Just Another iPhone Blog

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If you’ve ever done any traveling on a tight budget, then you may well have had the need to discover good hostels in places that you plan to visit - as they generally offer a much more affordable rate than hotels.   Hostel World is a new iPhone optimized site that offers to help you find the right hostel while you’re on the go, or when planning your next trip.

This is one of those iPhone sites that just feels great to use right from the start.  The home page offers two huge buttons to let you follow its two main branches of activity - checking on an existing booking, or searching for a hostel - and also has a link to switch to the regular site if you do not like the iPhone version.  I dont have any bookings to review, but I’ve had a real good look around the larger, searching for a hostel side of the site, and it is excellent.

Here’s some of what is very likable about Hostel World on the iPhone:

• It’s a fairly comprehensive source - covering 15,000 hostels in 168 countries
• A lot of its page design incorporates iPhone-specific tools - for example, the main search page uses drop-downs and roll bars to quickly choose the Country and City you’re looking at (as well as a field to type in a specific location or hostel), the date you plan to arrive, and the number of guests
• The search results page has a top bar that provides an easy one-tap way to sort your results by name, rating, or price of hostel
• The pages covering each individual hostel are full of good information - you get a general decription, a listing of facilities, some images, and guest reviews that ared dated and that provide the nationality of the reviewer.
• There’s an easy Book Now button at the bottom of each individual hostel’s page, that takes you out to an https page to make your booking.

There are also a couple of things that I think could be improved on the site, such as:

• The hostel images are pretty small thunmbnails, and there does not seem to be an option to view them at larger size.  It would be helpful to be able to get a better look at these.
• Information about where the hostel is in a city, and the easiest way to get to it, is often found within the general description text, but it can be hard to spot quickly within some of the longer descriptions.  I’d prefer to see this picked out as a separate section like the Facilities and Reviews sections - so that you could jump to it easily to determine whether a location works for you.

Overall, Hostel World seems a very easy to use and well designed iPhone site, and their full site looks very good as well.  My hosteling days are long gone, but if I was looking for one, this would be a top resource I think.

Chck it out at th link below and let us know what you think …

http://iphone.hostelworld.com/

Tags: Hostel World, find hostels, find inexpensive accomodation

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