EUROPEAN HOSTEL COOPERATION NEWSLETTER – APRIL 2008

Welcome to the April 2008 edition of the European Hostel Cooperation Newsletter. Below you will find information on changes to the GOMIO.COM website, a review of the 7th European Hostel Meeting and a look forward to next year’s event, as well as a round-up of news and information from the hostel, travel and tourism scenes. As ever, if you have any suggestions, ideas or information for future editions of the EHC newsletter, please do not hesitate to get in touch at info@gomio.com.

We just got back from the 7^th European Hostel Meeting in Barcelona, which was once again a truly fantastic three days of seeing old friends, meeting new ones, sharing information, networking and celebrating everything that is great about this industry in which we all operate.

At the meeting, GOMIO.COM announced changes to the website that you will see online over the next few months as we relaunch the portal. The new-look GOMIO.COM will continue in its primary function of processing bookings for travellers and hostels at the lowest possible cost, as well as integrating a number of new features into the website. We will be integrating google maps into the portal, as well as link-ups to social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook. Alongside this we will continue to work on and develop GOMIO.COM to make it more user friendly, with future plans that include featured city options, info badges and a member login.

Keep a look out for the new-look GOMIO.COM, coming soon!

We would like to thank everyone who joined us in Barcelona last month for the 7th European Hostel Meeting. It was a wonderful three days of networking, workshops, tradeshows and of course partying, and we hope that all of you who were there with us enjoyed it as much as we did. There is a full report of what went on in Barcelona on the hostel meeting website (see below for a link), but we would like to take the opportunity in this edition of the newsletter to say thank you to all of those who helped make the weekend such a success.

The European Hostel Cooperation Team is very grateful for the help and support of the Barcelona Hostels: Kabul Hostel, Equity Point, Alberg Pere Tarres and Be Hostels for helping us with the organization. For the first time the Hostel Meeting’s organization was shared with hostels on the spot. So we especially would like to thank Clara and Carles from Equity Point Hostels who helped with the full planning as well as Valia from Be Hostels.

We also want to express our gratitude to Heineken for sponsoring beer for the Welcome Drinks. Therefore Alberto and Manuel from Kabul Hostel supported us with drinks and tapas and allocated the hostels terrace for our salutation.

Many Thanks to Nils and Daniela for offering Bionade throughout the event, so everyone was full of organic lemonade and had enough energy to concentrate on the workshops after a long party night.

We are also indebted to the Team of Casa de la Convalescencia who made this amazing venue available for our Hostel Meeting and to Sala Be cool for giving us the place to celebrate our legendary EHM Party.

Thanks also go to Valentin from Equity Point for taking care of the hospitality desk and organizing special offers for the walking tours.  A big thank you goes also to Scott from Fat Tire Bike Tours Barcelona for offering free bike tours for all participants. The full range of tours was sponsored by Fat Tire Bike Tours and Discover Barcelona.

We would also like to thank Idiomatic and Sulcus for their support so we could realize this whole meeting.

For increasing our knowledge base, thanks to all who hosted workshops and presentations:

• Guy Verlinde (Inside Out) and Koen Demeulemeester (Hostel Lybeers)
• Tobias de Pessemier and Kristof Dams (USE-it)
• Michael Tumminia (212partners.com) and Chris Syvertsen (Czech Inn)
• Robert Coghlan (Agora Hostel), Sveta Hovhannisyan (Envoy Hostel) and Sofia Lizzo (Soph & Chris Athens Northern Backpackers)
• Soraya Garcia and Rene de Jong (Internet Advantage)
• Matthias Schwender (Sir Tobys), Urs Grossenbacher and Markus Werren (Eco-Planning for Hostels and Hotels)
• Michael Hughes (Webcarhire)
• Frank Hinrichs (mydaytrip.com) and Travis Pittman (bugbitten.com)
• Helga (Backpacker Network Germany) and Lloyd Jones (Backpackers Canada)
• Peter Weissbach (European Hostel Cooperation) and David Buehler (Backpackers Villa Sonnenhof)
• Vladimir Diaz and Ramon Alandi (Sulcus)
• Greg Richards (New Horizon Study)

For a full round-up of the seminars and workshops, plus pictures from Barcelona and much more, please visit the meeting page at: Go to Hostel Meeting Barcelona 2008 Page

We are also extremely pleased to announce that the 8^th European Hostel Meeting will take place on the 28^th and 29^th March 2009 in the wonderful city of Dresden. We hope that you will join us next year in Germany for what promises to be another great chance to come together, share information and have a good time, and if anyone has any suggestions or ideas of things that they would like to see at the Hostel Meeting, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at info@gomio.com.

The GOMIO.COM Phonecard was announced in previous editions of the EHC Newsletter, and we would like to once again remind you of this new service, which offers hostels the chance to provide low cost international phone calls for their guests, whilst giving excellent conditions for the re-sellers.

The GOMIO.COM phonecard is an International Phone Card, which means it can be used in any country to call any country. Wherever the phone call is made the rates remain the same, which means the traveller knows how much they are paying regardless of where they might be. For example, calls to Europe or North America cost 6 cents a minute from anywhere in the world, which compares favourably with other phonecard providers…the GOMIO.COM Phonecard really is cheap!

To give your guests the cheapest option to use the GOMIO.COM phonecard install VOIP in your hostel: “Voice over IP” is telephony via internet. All info about where to get and how to use it you find on the GOMIO.COM phonecard website!

If you would like to learn more about the GOMIO.COM Phonecard, and get an overview of the rates, terms and conditions, and other information, visit www.gomio.com/phonecard.

The ITB is one of Europe’s most important travel trade shows, and is held every year in Berlin. Last month was the 2008 edition, and the European Hostel Cooperation was there, alongside four hostel networks from Spain, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

We ran hourly competitions, met different people, received lots of positive feedback and made a number of interesting new contacts. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who sponsored free accommodation for our competitions, and helped make the fair such a success.

Finally in EHC and Hostel News, we would like to take the chance to welcome a couple of new hostels to the European hostel scene.

First up is Somnio in Barcelona, which opened its doors on the 1st March 2008. The guys behind Somnio have announced that this is to be the flagship hostel of a number of locations they hope to open up around Europe, and if you want to see what they’re all about, take a look at the website at: http://www.somniohostels.com

The second of our new hostels can be found not far from the EHC’s main office in Berlin. The Singer 109 Backpacker Apartment Hostel can be found in the centre of the German capital in a newly restored historic brick building. For more information, and some photos, check out their website at: http://www.singer109.com

As the travel industry changes, the rapid rise of the budget airline has been one of the key movements, especially in Europe. Those of you with hostels in cities served by the no frills revolution will have seen the effect, and it may be of interest for you to know what new routes are on the horizon. There are a number of different websites where you can keep abrest of developments in the European low-cost airline industry, and check out the different routes available to and from your city both now and those coming up in the future. Some of the ones we found useful include:

http://www.flycheapo.com/ - a site that brings together all newly announced routes

http://news.cheapflights.co.uk/flights/ - the news section from the flight comparison website

http://www.whichbudget.com/ - an easy to use website that lists low-cost routes by destination, departure airport and airline.

Those of you who were in Barcelona may have seen Greg Richards present the New Horizons II – a global study of young travellers. For those of you who were not there, or would like to read more about this fascinating report that provides fresh insights and trend data about one of the world’s fastest growing niche travel markets, you can download it from the WYSETC page at: http://www.aboutwysetc.org/Research.aspx.

On the same site you can also access some other reports from WYSETC, including “Climate Change and the Youth Travel Industry”, and “Global Directions in Youth Language Travel”. All are very interesting, and well worth a look.

Some not so good news from across the pond, as fears that economic downturn rumoured to be about to hit the United States could have a negative impact on tourism numbers to Europe. Voice of America news reports that the most important aspect of this is the low value of the dollar compared to the euro, which is making travel to Europe more expensive than ever before. You can read more on this story on the Voice of America website at: http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-04-02-voa13.cfm

Many of you will be aware of Tripadvisor, a reviews and recommendations website where travellers can rate hotels, upload photos, and make travel tips and tricks for their fellow wanders. Each year Tripadvisor makes a survey of their users, and in March they released some of the results for the best and the worst of Europe. See if you agree with what the Tripadvisor community think:

The award for the most friendly and helpful locals went to the Irish capital Dublin, with Amsterdam and London in second and third place respectively. London managed an odd one-two by coming second in the most UN-friendly category, beaten to top spot by Paris, with the Russian capital Moscow coming in third. The winners, or some cases losers, of other categories included:

Best Bargain European City: Prague
European City with the Best Night Life: London
European City with the Most Attractive Locals: Rome
Cleanest European City:  Zurich
Dirtiest European City: London
Most Boring European City: Brussels

For some more results, take a look at:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/PressCenter-i176-c1-Press_Releases.html

That’s about it for the April edition of the EHC Newsletter, but remember: we love to hear from you, and if you want to get in touch with us at the EHC for any reason at all, here’s how to do it:

European Hostel Cooperation
Schwedter Str. 227
10435 Berlin
Germany

Telephone: +49 30 2462 8500
Fax: +40 30 2462 8501
Email: info@gomio.com.

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