Hostel World - Analysis and evaluation

Hostel World is a hostel booking website and application. One can book on 180.000 different properties in 180 countries. I am going to focus on the application.

It’s very easy to use, the first page is a search page where one can choose the current location or type in a city. Then one can type in the check-in date and number of nights. Number of nights is not very intuitive though.

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Easy to use

Much information about the hostels

Reviews

Rating

Great filtering

Easy-access directions

Photos from the hostels

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Need wi-fi to use

Slow loading

Confusing booking

Think aloud:

Find cheapest hostel in Prague and book for 1 person two days from today

He found the search field, typed in prague and went right on pushing the search-button.

Then he realized he did wrong, went back and typed in the date, number of people and number of nights. He pushed the search-button again. He tried to find the cheapest by clicking the filter-button, but did not find anything, went back and chose the sort-button instead. The hostels got arranged with the cheapest on top and he chose the first one. He pushed the book-now button at the bottom of the page, got send to the rates-page, he got confused and then realized he couldn’t book just one night. He went back to the list of hostels and chose the next in the line and wondered why the first one appeared at all if he couldn’t book it.

Find the hostel with best ratings in London with free wi-fi

This time he knew how the first page worked and successfully searched for a hostel in London. When the list of hostels appeared he pushed the filter-button and checked out hotels and apartments so it wouldn’t appear in the search results. He then went to the sort-page and chose rating high to low. Then he started wondering about wi-fi and went back to the filter-page. He did not find anything there and tried the first hostel in the list. He scrolled down at the description page and saw that the hostel had wifi.