Improvements for São Paulo's hostels through brainstorming by students

Abstract

Hostels have gained popularity for their services with affordable costs and spaces that allow guests to socialize. However, due to the Pandemic of COVID-19, the consumption of tourist services has reduced significantly, requiring positioning, optimization of activities, and compliance with sanitary requirements by the tourist segment enterprises, including hostels. Thus, the objective of this work was to describe and analyze a situation in which students, from the Superior Course of Technology in Tourism Management, had a class in order to discuss the alternatives in the creation of solutions for some points that presented low guest satisfaction, according to the content generated by users, observed in seven hostels in the city of São Paulo. For this, a documental research was adopted, having the content generated by the guests of the hostels and the monitoring of the activity proposed to the students as primary data sources. The hostels were selected by the criteria of best cost and benefit, according to the digital platforms: TripAdvisor and Booking.com. The activity was carried out through the brainstorming technique, which resulted, by the students, in the elaboration of ideas that were selected and grouped and, finally, a basic work plan was made.