A note from Troy
Vikki -- you already knew you needed this. I wanted to show you rather than tell you.
You run one of the best-loved hostels on the East Coast, you wrote the book on how to do it, and you’ve built a whole slate of things around it. The work is real. The web presence hasn’t kept up -- and I think that’s costing you more than you can see from the inside.
So instead of a pitch deck, I spent a little time building the thing itself: a concept for what your digital home could be if it were treated like one connected business instead of six loose ends. Everything you just clicked through -- the booking flow, the brand, the imagery -- I made from your own material.
A few honest things I found while I was in there. None of this is meant as criticism. It’s just what I’d fix, in order.
Booking that needs an instruction manual
Your site tells guests: “For dorms, change # of adults to 1.” That note exists because the booking engine can't actually sell a single bed -- it treats a bunk like a whole room. Every traveler has to be taught a workaround before they can give you money. The demo's booking flow fixes exactly this: tap the bunk, done.
→A booking engine that sells beds the way a hostel actually works.
Your conference domain now points to a casino
americanhostelconference.com -- the event you founded -- has lapsed. The address now serves an overseas sports-gambling site. Anyone Googling your conference lands on it. That's not a knock on you; it's what happens when nobody's minding the whole digital estate.
→Recover the domain (or retire it cleanly) and fold the conference into one managed system.
Your own name-site won't load securely
vikkimatsis.com throws a browser security warning -- the domain was never properly connected to its certificate. Visitors see a scary red screen before they see you. For the person who is the brand, that's the worst possible first impression.
→A ten-minute fix, and a light refresh so it actually represents you.
Six sites that don't know about each other
The hostel, your bio, the book, the radio station, the real-estate work -- five or six separate sites, five or six looks, none linking to the others. All that authority, working in isolation instead of compounding.
→One brand and one hub, so every venture feeds the next.
How I work
Custom, full-stack, and one person you can actually reach.
I’m not a website mill that spins up a template in an afternoon and charges you like it was bespoke. This whole demo is hand-built -- the code, the brand, the images -- by one person who’ll answer the phone. That’s the same way I’d build the real thing.
We could start small: fix the booking flow and your name-site first, since those bleed every day, then bring the rest of the Empire in over time. Whatever pace makes sense for you.
Built for you, from your own work.
A private concept by Troy Carr · The Midnight Garden. Whenever you’re ready, I am.