Case Study: Hostelworld replaces in-house promotions, reduces tech debt and accelerates rollouts with Talon.One

Hostelworld Fully Replace Their In-House Legacy Promotion System with Talon.One

Hostelworld, the world’s largest online hostel booking platform, faced growing tech debt from a long-running in‑house promotion system and wanted to build a seamless referral and rewards experience without forcing users onto external platforms. To modernize promotions (coupons, discounts, referrals, loyalty) and enable faster experimentation, Hostelworld selected Talon.One’s promotion engine.

Talon.One integrated alongside Hostelworld’s legacy system (completed in six weeks), migrated legacy data to custom attributes, and rebuilt their credit system so customers collect points and “cash out” as coupon codes. As a result, Talon.One now manages 100% of Hostelworld’s coupons, provides logs of every credit movement for finance, dramatically reduced tech debt, sped up promo rollouts, and enabled new campaigns like two‑way referrals and discount vouchers.

Hostelworld

Johnny Quach

Chief Product Officer/Chief Marketing Officer