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Welcome to the March newsletter from the European Hostel Cooperation. We got
information on some new and planned hostels, some general tourism news including
predictions for 2005 and news from the budget airlines, as well as a number
of different things from the EHC including the last chance to register for
the conference, plus details of some software developments and changes on GOMIO.COM.
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So, we hope that there is something that you will find of interest, and for everyone
that is coming to Prague, we’re looking forward to seeing you there!
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New Hostels Opening
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Four hostels are opening or have just opened their doors in the last month or
so; two established hostels have opened new houses, and one brand new hostel
has appeared on the scene. Added to this the Dizzy Daisy hostels in Poland
have opened one new hostel and moved two others, so that makes six!
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Sleepzone, Connemara The Sleepzone crew in Galway have opened a new hostel,
also called Sleepzone in Connemara, overlooking the Killary which is Ireland’s
only fjord. You can check out the new house (and the one in Galway as well!)
at www.sleepzone.ie.
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Barcelona Dream Hostel A new, 100 bed hostel in Barcelona has been opened by
the folks behind the Barcelona Mar Hostel. We don’t know the website yet (hey
guys!) but the original hostel can be found at www.barcelonamar.com.
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In Dortmund, there is a new hostel just opened that is called Ruhgebiet (a nice
play on words for the German speakers out there), and you can find out all
about it on their slick homepage at www.ruhgebiet.de .
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Riverside Lodge, Berlin Another new hostel in Berlin, this one a cozy backpackers
lodge by the canal in trendy Kreuzberg. You can see pictures of this brand new
hostel, complete with in-house canoe, at their website: www.riverside-lodge.de.
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Dizzy Daisy Hostels in Poland The Dizzy Daisy hostels group in Poland are opening
a new hostel in Warsaw, called the ‘Dizzy Daisy Warsaw Pineska’, as well as two
new locations for their existing hostels ‘Dizzy Daisy Hostel Wroclaw’ and ‘Dizzy
Daisy Hostel Warsaw’. You can get more information, and see all the other hostels
in the group, at www.hostel.pl.
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Want to work in the Baltics?
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Andra Gabrisch, an architect from Blue.Berlin (architectural and project
development company) asked us to include a quick note in our newsletter,
and maybe someone reading it is going to be interested! Their new project
is opening hostels in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius, and whilst they have
found locations and investors, what they are looking for is managers. So
if you, or someone in your team might be interested in running a hostel
in one of the Baltic States or just wants some more information, then they
should express their interest to Andra at info@partner-blue.de.
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Smart City Hostels
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A press release at the beginning of March announced the arrival of a new player
in the hostel scene, Smart City Hostels, that are opening their first house
in Edinburgh which will be ‘the first of a chain of state of the art hostels
to be located in the major tourist cities in the UK’.
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The new company has said that all their hostels will include en-suite facilities,
internet access, bistro style restaurant, self-catering kitchen, and secure
storage areas. The first, the Smart City Edinburgh will open in early 2006
and will have 256 beds, as well as university accommodation that will revert
to hostel rooms outside of termtime.
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You can read the press release, and get more information about the Smart City
concept, at: www.scotexchange.net
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Base Backpackers Expansion?
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Another article that caught our eye this month was the announcement by Base Backpackers
(upmarket hostels owned by the Accor Hotel Group) that they were considering
expanding out from their bases in Australia and New Zealand.
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The hotel group’s Asia Pacific Managing Director announced that they were interested
in opening Base Backpackers in France and the UK, as well as other places outside
Europe such as Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong.
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Base Backpackers are seen in Australasia as the leaders in a new generation of ‘super
hostels’ that have been opened in 4 locations in Australia and 4 locations in
New Zealand.
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You can read the article about the possible expansion of Base Backpackers at
www.travelbiz.com.au and check out the hostels
down under at www.basebackpackers.com.
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Four Star Backpackers
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A lot of us in the hostel scene are used to Aussies and Kiwis in our hostels,
many of them based out of London as they take advantage of the visa agreements
between the UK and Australia/New Zealand, and now it turns out that these guys
have never had as much money as before!
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New changes to the visa requirements, a study has shown, has meant that these
backpackers who base themselves in the UK can now look for career-related jobs
rather than just working in pubs or selling ice cream, and 18 months after
these changes were made; 60 per cent are earning more than £20,000 a year,
and about 20% are earning more than £30,000.
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The impact on this for tourism in Europe has been increasing trips over the channel,
with 4 out of 5 interviewed taking a European weekend trip once a month, and
over 40% making more than 11 trips during their working holiday period. This
has been aided by the cheap flights on offer from the budget airlines, with
numerous routes to all over Europe from London, alongside the increased earning
power of the working tourists.
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It is this increased opportunity for a good time (a third of them go to the pub
10 times a month) that has led them to be dubbed ‘Four Star Backpackers’ by
the Australian and expat press.
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You can read more about this new breed of backpackers travelling and working
in Europe at: www.news.com.au
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A Tale of Hostel Arm Wrestling
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Everyone at the European Hostel Cooperation would like to send out a ‘Get Well
Soon’ message to one of our friends in Munich, Andy Mayston. Andy broke his
arm during the epic title bout for the ‘Munich International Invitational Arm
Wrestling Championship’.
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Astonishingly this did not stop the plucky Brit taking the honours in what was,
we are assured, a stunning performance of the noble sport. And the quote from
the victor? "You should have seen the other guy..." Congratulations Andy, and
we hope the arm gets better soon!
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World Tourism Predictions for 2005
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The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) announced earlier this month their
predictions for the growth of world tourism in 2005, after last years record-breaking
figures. Although the WTTC does not believe that tourism will grow on such
a level, it believes that the figures will increase despite the effects of
the tsunami in South East Asia, and the weakness of the American dollar.
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The biggest reason for the continued growth could be the rapid increase in travellers
from India and China, the later due to the relaxation on travel visas and the
announcement of ‘favoured states’ that the Chinese can now visit.
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The WTTC expects big growth in China itself, and also the USA (as more Americans
stay home for their holidays and those from the outside take advantage of the
dollars relative weakness) as well as Germany and, after a disappointing couple
of years, France and Spain.
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Forecasts for Europe as a whole predict similar growth rates as last year, with
an increasing ‘spread’ of tourists across the continent as more and more travellers
discover the new member-states of the European Union and their other, east
European neighbours.
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For more information on the WTTC’s predictions, click:
www.usatoday.com/travel/news/
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Launch of World Tourism Directory
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At the ITB tourism fair in Berlin a new worldwide tourism directory was launched,
with the handy name of WorldTourismDirectory.com. The idea behind the directory,
according to its editor Burkhard Herbote, is to be the most comprehensive
directory for the world tourism industry.
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The WorldTourismDirectory includes 110,000 entries from 330 countries, and has
information on ministries of tourism, national, regional and local tourism
boards, travel associations, tourism media, embassies, trade resources, and
much much more.
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It promises to be a useful resource, though we haven’t had the chance to
explore it in depth yet but if you need to find your local Ugandan embassy,
or who the Minister for Tourism in Norway is, then it could be just what you
were looking for.
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Information on the announcement following the ITB can be seen at:
www.traveldailynews.com
And you can see the directory itself at:
www.worldtourismdirectory.com
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Budget Airlines Part (I): Ryanair to be the biggest
airline in Europe?
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Anecdotally it seems as if the growth of budget airlines in Europe has had a
big impact on budget accommodation providers, such as hostels and guesthouses,
which means developments in the industry, especially new routes, can be very
interesting.
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And this month we have not one but two bits of news from the budget airline industry.
The first is more of interest as an example of the growing influence of the
sector, whilst the second are some new routes being launched that may have
an impact if they happen to be flying to wherever you are.
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So, first up, everyone’s favourite: Ryanair. Reports in the Guardian this month
that Ryanair are buying 70 new Boeing jets suggests that the Irish carrier will
increase its number of passengers in the next five years to over 70 million a
year. This would make them larger, in number of passengers, than both British
Airways and Air France.
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Already four out of ten flights from the United Kingdom are on one of the ‘no
frills’ carriers, and their influence has spread out from the UK as the number
of new airlines based out of different ‘hubs’ around the continent has increased.
No-one knows how long this ‘boom’ will last, and how many airlines that have
been launched will survive.
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Already in the last year two, Air Polonia and Volare have had to ground their
planes because of financial difficulties, but it seems that the big boys such
as Easyjet, Ryanair, Air Berlin and the like are going from strength to strength.
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The question is: will this have an impact on the hostel scene? Will less people
interrail, and more hop from point to point on the airlines? Or will it just
increase the number of ‘budget travellers’ moving around the continent, for
short trips or weekend breaks? No-one really knows, and it’s going to be interesting
to find out...
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The Ryanair article can be found at:
www.hotelmarketing.com(will_ryanair_become_europes_biggest_airline)
And there is more on the budget airline boom at:
www.hotelmarketing.com(low_cost_carriers_to_win_more_short_haul_market_share)
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Budget Airlines Part (II): New Routes Coming Up
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Here are just some of the new routes that are being launched by a number
of different airlines that were announced in the last month or so.
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Vueling (www.vueling.com)
Has announced 2 new routes that will begin in May, from Barcelona to Lisbon and
from Barcelona to Menorca.
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Air Berlin (www.airberlin.com)
Also in May, Air Berlin has new daily flights between Berlin and Amsterdam.
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Norwegian (www.norwegian.no)
The Oslo-based airline has flights from Norway’s capital to Krakow and Warsaw,
beginning in the middle of April.
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Germanwings (www.germanwings.de)
Will start a whole bunch of flights from a new Berlin hub in June, including
Zagreb, Split, Stockholm, Istanbul, Ankara, Munich and Dόsseldorf.
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Easyjet (www.easyjet.com)
Have announced 3 new routes from their Berlin hub, including London Gatwick,
Milan and Rome, that will begin September. In April, a new route between Maastricht
and Berlin will also be launched.
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MyAir (www.myair.com)
Starting in April, MyAir will fly twice a day between Venice and Paris
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Final Registration Period for the Meeting
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April 1st is the deadline for registration for the 4th European Hostel Meeting
in Prague, and if you want to join the 130-odd delegates from 80-plus hostels
and over 15 other backpacker and budget travel related organisations, then
you’d better get yourself over to www.gomio.com/conference to put your name
down!
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The 4th European Hostel Meeting homepage has a list of delegates, so you can
see who else is coming, the schedule for the meeting, as well as details of
venues and tips for finding accommodation in Prague. As well as this we have
organised two new presentations that were not included in the previous emails,
so it gives us great pleasure to announce:
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Overview of the Australian/NZ Hostel Market Keith Marsh from the Kiwi/Oz Experience
will present an overview of the backpacker and hostelling scene in Australia
and New Zealand, with a comparison to Europe, and how both the European scene
and the scene ‘down under’ can learn from each other.
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Presentation and Open Forum The open forum will be a chance for everyone to
discuss the hostelling scene in Europe with each other, trading ideas and voicing
concerns. The forum will be introduced with a presentation from Jim Zielinski
(Bulldog, Amsterdam) on the Art of Hospitality. Jim will look at the importance
of hospitality in the hostelling scene, and he promises that it will be a ‘lively,
funny and communicative’ way to stimulate the debate!
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EHC Shareholder Offer
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As was included in previous newsletters, the European Hostel Cooperation is
offering shares to hostels in Europe, to join the existing 14 hostel partners
of the EHC. We want to broaden the base of the EHC in order to continue the
work of establishing a fully hostel-owned, commission-free booking and information
portal for Europe, as well as the activities of information-sharing, representation
and providing a communications network for European hostels, which are fundamental
to the philosophy of the EHC.
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The talks with those hostels who have expressed an interest are under way, and
if you are interested in finding out more about the shareholder offer then
you should contact Andreas Becker in the head office as soon as possible, preferably
before the meeting in Prague.
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We expect the process to take, for the individual hostels concerned, between
3 4 weeks, and will have had the distribution of new shares completed by
the end of April. You can call Andreas in the office on +49 2462 8500, or email
him at andreas.becker@gomio.com.
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Tsunami Appeal
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As those of you who took part in the tsunami appeal, we have raised around 3000
for the project in Sri Lanka, and Mathias from the Sir Toby’s in Prague will
be heading to the island in May to deliver the funds and oversee the spending.
We just wanted to thank all the hostels that contributed to the appeal, as well
as mention the numerous emails we received from hostels all over Europe that
were undertaking their own appeals for other charities and aid organisations.
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In such an unstable time in international politics, it has been wonderful and
overwhelming to see the response to such a tragic event, and hopefully every
cent raised will make a difference across the affected region.
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Something related to this is the announcement made at the ITB in Berlin by the
World Tourism Organisation as to the recovery of tourism in the Indian Ocean
region, and the WTO is confident that it will be relatively quick. This will
have an enormous impact in the overall recovery of the region at an economic
level.
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The press release, which is linked to below, highlighted reconstruction of hotels
and destinations, including levels of 80% capacity in Sri Lanka and the Maldives,
and a gradual but consistent increase in international visitors that give the
WTO confidence that the regions tourism industry will be ‘back to normal’ by
the winter season 2005/6.
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The WTO press conference from the ITB can be read online at:
www.world-tourism.org
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GOMIO.COM New Features in the Management System and Booking Process
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For those hostels that are working with GOMIO.COM there are a number of new features
within the management system that we are pleased to announce, and that will
be important particularly for those hostels with GOMIO.COM booking engines
on their own homepages.
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We will send out an email to all the member hostels, but we are including it
in here for all other hostels that might be interested in the developments.
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Within the hostel’s management system on GOMIO.COM there is a new section called ‘Booking
Settings’ that allows the hostels to add their own conditions on bookings, such
as maximum number of guests or minimum length of stay. The different options
available to the hostels are:
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- Set maximum number of guests the number of guests that can be in one booking
- Set maximum length of stay the maximum amount of nights that people can
stay
- Set a minimum stay this means you can set a certain minimum stay, for all beds or just some (i.e. double rooms or apartments)
- Set ‘no check-out’ days this allows you to set days in which guests cannot
check-out, such as maybe Sundays, or New Years Day
- Set ‘advanced booking’. This means that the guest can book different amounts
of people for different nights, move rooms and book non-consecutive nights.
You can limit this to where the guest can book more than one room, but must
have the same number of people for the entire period of the stay in the rooms
they book.
- Ask for information about the guest, such as gender, nationality and arrival time.
- Plus there is a field where the hostels can add their own terms and conditions,
provided that they do not contradict the terms and conditions of GOMIO.COM
itself, most importantly that this is a confirmed, guaranteed booking that
the guest is making.
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We hope that these additions will allow the hostel more control over what type
of bookings they will receive from GOMIO.COM or through the GOMIO.COM-powered
booking systems on their own webpage. If you want more information about this,
or some help in setting things up, then please do not hesitate to contact us.
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Interfaces, Software, Booking Engines and Other Techie Stuff
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Just a quick note to let you know, as we reach the end of another newsletter,
that the EHC is working together with different companies, to bring together
different reservations software systems and booking engines to help put
together an interface that would allow different softwares and engines to
link together, and allow the hostels to manage all their allocations in the
same place. As you can imagine, this will make life a lot easier for hostel-owners
and receptionists, as well as saving time. As soon as we have some more specific
details as to this we will let you know.
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Contact the European Hostel Cooperation
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So that’s your lot for March. Please let us know if you have any information
that you would like us to include in future EHC Newsletters, and if you want
to get in contact with us, with suggestions, criticisms, questions or comments,
here’s
how you do so...
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The European Hostel Cooperation GmbH
Johannisstrasse 2
10117 Berlin
Germany
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Telephone: +49 (0) 30 2462 8500
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Email: info@gomio.com
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All the best from your European Hostel Cooperation Team.
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