the hostelworld site, if only to correct some of the places with a 98% rating.
Just in case anyone doesn't know the big Hostelworld secret yet…
Hostels.com is OWNED by hostelworld.com, and moreover, (as far as I know, having checked while booking hostels for 2 years…), has the EXACT same prices. Your credit card will even say HOSTELWORLD.COM.
But the best part is that hostels.com has a FREE sign-up that allows you to avoid ever paying the booking charges - that's right, I saved 100s of dollars over 2 years.
Whether hostelworld.com has unique specials once in a blue moon I can't say…so still check. And another bonus is you can still book with Paypal on hostels.com, so you don't have to waste 3 seconds opening your wallet (and can give away your Paypal password in a shady internet cafe instead of your CC info…).
Of course, using hostels.com you can't spend your own money to help bring down the bogus 98% Hostelworld.com ratings…
And while we're on the topic, Hostelbookers.com have a lowest price guarantee where they'll refund you double the difference of a competitor's site. But they don't count so-called membership discounts like that of hostels.com, thereby making it unlikely you'll ever get a good deal. Furthermore, you also take a chance of LOSING money, if hostelbookers admin checks the competitor site within about 24 hours and finds that there are no beds at your quoted price left. Their guarantee would never fly in Australia after the ACCC took care of Flight Centre's and Video Ezy's original promises…
And just one more tip…if you're in a village with ultra slow internet and you just have to book your next hostel destination and the page doesn't load, give m.hostels.com a try (or m.hostelworld.com if you're a member there). The page loads much faster!!! Unfortunately, hostelbookers still doesn't have a mobile version as far as I know.
nice tips…
Thanks!
Was about to sign up again for an OS trip, so good timing.
I got a year free with HW last year, but free annual Gold Card link is no longer working.
There are HW Discount Codes on the web - generating a Gold Card number to use for about a month, then generate another… eg http://broketraveller.com/hostelworld-coupons/ (I haven't used a code yet)
But after that good advice, may just use my HB membership.
Nice work! You can pay $10 for the membership which elimnates booking fees for a whole year which I've found useful.
Although booking my upcoming accom for Europe, I've found that hostelbookers.com is generally quite a lot cheaper and they don't charge booking fees
1 month? Try a Free 6 Month HW Gold Card:
http://www.hostelworld.com/student
Got an email confirming my membership
"Thank you for registering for your free 6 month gold card membership. You are now a hostelworld gold card member so simply enter your gold card membership ID (xxxxxxxx) when making a booking on hostelworld.com and pay no booking fees for the next 6 months."
Any advance on 6 months? OK there is HB.
You gotta get the gold card if your doing a lot of travelling cause it just adds up so much and hostelworld have more hostels than the others. We saved heaps using that new Aussie company http://hostelzoo.com to do the price comparison on them all first and found hostelbookers a little cheaper overall. Theres a few other booking engines on hostelzoo I haven't heard of and I think one of them has a membership card to waive the booking fee.
Thanks for all the tips guys but I think hobotraveller, brucefromaustralia and spaceangelz (while your tips are great) may have missed the point of 070101a's post! You don't need Hostelworld or its Gold Card at all, *** ever ***, because "hostels.com" is the same company and it's free.
Btw hobotraveller, Hostelzoo looks great (I was going to start the same thing myself but had no skills…) and it looks like they only make money on the referrals paid out by hostelworld, gomio, hostelbookers, and hostelsclub. But remember, if hostelworld comes out as cheapest on Hostelzoo that means you use HOSTELS.COM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't think I missed the point…
HW & H.com are basically the same, but H.com lacks some servces of HW.
Every price I checked for my 7 week trip starting Tuesday was the same on both.
I have used HW since 2005 (travelling most years for 9 months), have a lot of data stored there, and have not paid a cent to book or use the members area for over 2 years. Meanwhile I build up points for gifts. Occassional bonus offers have been good for free Skype.
Some accommodation has no reviews on H.com. I use & post reviews a lot & am aware of the traps of some recommondations & ratings. The larger mass of reviews on HW gives me a better idea of the accommodation & if it will suit me. That is a valuable resource.
Also the mobile site & Android App for HW is useful, but not fantastic.
And the 'bonus' of using PayPal on H.com - well it is on HW also, along with stored CC details, etc.
I am happy with HW for free.
Can't see any benefit in changing / swapping between the 2, for a lesser service.
I got offered 3 months free by email. Probably because I used them in the past. Don't remember if I got $2 Skype credit when I used them.