Field Notes
Running hostels, written down as we learn it
Pricing, channels, volunteers, double bookings — practical guides from an owner who runs three coliving hostels in southern Mexico. No content team, no filler. Just the stuff we wish someone had written down for us.
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Operations
Reaching guests before check-in when the OTA hides their number
When the number on the booking is dead, this is how we still get the door code to a guest arriving at one in the morning.
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Operations
Selling breakfast, laundry and tours from the hostel desk
The extras are where a hostel's margin hides, and the desk is where it leaks. How we sell breakfast, laundry and tours without arguments.
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Operations
The monthly report a hostel owner should actually read
Skip the fifty-tab dashboard. This is the one-page monthly report I read for each of our hostels, and what each number tells me to do.
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Basics
A hostel no-show policy guests actually accept
First night, not the whole stay. One fixed release hour. The same rule on every channel. The no-show policy our guests accept without arguing.
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Software
Switching hostel PMS without losing bookings
The complete checklist for switching hostel software without losing a single booking or confusing your team.
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Marketing
Why hostel guests leave reviews—and how to ask
Reviews drive bookings. Here's the simple system to ask your guests for them at the right moment.
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Software
What to ask a PMS vendor before you sign (from a hostel owner)
Four demos taught me which questions vendors dodge. Here is the list I take into every software call now.
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Pricing
How to price your hostel for big events — what Día de Muertos taught us
Our Oaxaca beds sell for roughly ten times the low-season rate during the festival — and still sell out. The exact playbook: rate calendars, minimum stays, and the mistakes that cost us real money.
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Operations
Double bookings: why they happen and how to actually stop them
Every double booking traces back to one of five causes — unsynced channels, silent outages, desk lag, migration duplicates, or dorms modeled as rooms. Each one, with its fix.
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Direct Bookings
The real math of direct bookings (and how to get more of them)
What OTA commission actually costs a hostel per year, who realistically books direct, and the six levers that move the number — in the order I'd pull them.
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Basics
What a channel manager actually does — explained by a hostel owner
The plain-language version: what syncs, how fast "real time" really is, what happens when it breaks, and an honest rule for whether your property needs one at all.
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Team
Running a hostel with volunteers without losing your mind
Total knowledge turnover every two months is the model, not a bug. The systems that survive it: 30-minute onboarding, granular permissions, visible schedules, real stint dates.
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Software
Why hotel software fails at hostels (it's the beds)
A hotel sells rooms; a hostel sells beds. That one data-model difference cascades into the calendar, pricing, groups and overbooking detection. A vendor-neutral buyer's checklist included.
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Community
The feature no PMS had: why we built a guest community app
Nobody chooses a hostel for the bed — they choose it for the people. Why management software finally had to act on that, and what changed at our own properties when it did.