How ONEFAM Hostels automated 86% of guest communication across 19 properties with HiJiffy
marzo 2025 – marzo 2026
5,470
conversations
86%
automation
19
properties connected
24/7
guest responses
Introduction
In hospitality, responding to guest enquiries quickly and accurately is essential. Yet, reducing the time teams spend on repetitive tasks remains one of the industry’s biggest operational challenges. That was exactly the situation facing ONEFAM Hostels: enabling its teams to focus on creating memorable guest experiences while continuing to scale across Europe.
Since early 2024, ONEFAM has been using HiJiffy to transform guest communication. With 19 properties across eight European cities, the group needed a solution that could integrate seamlessly with its PMS and booking engine.
This case study combines key insights from HiJiffy’s platform with practical experience from the team at ONEFAM, showing how conversational AI can enhance the guest experience, reduce operational pressure, and scale guest communication across multi-property hospitality groups.
The Client: ONEFAM Hostels
ONEFAM has spent more than 20 years building a different kind of hostel experience in Europe. What began as a single hostel in Barcelona has grown into one of the continent’s best-known hostel groups, with 19 properties across eight cities: Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Lisbon, London, Prague, Budapest and Amsterdam. The group also employs more than 150 people across Europe and the Americas. The recent opening of ONEFAM Clérigos in Porto marks its latest expansion, bringing operations to six countries, each with its own legal and fiscal requirements.
The concept is built around a simple idea: travel is more enjoyable when shared with other people. Every property organises daytime and evening activities, communal dinners and city walks designed to help solo travellers connect with one another. Guests know that if they enjoy the atmosphere at one ONEFAM property, they can expect the same sense of community in the next city they visit.
Most guests are international travellers aged between 20 and 35 who are constantly on the move. As a result, many of their questions tend to be the same. Answering them consistently across 19 properties, often with frequent staff turnover, was both essential and operationally demanding. Any new tool had to be fully operational within days, not weeks.
The Challenges
The reception team at a ONEFAM property is not there to answer emails. They are there to bring people together: to help a solo traveller step out of their room and sit down with ten people they have never met before, to show them a hidden bar in the neighbourhood, and to turn someone who arrived alone into someone who leaves with friends for life. That is what guests come for.
But before guests arrive, and often before they have even chosen which property to book, they have questions. Hundreds of them every day across 19 properties. “Is there luggage storage before check-in? How much does towel hire cost? Is the hostel suitable for families with young children? Is it a quiet place?” Sometimes the honest answer is no, and that matters too.
Those questions were arriving in separate inboxes, unanswered WhatsApp conversations, social media messages, reception phone calls and, more than once, the marketing team’s inbox. Some were answered. Many were not. Every minute spent explaining the pet policy for the tenth time was a minute reception staff could not spend with guests, creating the experience they had come for.
The group needed a solution that could handle that volume automatically without losing the personality of the brand, while also integrating natively with Cloudbeds, the operational backbone of the business. That is where HiJiffy came in.
The Solutions
HiJiffy is a guest communication platform powered by conversational AI and built specifically for the hospitality sector. At ONEFAM Hostels, it supports operations across four areas simultaneously.
Instant answers to common questions
- HiJiffy’s AI resolves the most frequent pre-booking enquiries instantly and automatically. The service operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week across website chat, WhatsApp, Booking.com and social media, responding in the guest’s language without human intervention.
- Data from ONEFAM’s platform highlights the main sources of demand. Check-in enquiries account for 34% of all pre-stay questions, followed by booking management at 20% and property location at 12%. The remaining enquiries relate to routine topics such as contact details. These categories previously generated a constant stream of emails, calls and messages, all of which are now handled automatically.
Helping guests decide before they book
- ONEFAM has a clear identity: a lively and social atmosphere designed for travellers aged between 20 and 35 who want to meet people and experience the city. It is not intended for everyone, and that is part of its appeal.
- HiJiffy helps communicate that identity before a booking is made. When guests ask whether pets are allowed, whether the hostel is suitable for families with young children or whether the environment is quiet, the chatbot responds clearly and honestly. The outcome benefits both sides. Guests who are not the right fit are less likely to book, reducing the risk of a disappointing stay, while guests who are a good fit arrive with the right expectations. Reception teams spend less time managing mismatched expectations and more time focusing on the guest experience.
From enquiry to instant resolution
- HiJiffy integrates with Cloudbeds, allowing guests to access relevant information without leaving the chat. The chatbot identifies the property, adapts responses based on the guest journey, and helps standardize communication across ONEFAM’s locations. This creates a smoother experience for guests while reducing operational pressure on reception teams.
One place for every conversation
- HiJiffy brings every guest interaction into a single platform, regardless of where it begins: website chat, WhatsApp, Booking.com or social media. ONEFAM’s team has a complete view of each conversation, including property context and conversation history, whenever needed. If an enquiry goes beyond what the AI can resolve, staff can step in immediately with all the relevant information already available, without the guest having to repeat themselves.
5,470
conversations
86%
automation
19
properties connected
24/7
guest responses
The Results
The 86% automation rate means that, for every 100 enquiries received across ONEFAM’s 19 properties, 86 are resolved by HiJiffy’s AI without any involvement from the team. Over the course of 5,470 interactions in twelve months, that amounts to thousands of responses that never needed to reach an inbox.
Across 19 properties, HiJiffy helps ONEFAM centralize guest communication while maintaining a consistent experience across channels and locations. By automating routine interactions and managing guest communication at scale, reception teams can focus on higher-value guest interactions instead of repetitive administrative tasks.
Beyond the figures, the operational impact is equally important. Reception teams now spend less time managing fragmented enquiries across email, phone and messaging channels. When human support is needed, conversations already include the relevant context, allowing teams to respond more efficiently while staying focused on the community-driven experience that defines ONEFAM.
The Tech Partner: Cloudbeds
For ONEFAM, the decision to go with HiJiffy was tied from the outset to its compatibility with Cloudbeds, the system that connects every property, every market and every booking channel in one operational environment.
Cloudbeds’ intuitive hotel software design directly addressed ONEFAM’s core challenge of rapid staff onboarding. The platform’s user-friendly interface significantly reduced training time, enabling new staff to become productive quickly despite the group’s turnover rate.
Its extensive integration marketplace proved crucial for ONEFAM’s multi-country hostel operations. These integrations handle country-specific requirements automatically, from Portuguese billing regulations to Spanish government reporting, allowing ONEFAM to maintain compliance across jurisdictions without making things more difficult for new starters.
How the integration works
HiJiffy connects directly to Cloudbeds’ PMS and booking engine, allowing every chat conversation to be supported by live operational data. Behind the scenes, the process works as follows:
- A tracking pixel embedded in Cloudbeds’ booking engine captures data from every completed reservation, including value, dates and confirmation, and sends it to HiJiffy, which automatically links the booking to the guest’s prior chat interactions.
- The sync runs continuously in the background, keeping all communication aligned with live Cloudbeds data at all times, without interrupting the booking process.
- ONEFAM’s team can see exactly which conversations lead to direct bookings, for which properties and at what price. That visibility allows the group to refine its communication strategy using real operational data rather than guesswork.
Testimonials
«HiJiffy has helped us professionalise and scale our guest communication without increasing the team’s operational workload. With 19 properties in ONEFAM Hostels, managing every enquiry manually would be extremely challenging, so having instant responses and 24/7 availability makes a huge difference. The chatbot allows us to automatically resolve a large volume of frequently asked questions and filter enquiries by property.
This is especially useful, as guests can indicate which hostel they’re asking about and what they need. That way, when an enquiry requires our personal attention, the team already has the context needed to respond more quickly and effectively. It also allows us to better guide guests through the booking process and improve the experience from the very first point of contact.»
Florencia Echevarria, Marketing Manager at ONEFAM Hostels
«There are fewer emails for the receptionist, and it means the team can focus more on looking after guests rather than answering messages.»
Jona Vazquez, Reception Team at ONEFAM Hostels
«ONEFAM is a prime example of how AI automation can scale hospitality operations effectively. With our PRO plan, the majority of interactions are resolved instantly and accurately, ensuring consistent service across all their properties.
This frees the team to focus on what really matters: the human connection that ONEFAM is known for. Technology, when applied well, doesn’t replace the guest experience; it enhances it.»
Isabel Reynal, Senior Customer Success Executive at HiJiffy
Curious about our conversational AI?
Let us show you how this cutting-edge technology can empower your guest communications.