Last week we released a new look and feel of the Base Backpackers website and it looks cool.

The site was given an upgrade in February but was in beta and we added more functionality last week. Some of the things we have introduced are:

• A cool accordion menu that Mat developed in Javascript himself
• Latest photos feed from Flickr
• Magnetic Island Full moon Party booking engine
• A new map
• New comments section that allows us to pull comments from a variety of sources including Hostel World, but also other sites and blogs. We run the blogs through our XEFEED product which can filter the comments for relevancy
• A news section to track all the news media for each of the hostels
• And, some updated content

The site is still in development and Xebidy is contracted to continue development through to late in 2009 so expect lots more things to be released soon - in fact, we have some cool You Tube video scanning and destination wiki stuff coming in the next month that we will announce soon.

In the New Zealand herald today an article came out (click here for article on Base Backpackers) about Base Backpackers receiving a “rap” over the knuckles for the slogan “New Zealand’s best hostels” in their advertising. According to the article this was in response to a complaint by the Youth Hostels Association (YHA) - a direct competitor of Base. YHA complained that travellers might perceive this to be determinmed by an independent review.

What a load of poppy-cock! I am sure it is marketing 101 that you try and find a statement that proposes you to be the best, the legends, the most famous, the number 1 whatever you are in your market. Does anyone really take any notice of this in advertising? In fact, surely this comes back to the increasing disenchantment of consumers with traditional media and marketing sources and a greater emphasis on peer reviews - hence the growth of review sites and forums etc where travellers seek out fellow travellers opinions on the best places to stay. Are YHA and the Advertising Standards Authority really serious that anyone believes these sort of slogans?

Last year I wrote a post on the Art of Writing Web Content which stated that web content should start with a big fat claim to draw people’s attention in. Examples were “lost weight in 21 days guaranteed” and “Pick of the backpacker hostels - Lonely Planet”. I did fortunately qualify this to say make sure it is believable and provable. Perhaps YHA is recognising that at least Base’s claim is believe - perhaps they are the best hostels in NZ, after all the above Lonely Planet claim relates to Base Hot Rocks Rotorua and the y have certainly received their fair share of awards from independent hostel booking website Hostelworld.

Interestingly enough the findings of the Advertising Authorities Standards panel (that the word was hyperbole and comparative) was similar to a complaint upheld against Kiwi Experience last year. I can’t help thinking that surely this is simple evidence of competitors misusing this medium to try and gain competitive advantage. If the businesses complaining spent more time focusing on their own products and less time staring at their competitors they might all raise the standard of tourism offerings in this country to the benefit of the tourists - you remember those people, the ones with the brains who can see through the superficial slogans that the marketing departments continually pump out and make informed purchase decisions based on what they think will be the best product for themselves and then very quickly report back via word of mouth and other peer to peer forums (such as the web) how good or bad the service really is.

Incidentally, I notice on the YHA site that they claim to have hostels in “57 of the country’s best locations” - but they don’t have a hostel in Quail Rise, or Arrowtown, or Cardrona, or … I think these are “bester” (hic) than some of their best locations - are they misleading travellers?

We recently upgraded the look and feel of the Base Backpackers hostel pages and introduced a feature we had been developing for awhile (those who have seem the Adventure Tours Australia website would have seen it before) - that is, the displaying of images onto the website that sit on Flickr.

The idea here is that we take an RSS feed directly from our these pages and then display the most recent 20 or so images. This works fantastic for a company such as Base which has 14 hostels across Australia and New Zealand and a continually growing mountain of images that are taken almost daily by staff, customers and friends.

A lot can change in a week in a hostel and there is just so much going on from regular parties in the hostel bar to activities and local events. By using a Flickr account we can give access to all the hostel and bar managers who can easily update their photos in real time without the need to continually go back to the website content manager to get new photos. It keeps the images fresh and gets everyone from the crew to the customer buy in - hey that’s me in the bar the other night!

I have said this before in my articles etc, but Flickr also provides a parallel marketing medium. For example someone looking for images on Magnetic Island on Flickr might come across Base or the Full Moon Party and subsequently be enticed to investigate Base Magnetic Island hostel as the place to stay.

We are currently in the process of extending the functionality such that we also pull in the description and tags of the images as they appear on the Flickr site and are displayed on Base, Adventure Tours etc websites.

We gave our unsolicited opinion on a website and potential strategy the other day and it really got me thinking about the importance of establishing some social currency in today’s Web 2.0 sites. The site was effectively a reviews and ratings site that was struggling to generate the traffic and comments that were wanted.

I believe the reason that people are not using the site is because it does not answer the basic marketing axiom of “what’s in it for me”. There is no social currency to be earned from leaving a review or a rating for the user. It has already been shown that cash or prize incentives don’t work for this sort of thing (ala all the video publishers that pay for content versus You Tube and still You Tube wins). You need to create a method of people earning social currency, whether that be through a rate the rater system of some other method.. Thereby there is something in it for those doing the reviews - to get a better rating.

I also think that in the plethora of review sites, even bookmarking sites there needs to be a second layer of demographics added to the process. In my opinion reviews these days are only useful if those reading them can identify with them. An example is on the Base Backpackers site where we take comments directly from HostelWorld. These comments include the reviewers age range and their nationality and sex. That way if you are an English lager lout looking for a party hostel and read a review saying that it is too noisy from an older American lady you can take the review at face value - or vice versa. We know that users are quite open with their personal information if they believe it is going to be of benefit to them.

I am reading Wikinomics by Don Trapscott and Anthony Willliams (thanks Nigel at AJ Hackett for the recommendation) at present and it was interesting to come across a similar argument put forward by blogger and media consultant Jeff Jarvis. Although talking about “ownership” of all the user generated content his sentiments echo the argument that for a site looking to gather user generated content the site needs to recognise the ownership of the content - reward the contributors with social currency, in my words.

“These collective benefits yield a richer web experience and enhance the wisdom of crowds (see my article on What is Web 2.0 for information on this). This new wisdom can be useful in helping people discover content, or in organizing the web around topics, or improving search results, and even in improving ad performance.”

“So who owns that collected wisdom of the crowd? Obviously the crowd does. Platforms like Google, Technorati and Yahoo (…) merely borrow it. And they can only borrow it if they continue to have the trust of the crowd and if the pay dividends back to the crowd. And those that try to hard to control that wisdom, to limit its use and the sharing of it … risk turning away the crowd that creates this value”.

When we developed the functionality to take Hostel World reviews and ratings and display them on the Base website I believed we were working with Hostel World (rather than against them) - after all Base hostels used the Hostel World property management system - and as I said earlier today, we were in effect announcing the importance of Hostel World content.

Ironically, it was over a year ago that I first saw the aggregating functionality that the Charts property management system was promoting for populating the Hostel World inbox with availability from Charts and subsequently retrieving bookings into the property management system. It was obvious to me at the time that this would be unacceptable to Hostel World. Firstly, there is the case of controlling the hits on their server. But secondly, it is the case of controlling the data.

Hostel World are happy to share their technology (you can insert their booking engine into your website very easily) and their moves to RSS feed the reviews and ratings is evidence of their Web 2.0 attitude to sharing data within the realms of sensibility. But their wish to restrict the access to availability (their main asset) is understandably essential.

Firstly, they are in the business of providing property management systems (Backpack for Windows) and to allow other property management systems access to their online availability database is in effect cutting their own market. But the second and more understandable reason was made clear to me by Tom Kennedy in a brief discussion outside the Sheraton Hotel in Toronto in 2005. When I asked Tom what the chance of accessing the Hostel World database both for populating and getting availability for the TravelFAT system he said slim. He explained that the risk for Hostel World if everyone had access to availability would be an erosion of prices - sites cutting commissions or hostels putting lower prices on certain sites. The net effect a lower yield for everyone - obvious.

The screen scraping method that Charts was using for populating the Hostel World inbox with availability and retrieving bookings was only a short step for someone to develop a booking engine using the Hostel World availability but not their payments engine - in effect side stepping Hostel World and keeping the money for themselves.

So it came as no surprise recently that Hostel World has added a visual randomly generated code that has to be entered to their login screen to stop such practices. It is a pity for all the hostels that purchased Charts on this premise. Nonetheless, let us hope that at sometime in the near future Hostel World considers publishing their APIs for how other property management systems might send availability to, and retrieve bookings from, the Hostel World database - ignoring of course their business model of distributing their own property management system (sic).

I have written two earlier posts regarding Base Backpackers and their courageous move allowing Hostel World reviews and ratings to appear on their website unedited. But today a thought…

Clearly, the use of this independent user generated content signals a tick of recognition by Base of the dominant position of Hostel World in the online hostel booking space but does it also mean an erosion of the Base brand online? Is this in effect saying to a customer book with Hostel World and not us?

When we originally designed the Base web strategy the majority of Base hostels were using the Hostel World property management system Backpack for Windows which meant that every customer that booked online at both the Hostel World website and the Base website were sent an online survey. Unfortunately, in the last 6 months many of the hostels have switched systems and this is no longer the case. So, I guess the answer will come over the next few months. If Hostel World can maintain the necessary level of content to make this functionality work for Base then Hostel Worlds’ position as the dominant independent source for traveller reviews and ratings will be confirmed - if not, perhaps Base will be forced to look elsewhere.

As an aside, the whole displaying of these reviews and ratings on the Base website developed by Xebidy is pretty flash - well we thought so anyway! We use a variety of products to continually monitor the relevant Hostel World pages, pick up the content, strip it of any presentation and represent it on the Base website in valid HTML. Since making it public I have been advised that Hostel World are going to RSS feed that content in the next 4 to 6 weeks. This is a great move by them, firstly it stops uncontrolled hits on the server by guys like us, and secondly it will make the content widely available for use by everyone - and maybe this is the answer to the dominance of the Hostel World brand online.

Interestingly enough it also means that those wanting to display only good comments could use products such as our Xefeed RSS feed rinse to remove bad comments - not quite what everyone had in mind I am sure!

I spent the day yesterday with my mates at Base Backpackers finalising the go-live beta version of their new website as well as looking to the next few months advancement of the site. Xebidy did not design the site but we developed it onto our Bootstrap content management server which is based on the Open Source Silver Stripe CMS. The most exciting is probably the next 12 months however when Xebidy will be working with the guys at Base to develop the functionality into a new world with lots of great Web 2.0 features planned - I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag just yet; and also the implementation of an extensive Internet marketing plan that was authored by Jonathan Dixon at Xebidy.

One of the cool things about this project is the courageousness of management and foresight with respect to this project. A few weeks ago I posted about a real world web 2.0 dilemma we were facing on the project; in which we are taking automatic feeds of reviews and ratings from the independent Hostel World website and displaying them directly on the Base website. As I said while the reviews were not really that bad - there were reviews that you might not want to display on your home page necessarily. Nonetheless, it was decided that these reviews would be displayed regardless, unedited.

Base understands the importance of word of mouth and that in order to compete and achieve their objectives of being the best hostel/budget accommodation in Australia and New Zealand they simply have to provide the best possible product. A message has been sent out from head office to all hostel managers that the reviews and ratings will be considered as a measurement of success and that managers should strive to improve their ratings and address reviews head-on. Further a policy has been put in place to address any negative comments head on so that they are either turned into a positive or more importantly that the issue is taken on board, that if possible they are rectified and that the users are communicated that this has been done.

It will be great to monitor the reviews and ratings over the next 12 months and see what impact this positive attitude has. I am easily betting that all the Base hostels ratings will improve by at least 5 -10% (which is a lot when you consider they are already consistently the top rating hostels in their cities) over the next 12 months through both a positive influence on the ratings and review medium and also through increased focus of the manager directly on the feedback from their customers.

It’s going to be a great 12 months and I will keep you informed as we introduce some of the new functionality and rework the site - taking it from the soft beta launch it is today to the full functionality user-centric site that is planned.

User-generated content is certainly a revolution and those that are harnessing its’ power are winning the web game to attract customers. But are they?

I am involved in a very interesting project with Base Backpackers that has somewhat run aground. I first proposed the use of inbound RSS feeds from blogs etc as a means of building up independent content about the 11 hostels across Australia and New Zealand, however, following a strategy session in Sydney it was decided to take a gigantic leap of faith in the product and take comments about the hostels directly from Hostelworld.com (the largest online booking website for hostels and backpackers with many many user reviews). Of course, I was right into the idea - an awesome real Web 2.0 initiative. The decision in the strategy sessions were that Base Backpackers was focusing on delivering a superior product and therefore this was very much firstly about facilitating the flow of information between customers to spread the word that Base Backpackers hostels were good; and secondly about setting transparent checks and balances for hostel managers to strive to.

All sounded good those days in March when the plan was hatched. However, as we moved toward going live on Friday we struck a huge snag - comments are not as appealing as it was hoped. In the majority they are not that bad - but there are those that are simply not complimentary. Surprisingly, the one that has caused the most problems is kind of completely left-field, encouraging customer to stay there if they want sex (in a few other words) - not really a complaint against the hostel but certainly not something you want displayed on the front page of the website.

We have not really been involved in the design of the website only the execution and now it is crunch time in the project. The plan is to make the Hostelworld reviews appear on the site automatically, but at present we are simply taking them to text file and then manually putting them onto the site at regular intervals. The most recent comment is displayed as a leader on each hostel home page, which then links to the other comments. We also take the ratings of each hostel from Hostel World and display these on the website. Once we automate the process the ability to edit is completely removed.

So, now in going live the questions are overarching - do we intervene and only show positive comments on the home page as the leader to all the comments? Or, do we go a step further and delete all the negative unwarranted comments from the site completely?

The theory of Web 2.0 is that the masses generate a collective intelligence, that a bad review is outweighed by good reviews (that is, if the product is good) and that one off reviews such as the review posing problems for Base Backpackers are immediately seen through by the customers. All good and well, and you know that I am a huge promoter of this, but what if there is simply not enough comments to generate the critical mass of collective intelligence? Moreover, what about travellers on long travel time frames, such as Backpackers - also tight on a budget; are they not less likely to take the time to write in a good review? Things were fine, thank-you very much, stayed for a few days, moved on - can’t really be bother filling in the online survey, reviews and ratings form.

So there you go - a real world Web 2.0 conundrum!