The article deals with the development of hostels in the hospitality industry, reveals the features of hostels as a form of small hotel business, and develops directions for state support for the development of hostels within small businesses.
Keywords: small accommodation facilities, hostels, public-private hostel development support program
The development of small accommodation facilities contributes to political, economic and social stability, the flexibility of economic structures, as well as the effectiveness of the implementation of market regulators, which has a beneficial effect on the growth of the competitive advantages of the host country. The economy and socio-cultural field of activity of countries cannot develop only on the basis of a large hospitality business. There must be a certain balance between small businesses and large companies. The small hotel business is an economic basis for providing social guarantees to the population of various countries, and contributes to the implementation of a socially oriented policy. At the same time, the level of development of small accommodation facilities in the country is determined by the level of sophistication of market relations.
Hostels are one such form of small hospitality business. Hostels have great prospects for development and strengthening in the market, as they have a high socio-economic efficiency. One of the current trends is the change in the status of the hostel, which is turning into a convenient accommodation facility not only for budget travelers, but also for business people.
Hostel is European accommodation system that provides its guests with short or long-term accommodation — usually a bed without additional amenities in the room. Hostels are mostly youth and budget hotels that accommodate guests who prefer to spend their holidays as economically as possible, as well as socially active segments of the population [1].
Some researchers raise the issue of the development of youth hostels, which can play an important role in providing a unified educational space by acting as venues for educational, creative and sporting activities at regional or national level. Other researchers consider hostels in terms of social hotels as collective accommodation facilities designed for temporary stays of tourists, primarily from low-income backgrounds [2].
Historically, the idea of creating a cheap youth hotel belongs to the German teacher Richard Schirrmann (1909). Since he traveled a lot with his students, he often faced the problem of not having accommodations that were affordable for groups of students. It should be noted that such ideas were already emerging at that time, as the early 20th century can rightly be called the era of the beginning of mass children's and youth tourism. Over time, hostels have become widespread in the world. Now there are about 4500 of them, and the total number of overnight stays in them annually is about 30 million [3].
The development of the hostel market is historically connected with European civilization, namely with England. The hostel is a European accommodation system, according to which guests are provided with accommodation in the form of a bed for a short or long period of time without additional indoor amenities.
Undoubtedly, Europe has the largest number of hostels, accounting for two thirds of all hostels. Under the planned economy, the concept of a hostel was absent, but student dormitories were closest to this type of accommodation. However, they did not meet the relatively high standards of cleanliness and safety that are traditionally maintained in Western European hostels [4].
In Kazakhstan, most hostels are located in the cities of Nur-Sultan and Almaty, which have new facilities, high-speed internet, and many owners take care of their guests and offer check-in services. Since hostel owners, as a rule, are directly involved in their business and its promotion, they try to offer as many additional services as possible. So, as the desires for organizing and conducting excursions are received, they organize them themselves. After analyzing the hostels in Almaty, we would like to note that when organizing a business, many hostels do not use promotion methods typical for the hotel business, they often register on hotel sites (booking.com, TripAdvisor, etc.) and maintain an active position using Internet tools marketing, social media. Looking at the 2019 data, the majority of residents were foreigners who like to travel a lot and learn about local customs and traditions, and the hostel format is the perfect platform for this. But it can also be noted that the residents have become guests in the last difficult time. First of all, students began to be among them, as many hostels began to develop and offer services for long-term accommodation at an attractive price, which makes this accommodation facility competitive in relation to renting apartments, and it should also be noted that the residents must clean their own flat, in the hostel this service is taken over by the principle of accommodation. Hostels started to offer catering services and storage for valuables.
For a hostel organisation, a low-cost structure and an appropriate pricing policy are the most important factors. The price of a hotel room depends on many factors and is set taking into account the cost of maintaining the room, the ratio of supply and demand, competitor prices, and the image of a service provider. The cost price includes material costs, wages of maintenance personnel, depreciation of fixed assets, other expenses (maintenance of the management personnel, the cost of renting buildings and premises, equipment and inventory, maintenance of technical controls, signaling, security). The price of a room or a place in a room is set, as a rule, for its use within 1 day, in some hostels hourly payment is applied.
The advantages of hostels also include the presence of a shared kitchen, equipped with all necessary appliances and utensils, which is a definite plus for tourists, because this is a good opportunity to save money on food, compared to cafes and restaurants. But the main feature of hostels is a “home-like atmosphere”, in which there are no boundaries for communication between travelers from all over the world. For many tourists, this is an important criterion for choosing a temporary place to stay. Thanks to the above factors, hostels are gaining more and more popularity both in the world and in Kazakhstan.
Also, for many people, communication and the opportunity to meet new, interesting people is very important. In a hostel you can meet travellers and find people with common topics of conversation and interests. So for many, this overshadows the disadvantages they are forced to face. Despite the fact that hostels are inferior in luxury to expensive hotels, they also offer clean rooms, comfortable beds. For the reasons mentioned above, hostels are very popular with students, as they provide an opportunity to meet foreigners in an informal setting, make useful friends, practice foreign languages or simply learn something new about the culture and life of other countries.
Further development of hostels in Kazakhstan as a form of small hotel business, in our view, will be associated with the adoption of a comprehensive program based on public-private entrepreneurship. Such a program to improve the performance of hostels for the public sector can solve the following list of tasks:
1) development of legal acts regulating the activities of hostels. To this end, it is necessary to carry out: monitoring of existing normative and legal acts relating to the activities of hostels; preparation and adoption of legal acts aimed at creating socio-economic conditions for the functioning of hostels in the legal regime.
2) creation of unified systems for promoting and booking hostel services throughout Kazakhstan. To implement this task, there are necessary things: formation of a single database on Kazakhstani hostels; publication of promotional products (catalogs, booklets) for hostels indicating the list of services provided; cooperation with existing Internet booking systems for hotel services to provide them with the resources of the hostel reservation system under development; creation of a domestic system for booking hostel services; holding meetings and seminars concerning the activities of hostels, the introduction of innovative technologies in the field of hotel services; participation in international exhibitions and fairs in order to promote hostels; advertisement of hostel services in the media and on Internet resources.
3) development of relations with educational institutions in order to train personnel for work in hostels. This includes: training of employees in advanced training courses in educational institutions; hostelers' participation in educational programs of universities; holding conferences with the participation of the scientific community, business and government agencies to discuss the current state and problems of the hostel market.
4) improving the mechanism for financing the development of the hostel market. It is expedient to state support for hostels in the field of taxation and lending, as well as the use of market mechanisms for investment support for the development of the hostel market by financing targeted development programs.
5) establishing cooperation with international and regional organizations in order to promote Kazakhstan as a tourist center for people with different income levels. Promote the possibility of a budget holiday in Kazakhstan for foreign tourists.
Thus, in our view, hostels in Kazakhstan are a new small hotel business format with dynamic growth, cleanliness, low prices and market promotion methods. Having studied foreign experience in the development of hostels, we can say that the further development of this segment of accommodation places is a factor that positively affects the increase in the tourist attractiveness of the republic's cities and steadily contributes to the further development of domestic and inbound tourism. A hostel is a special business model, in which a small hotel business forms a special, creative culture of hospitality within itself, based on communication that engages customers in a process of co-creation.
References:
- Leleka V. V., Sokovnina N. V. Hostels as a Promising Trend in the Hospitality Industry. Innovation: electronic scientific journal , 2017, no.1.
- Kukushkina A. G. Hostel as a Center for Educational Tourism for Children and Youth: Pedagogy of the Environment. Vestnik Novgorodskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta — Bulletin of the Novgorod State University , 2016, no. 2, pp. 63–66.
- Batina S. I. Hostels as Social Enterprises of the Hospitality Industry in Low-cost Tourism Batina S. I. Selezneva T. A. Successes of Modern Science and Education, 2016, no 10, pp. 7–8.
- Panfilova A. S. Hostel as a Universal Form of Hotel Services in Domestic Tourism Development. Gumanitarnye nauchnye issledovaniya — Humanitarian scientific research , 2016, no 2, pp. 35–38.
