Blue Almond and Social Responsibility

Posada Nativa Ms Trinie

Jenniffer and I are happy to announce that we have adopted a "Posada Nativa" which in English is the equivalent of a guest house. The Posada Nativa initiative is a goverment program that helps local house owner open their doors to tourism. In the case of San Andres one of the prerequisites to be a Posada Nativa is that it should be run by local native people, however as many government programs in Colombia whoever makes the decisions thought that by making a flashy website, this would attract hordes of tourism to a posadas' door... WRONG. Posadas currently have a very low occupancy rate, horrible REVPAR and a lack of vision, which comes basically because the people running the posadas have little or no knowledge of tourism, segmentation, marketing, applied technology, customer service etc.
We will not be running the posada, we will only provide them with the tools and the training to make them more competitive these tools include, a website with online booking capabilities, reservation system software, a marketing and e-marketing plan.


We are doing this because we know posadas nativas give people who are interested in culture a chance to take a plungle into our amazing soon-to-be lost traditions, an on top of that we will help a local family increase their income therefore their quality of live.

Hostel Blue Almond in Greek!

Το Hostel Blue Almond απέχει από κεντρική παραλία του Σαν Αντρές μόνο 20 λεπτά με τα πόδια, και προσφέρει οικονομικά καταλύματα με δωρεάν Wi-Fi και κοινόχρηστες εγκαταστάσεις.Υπάρχουν μονόκλινα και δίκλινα δωμάτια με κοινόχρηστο μπάνιο. Όλα τα δωμάτια διαθέτουν πλακάκια στο πάτωμα και ξύλινες ντουλάπες. Οι επισκέπτες μπορούν να μαγειρέψουν το γεύμα τους στην πλήρως εξοπλισμένη κουζίνα ή να χρησιμοποιήσουν το μπάρμπεκιου.Το σαλόνι διαθέτει DVD player και ανταλλακτική βιβλιοθήκη.

Το Σαν Αντρές προσφέρει πολλές δυνατότητες για κατάδυση και ψαροντούφεκο, και το Hostel Blue Almond μπορεί να σας εξασφαλίσει κράτηση με τους καλύτερους όρους για τέτοιου είδους θεματικές εκδρομές. Επίσης προσφέρει ποδήλατα για ενοικίαση προκειμένου να εξερευνήσετε το νησί.

Is happening!

Yes, is true. We are opening availability until the middle of February tomorrow (aug 31). That means you can stop emailing me! yay!

Keep in mind that:

• We only do online reservations.
  
• November has 2 long weekends.
• The 8th of December things will get busy for that weekend as is a holiday and people will likely take Friday off and come to San Andres.
• From December 20 to January 20 is considered HIGH season in San Andres. Everything from water to flight tickets is going to be more expensive than usual.
• From December 28th to the 2nd of January is considered VERY HIGH SEASON.
  
• We have yet another long weekend on January the 9th.
• Although there's a child in the picture, we don't accept underage minors in the Blue Almond for many reasons like alcohol consumption as a bad example an insurance voidance.

On a more serious note, remember that high season will sell fast, so have your credit card and dates ready.

Most traveled person I know.

According to www.mosttraveledpeople.com, Harry Mitsidis, a former guest at the Blue Almond is the most traveled person under 40 years old IN THE WORLD. We are happy to having help him achieve that!. You can read his blog and his very interesting stories on his personal website Harry's Trails Around the World We wish you the best Harry!

Web of lies, or lies on the Web.

While doing some benchmarking on the web I found out that a new hostel is soon opening in San Andres in SEP 2011. This is great news for the island and we welcome them with open arms, as backpackers are a market that has been historically neglected in San Andres and to everyone's surprise is a very profitable and low impact niche.

What I find unacceptable, borderline offensive is that they claim they will be the first; therefore the only hostel in the Island. This is simply a BIG LIE and a example of unethical and irresponsible marketing, we have been in business for almost a year and not even us were the first hostel in San Andres at that time. With this post We don't mean to pick up an argument, we just think people should get the facts straight.

How far are we from Downtown

Lately I have read a few comments about the distance between the Blue Almond Hostel and downtown, most people comment that we are very close from each other and that is only a matter of minutes to get where the "action" is, and by action they mean stores, beaches, bars and restaurants.
As usual there's always an asshole who claims that a 10 minute walk is unacceptable and that while booking you should pick another hostel closer from downtown. To rebutt that.

1. There's no other hostel in San Andres.
   
2. I have made a video to prove otherwise.

If after watching the video you think we are far from downtown you either are; an idiot or a unhealthy fatty.

Our first commercial

Take a look at our first Internet ad.

The voice used was done using AT&T Natural voices software, the audio was done with Audacity and the video was edited with AVS video Editor. The music was taken from http://incompetech.com/ and the song's name is Private Reflection

We are a hit!

Lately we have been getting a lots of hits on our booking website, crappy thing is that the conversion rate is not increasing.

What i think it is is that we might have been featured somewhere inside booking, after all we have the highest score in customer satisfaction in all accommodations in San Andres Island thanks to all our former guest.

Conversions

	Sun 6-5	Mon 6-6	Tue 6-7	Wed 6-8	Thu 6-9	Fri 6-10	Sat 6-11	Sun 6-12	Mon 6-13	Tue 6-14	Wed 6-15
Conversions/Hits	1 / 17 5.9%	0 / 70 0%	1 / 286 0.3%	0 / 271 0%	1 / 254 0.4%	0 / 445 0%	0 / 629 0%	1 / 558 0.2%	0 / 372 0%	0 / 400 0%	0 / 348 0%

Conversions: (data generated on Wed Jun 15 22:05:43 2011)

Yes, I'm a square.

Something that I didn't know when I started the Blue Almond Hostel was the amount of funny emails that i was bound to receive. Some funny, some idiotic and other ones plain weird.

I have a few personal favourites which are basically people asking for imposible things like stuffing all the family members cats and dogs included into one room and paying the single room rate or wanting to have hot steamy sex with me. One of my all time favourites was a guy who never stayed with us, but was willing to write us a review in Trip Advisor only because our reviews were good. I wish everyone were so prone to write reviews.

If you are going to write me an email keep in mind that we don't do special requests (there'are hotels for that), nor sexual favours and like our reviews to be as genuine as they get.

2010 in numbers

This is 2010 in numbers in case you are willing to invest on us!

percentage occupancy

2010 (32.8%)
33	28	36
10	11	12

Number of reservations per month

2010 (24)
3	10	14
10	11	12

Number of reservations per nationality of titular client

2010
4	1	7	3	1	2	1	2
United Kingdom	Portugal	Colombia	Brazil	Greece	Spain	Switzerland	United States Of America

Incomes from reservations per nationality of titular client

2010
1,8M	300k	1,5M	450k	40k	130k	400k	270k
United Kingdom	Portugal	Colombia	Brazil	Greece	Spain	Switzerland	United States Of America

Crazy Dog Old Lady

If you have ever seen the Simpsons, you are familiar with the crazy Cat Lazy, some fictional crazy ass old lady who mumbles and yells while she throws cats to people.
Right by the Blue Almond Hostel, we have a similar lady. She doesn't own any cats, but

1. She mumbles
   
2. She looks crazy
3. She's Old
4. She owns 8 dogs

To make the insult even worse she has name them after me; Juan 1, Juan 2, Juan 3 and so on. The dog are hideous and in very poor sanitary conditions. I can't imagine how the house must be in the inside, gross i assume.
We have pleaded to the government entities in charge and so far our cry for help has been ignored.

I have a secret admirer 100% awesome

I just got this on my email from the hostel website, awesome! Besides funny she or he sounds Japanese!

This is an enquiry e-mail via http://bluealmondhostel.com/ from:
T

I like you so much!!

I love stay 2 nights in de hostel; one for to meet you and the other lets leave to the imagination (one night to hot with you)

when you have availability??
let me know that.

Testing Hostel World

We are currently beta testing Hostel World reservation system for the months of May, June, July and August to see if its better than booking.com. So far it has proven inferior on some many levels that we might end up our beta testing pretty soon. Nonetheless we invite you to give it a go in the following link.

http://www.spanish.hostelworld.com/hosteldetails.php/Blue-Almond-Hostel/Isla-de-San-Andres/46230

Why won't I allow visitors in the hostel?

I could list a million reasons why one of the rules we enforce the most is the no visitors allowed one, but for now i'll just list the ones i can think of before my potatoes are cooked.

1. Your visitor cost me money.
2. Your visitors void my insurance.
3. Your guest may disturb the experience of other paying guest.
4. We are a small hostel, almost no one locks their doors, so your visitors could easily get into people's rooms if they wanted to.
5. Your guests shorten the lifespan of things in the hostel.

What to do is your visitor is sexy and want to show you his/her fun areas.

1. Take him/her to Blue Moon Hotel (right downtown) it offers rooms by the hour with disco-club, mirrors on the ceiling, Jacuzzi and a bunch of other classy stuff.

My potatoes are ready!

Broken computer.

My computer broke, that's why the website is still under construction. February is sold out. We never imagined we would have such a good run starting the business. We have met some incredible people so far and in about 8 months we'll decide whether we expand or not.