It’s cold and rainy and you have no one to talk to. You are already back to daily routine and you are going to bed pretty early. While you’re trying to fall asleep you would like to turn back the hands of time! Back to the
7th European Hostel Meeting 2008 in Barcelona!
A crowd of people basking in the sun, sharing their minds and philosophies, because they all have at least one thing in common – hostel business.
Let’s start dreaming and looking back how 254 people from 29 different countries enjoyed those days in Barcelona. Three days full of networking, workshops, tradeshows and of course party, party, party! Below you can find a review with useful information about the workshops including presentations and a photo collection of the whole meeting in Barcelona.
For those who couldn’t make it to Barcelona, we hope here are enough impressions for you to be convinced to come to the
8th European Hostel Meeting in Dresden
March 28th and 29th, 2009
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)
And of course we all would like to thank everyone who showed up in Barcelona and joined us at the 7th European Hostel Meeting!
We are looking forward to meeting you all again in Dresden!
March 1st, 2008
Welcome Drinks
08:00 pm – 11:00 pm (officially)
After being welcomed by likeable colleagues of the European Hostel Cooperation at the Kabul Hostel, they all found the way up to the terrace where the welcome drinks took place. The view over Barcelona filled everyone with Spanish flair, so they could start networking in a Spanish kind of way – laid back and with a huge amount of fun!
After 10:00 pm the terrace became absolutely crowded, so the night temperatures couldn’t do any harm in such a cuddly atmosphere. Some participants got already scared that the roof will break through, but all good, Kabul Hostel is well built. Thanks to Alberto and Manuel again for assuring us such a save place to party!
There was a constant noise of people talking and the DJ did the rest with great music.
Besides small talks and meaningful mind exchanges, most members used the chance of free Heineken beer to celebrate reunification after a whole year and infected everyone who stayed sober with sponsored Bionade.
At the end no one wanted to interrupt this amazing atmosphere with leaving, so the party took much longer than it was planned in the schedule. The EHC Team was probably the first who went home after they realized that the next day has already started!
Did we catch you on camera? Have a look at the pics from the Welcome drinks at the Kabul Hostel: Go to pictures: Welcome Drinks
March 2nd, 2008
The Meeting
It was the next day and only six people showed up on time – the EHC team!
Most of the others probably enjoyed their pillows a little too much.
Every single person who has seen the venue for the first time was amazed. They were impressed by such a wonderful building comparable with a church with historical paintings and mosaic on the walls. Suddenly everyone could keep their eyes open even though they were still tired from the night before.
We are talking about the Casa de la Convalescencia.
After the main room was filled with tired people, Gerard and Domenic helped everyone to wake up and reminded us of Interlaken last year, so the meeting could officially start.
Frank and Valia kicked off the meeting with some useful words and made room for David Buehler’s Sketch for introducing the GOMIO.COM International Phonecard. They gave the signal for the bunch of workshops to get started.
Go ahead and read more about the workshops! There you also find the presentations you can download.
Opening Presentation and Workshop Rounds
To our advantage the sun was working hard and so everyone enjoyed the breaks resting in on the terraces in the sun, drinking Bionade and having some snacks.
At 1:30 pm a mass of people was waiting in a queue which reminded you of times when you had to wait for bananas in East Germany. And yes the waiting was also about food – an immense variety of food and then really everyone was fit to get started again for a third and fourth round of workshops:
Workshop Round III
Even it was a full day of information sharing, everyone got together again to listen to the Closing presentation from Greg Richards.
CLOSING PRESENTATION
New Horizon II Study
Greg Richards presented the report “The New Horizons II-The Young Independent Traveller 2007” which is an update of the benchmark study conducted in 2002. This report identifies the motivations and unique travel characteristics of the millions strong global movement of young travelers. Through this updated study, Greg Richards endeavors to further advance an understanding of the unique travel motivations, activities, booking and spending habits of young travelers.
Greg Richards concluded that travel is an increasingly important aspiration for young people around the world. It shows that young people continue to identify themselves as “travelers” rather than tourists, and that they are exploring further, spending more, and demanding new types of experiences to fulfill their desire to learn about and discover the world around them.
Thanks Greg for such an interesting presentation and useful research.
PDF version of WYSE TRAVEL CONFEDERATION’s New Horizons II research
Contact Greg Richards at Greg@tram-research.com
Have a look at the photos from throughout the day here: Go to Meeting Pics
March 2nd, 2008
The Hostel Meeting Party at Sala Be Cool
At 11:00 pm Sala Be Cool started to become kind of full. Even though we had two floors, most of the people congregated on one. Maybe it was because of the music or the free beer and Bionade. Anyway, it was packed even though we had a concert from a German band as a competitor. In the end everyone showed up, because they didn’t want to miss that kind of fun. Everyone started sweating from shouting to each other in order to discuss the day and dancing while talking! It’s probably needless to write about how much fun it was – have a look at the pictures!
Go to Party Pics
March 3rd, 2008
Tradeshow
Last but not least – the tradeshow. The participants used the chance to have a flyer exchange on place to show their own and grab some new ones!
Here everyone could also present their own company distributed on nearly 40 tables with outstanding decorations as far as your eyes could see. People asked and answered, socialized and networked, discussed about this meeting and already arranged to meet up next year in Dresden.
Go to Tradeshow Pics
We are already looking forward to meeting you at the
8th European Hostel Meeting in Dresden
March 28th and 29th, 2009
