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