It’s our first ‘business’ birthday – and before we crack open the cake and blow out our candle, we wanted to share a behind the scenes (and behind the screen) look at our first year.
From launching our website to signing our first clients to speaking in Lisbon at a leading hostel conference, it been an unforgettable year for us here at Stay the Night.
Take a look at what we’ve been getting up to in our first year of business below…
THE FIRST THREE MONTHS
The first few months of any business are exciting and scary in equal measure – there’s a lot to learn and a lot to do, but an equal amount of plans, ideas and moments of inspiration.
We spent these early days thinking hard about the kind of business we wanted to be and how we could achieve that. Above all, we wanted to create an accessible, honest and high-quality digital marketing service and hub of information specifically for hostels.
After months of chatting, reading, planning and researching, we soft-launched Stay the Night on social media and it was time for us to get engaging with hostels online. With no website at the time, we decided to simply share advice on how best to utilise digital marketing for hostels and post the latest industry news. We received a great reception – but we still had lots of work to do.
Goals were set, to-do lists were made and we were ready to get Stay the Night officially up and running…
OUR FIRST CLIENT
In March, Stay the Night became Stay the Night Limited – we were officially registered and incorporated as a business here in the UK! After so much planning, the discussions and dreams were becoming a reality.
In the same month, we received our first enquiry (through Instagram!) from Long Story Short Hostel in Olomouc, Czech Republic. We began working with the owner Eva on a consultancy basis to help improve the hostel’s social media. This included offering support with organisation, efficiency and content ideas.
As part of Long Story Short’s personalised package, on-site staff training was included. So in mid-April, we headed over to Olomouc for 5 days of training and we had a blast – it was so great to meet the team, explore the hostel itself (have you seen it? I mean, wow!) and see the city which we had heard so much about. We covered a lot of topics in the 5 days we were there and had some hands-on content creation sessions.
As a remote business, we can work from anywhere (as long as there’s a good WiFi connection!) – travelling more is high up on our 2019 agenda, so if you think your hostel could also benefit from on-site staff training or consulting support, just get in touch.
GOING LIVE
In July, the moment we’d been waiting for was here. It was time to launch our website that we had been working on for the past few months. In the build up to the launch date, we ran a 10 day countdown campaign on Instagram, sharing ‘10 top tips to help hostels improve their online marketing’.
We also ran a competition to win a free personalised social media strategy which proved popular with our followers – we were clearly feeling particularly excited, too, as we decided to make every hostel who entered the competition a winner!
In the same month, we confirmed our next client – a popular backpackers in Cape Town. As a coincidence, this was one of the first hostels we stayed at a few years previous at the beginning of our year-long travels so it was great to have them on board.
PUTTING FACES TO NAMES
With the launch of our website came the introduction of this blog and our email newsletter, which meant we were communicating with more hostels than ever. But with much of this communication happening from behind our laptop screens, we thought it was time to get out and meet people face to face.
In September, we took a day trip up to Edinburgh – one of our favourite cities – on the day of the WYSE conference. We met up with a number of hostel professionals and it was great to discuss how we could support achieving their goals and objectives by working together.
October was also a really exciting month for us – we attended our first Hostel Skills conference AND delivered a workshop all about ‘Using Instagram to reach more guests and increase direct bookings’. We covered a variety of areas including what sort of content works (and what doesn’t), using hashtags, getting the most out of video on Instagram and getting started with Instagram advertising.
As we said in our Hostel Skills diary blog post, speaking to over 100 people is always going to be nerve-wracking but we had a blast and the feedback afterwards was great.
The conference itself was a great experience too – we loved learning from the different speakers, catching up with some familiar faces and chatting with fellow industry professionals. Each night, we had the chance to visit a different Lisbon hostel and, we have to say, the standard is high in that city!
By the time we left, we really felt like we had become a part of that particular community and we’re looking forward to future Hostel Skills conferences in the months and years to come.
CLIENTS AND COLLABORATIONS
So, new month, new client – the beginning of November saw us start work with Curiocity Hostels – an amazing network of African design hostels.
If you’ve seen the below photo on our Instagram page, you’ll know that their Johannesburg hostel is the special place where the idea for Stay the Night was born back in 2017, towards the end of our year-long backpacking trip.
Starting work with a new client is always a lot of fun – learning more about the brand, brainstorming content and implementing new ideas are all things we love about our jobs.
We also began an exciting new collaboration with Cloudbeds and our first blog post was published over on their site. We have started with a feature on the ‘8 ways hostel marketing should differ from hotel marketing’ and we really hope you found it useful!
LOOKING AHEAD
As we round off our first year – and near the end of 2018 – you might be forgiven for thinking that now’s the time to wind down for Christmas… Well, not quite. To make sure we hit the ground running in 2019, we’ll be setting aside time this month to develop some new business goals and outline our plans for the next 12 months.
With new clients on the horizon, collaborations underway and plenty of new ideas in the pipeline, it’s safe to say we’re excited to see what the second year of Stay the Night brings. Watch this space!
Our first year in business is dedicated in loving memory to our honorary co-founder, Don Willan, who was a constant source of support, advice & encouragement as we began our venture.
