Hostel Marketing

If you run a hostel, you might be interested in these hostel booking engine. Generally, they take a commission of between 2.5% and 10% of the booking cost. Despite that, they can bring many reservations to a hostel.

The list can be found at the hostel B2B service directory.

You may find many more similar sites online, but most of them powered by Hostelworld, Hostelbookers, Hostelsclub, or one of the other hostel booking engines.

Hostelling International is a network of several thousand affiliated hostels worldwide. Different HI hostels are run under different conditions. Some of them are owned by HI, and some are independently owned but members.

To find out more about affiliating your hostel with Hostelling International, find your national HI association and contact them for more information.

Note: You do not have to be affiliated with HI to run a successful hostel.

The first hostel was started in Germany in 1912 by Richard Schirrmann. The concept of hostelling took off very quickly — there were 2,124 hostels by 1932.

Unfortunately, hostelling has not taken off in the USA like it has in places like Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Wikipedia has an article about hostels, but it is constantly rewritten and the quality varies from time to time. Another introduction to the history of hostels can be found here.

Information about the history of hostels in the USA can be found at Hostelling International's Golden Gate Council web site.