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Hostels and hybrid models have always faced challenges selling beds through the direct channel. Booking systems were designed to offer rooms, but didn’t easily adapt to the bed-based model. While Booking.com or, primarily, Hostelworld, knew how to manage this model, the direct channel lagged behind: complex flows, too many clicks, and friction-induced drop-offs in conversion.
That’s why we have evolved and enhanced our booking engine to provide a real solution for any property selling beds: youth hostels, urban or coastal boutique hostels, hybrid models, surf hostels, mountain hostels, and large multi-property chains. A robust and comprehensive solution so you can compete head-to-head with intermediaries.
Native technology for Hostels: total conversion and flexibility
The booking engine minimizes friction, specifically adapted to the hostel’s actual operations and complexity.
Hybrid management (private rooms and beds): the booking engine displays all available options—private rooms or individual beds in shared dorms—presenting all possibilities customers with all possibilities in a single, streamlined process.
Visual selection by typology: a clear distinction between mixed, females-only and private dorms. Customers can see the type of dorm and its conditions at first glance.
No sales limit: all available inventory can be sold in a single transaction. The entire group within the same category. A group of 10 friends can book directly, from start to finish and regardless of their distribution, through your direct channel.
Our platform data confirms this:
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More than 35% of bookings include more than one bed. In some properties, this figure reaches up to 70%.
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Around 8% are groups of more than 5 people—a demand that was previously lost through intermediaries.
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Another 8% of bookings combine shared dorms with private rooms.
Smart availability: if there is no availability for a specific date, the booking engine automatically suggests alternative dates so that no search ends without a booking option.
Integrated loyalty: offers exclusive Club rates directly within the booking flow, at the exact moment the traveler is making a decision. No redirects, no friction. The most effective way to make your loyalty program work for you.
Sarai, an MCP-ready conversational engine: travelers no longer just search on Google. They ask their voice assistants, ChatGPT, and Gemini. Mirai is one step ahead: we built Sarai on an open conversational architecture compatible with the MCP (Model Context Protocol) standard. This means your hostel’s inventory, prices, and bookings are accessible from any AI assistant, not just your website.
Sarai responds in over 100 languages, displays real-time availability and pricing, and completes bookings or modifications directly within the conversation. No forms, no redirects, no need to leave the chat. Available on the web, WhatsApp, email, and voice, 24/7.
But the channel isn’t what matters; what matters is that your hostel is already ready for a world where travelers book through their own virtual assistants. Mirai AI Infrastructure makes it possible.
Upselling (Incremental sales): maximize Total Revenue Per Available Room/Bed (TRevPAR/PAB), including additional services such as breakfast or activities, directly during the booking process.
Payment management. Full control of the collection cycle from your extranet: prepayments, refunds, No-Show charges on tokenized cards, deferred payments, and automatic recovery of failed payments, among many other features. With support for major gateways (Stripe, Adyen, Redsys, Paycomet, Addon Payments, Worldline…) and methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal, as well as many other local alternatives like MBWay or Bizum.
Premium visibility on metasearch engines where OTAs don’t reach. OTAs have been winning on metasearch engines for years for a technical reason: they could display the exact price for any occupancy combination. The direct channel either showed incorrect prices or didn’t appear at all.
Mirai solves this natively. We sync your inventory with Google Hotel Ads, trivago, TripAdvisor, Skyscanner, and Kayak, ensuring the correct price based on occupancy, typology, and booking combination—including options that OTAs simply don’t display, such as a bed in a shared dorm or a private room.
The result: travelers see exactly what they are going to pay right on the metasearch engine. No surprises. No bouncing back to OTAs due to price distrust.
For groups: we cover up to the maximum number of people supported by each metasearch engine. A group of 6 searching on Google Hotel Ads finds your direct price, not Hostelworld’s, as seen in this initial search for 2 people:
Internationalization: sell without borders, collect without friction. A hostel welcomes travelers from dozens of different countries. The booking engine must display their language, currency, and preferred payment method without the hostel having to manage that complexity.
Mirai solves this natively:
- Multi-currency: pricing and collection in the traveler’s currency. No surprise conversions, no cart abandonment due to mistrust at checkout.
- Smart Multi-acquiring: automatic routing based on the traveler’s country; each payment is directed to the most efficient gateway and account for that market. This reduces cross-border fees, integrates local payment methods, and optimizes 3DS in markets where it isn’t the standard (such as the U.S., Canada, or Japan), maximizing conversion where bookings were previously lost.
- Global and local payment methods: Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal for any market; Bizum, MBWay, Klarna, Oxxo, and other alternatives depending on the traveler’s country of origin. The checkout adapts to the person booking, not the other way around.
- End-to-end multilingual support: booking engine, transactional emails, and confirmations in the traveler’s language. The entire flow, without language switches that break trust.
Business Intelligence: advanced reporting to maximize your RevPAB (Revenue Per Available Bed in shared dorms) and your RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room), with visibility into your entire pricing structure, including unmet demand and key KPIs. We report on stays for your beds in shared dorms: the right metric for measuring your independence from third-party platforms.
Compatible with your current technology
Our booking engine integrates seamlessly with the tools you already use on a daily basis. It is fully compatible with the leading systems on the market, such as Prestige, Cloudbeds, Mews, and SiteMinder, among many others.
Hostels that sell direct no longer compete at a disadvantage
With Mirai, the direct channel has the same, or even better, weapons than intermediaries: full inventory on metasearch engines, payment options tailored to each market, and now, a native presence in the conversational ecosystem where prospective travelers are already searching. The question isn’t whether the direct channel can win. It’s how much you are leaving in the hands of others.
