In addition to images, we are also encouraging hostels to provide enticing video footage.

wombie.com from holden thomas on Vimeo.

Wombie.com started 3 months ago as an idea and we've been boot-strapping from the start. We formulated the original product for our own needs as hostel owners and then 3 months ago began expanding it.  

Continous Deployment

We have a contant stream of releases connected to a selected number of partner hostels who signed up as early adopters. We take their feedback as well as incorporate new ideas, problems & bugs into each new release.  Combined with behavior driven testing we are able to deploy several times per week.

• Automate everything
• Deploy regularly
• Customer feedback at every step

Somewhat Open Beta

Our site is still in beta and our growing base of 1,700+ hostels listed are accessible by invited beta users who act as missionaries for our service.  Additionally, partner hostels have been supplied with a widget which allows unlimited access to their hostel. This has allowed us to test our service to an increasing number of users who may or may not have heard of us at all.

From Austin to Lviv, Ukraine

Example (case study): http://www.wombie.com/hostels/the-kosmonaut-hostel

The Kosmonaut Hostel is a prime example because of it's location.  Tourism has been growing rapidly in eastern europe for the last decade but only recently in the past few years has it spread to Ukraine which only jettisoned its archiac visa system in 2005.  Oddly enough, the cause of it's open decision was to facilitate the Eurovision song contest.  Our user base in Ukraine is stronger than most because its tourist base is restricted to younger & more adventurous tourists who are technically more adept and often use google to seek out hostels directly to avoid the hefty fees imposed by our competitors. Making them prime candidates for our service and born again missionaries carrying our service aloft & converting undiscovered masses who still use the stagnant service of our main competitor, hostelworld.

Marketing

Virally Launchrock - Lauchrock.com came to our attention quite suddenly and has enabled us to quickly select those users who are the most valuable. The signup model works by signing up an interested user by email and their early acceptance is contigent on their ability to influence as many other users as possible by facebook, twitter, email... It also uses rapleaf's service to rank a given user's ability to influence others.

Word of mouth & partner hostels

Our most powerful marketing tool has been word of mouth from our early adopters.  Hostel owners are averse to losing 10% of their operating costs (as they are required to do so currently under the WRI established business model) and we have been able ingratiate ourselves to them with optional & shared deposits (see our previous post for more on deposits). For users we supply all information about a hostel including website, email, phone, skype, twitter, etc. allowing direct contact (no other booking sites allow hostels to post this information).

Our reviews system doesn't allow unconfirmed ratings, users must build up a profile. The more hostels they visit the greater their credibility and after staying at more then 3 their reviews get published.  This helps prevent false reviews which is one of the largest problem facing for both users and hostels.

Based on user feedback, we added the ability to find a hostel based on features such as free-wifi & free breakfast, etc in addition to the lowest price and best location (example: Krakow, Poland with 50+ hostels).   We also allow users to signup with one click using facebook, google, yahoo, etc. (github: https://github.com/holden/devise-omniauth-example)

Invaluable Tools of Development

Heroku and an ever smaller/quicker deployment

Using heroku and their pure git workflow we are able to update quickly and ensure scalability.  Additionally using Amazon S3 and Cloudfront we are able to decrease the size of our entire site into less than 15 mg compiled slug which can be flexibly transferred across the dyno grid as traffic increases.

Keeping track of our progress

• Pivotal Tracker has been invaluable to our agile method of development and we have been using since Pivotal's early beta. It's realitime tracking and simple workflow have been invaluable to the high turnaround of our app.
• Snap-a-bug (now Snap Engage) handles all our bug tracking from our end users who have found their way from our partner sites and integrates with Pivotal Tracker.

Our Tech

• Heroku - Rails Cloud as a Platform Service
• Amazon S3 & Cloudfront
• SendGrid

Raising Money

In addition to boring normal stuff we would like to organize a lean sendoff/contest choosing a lucky few winners on a subsidized trek across europe & north america, paying for their accomodation along the way.

 This article was inspired by the: Lean Startup Bundle for SXSW

Hostelworld like most booking engines has a series of complicated fee structures.  Booking fees, "Desposit fees", Insurance fees, etc. Hostelbookers, as they will tell you in their lengthy third-party analysis, has no booking fee, however unknown to many users "deposits" are also a fee.

Despite what booking agents advertise and clever wording, "deposits" are not deposits.  As any hostel owner can tell you, deposits are a commission fee and they will never see it.  Regardless of whether a user arrives, the deposit is kept by the booking agent.  This drives the price you pay for a bed higher. 

Additionally Hostelworld has a complicated legal agreement requiring hostels to match any listed price with them as their lowest.  Meaning they can't offer discounts to users who book directly without using hostelworld despite the fact that it saves them 10% or more to do so.

Hostelworld also charges a booking fee of €2 on top of the 10% "deposit" meaning you actually pay them twice.

Support local businesses & independent hostels and save yourself some money at the same time.

Sign up for wombie.com and book free, with no deposits, no fees & no credit cards.

After 3 months Wombie.com has launched.  Free hostel bookings have arrived.  No more crafty "deposit" fees or questionable reviews.  You can now book over 1,700 hostels fee free without your credit card.

Sign up now for the BETA and we’ll drop you an invite as soon as we’re ready for more users.  You can also contact us via twitter @wombies or on facebook.

http://beta.wombie.com