Hospitality Club (HC) was a hospitality exchange service (a gift economy network for finding homestays whereby hosts were not allowed to charge for lodging) accessible via a website. HC's specified goals were to facilitate "intercultural understanding ... bringing people together ... travelers and locals".[1]
| Area served | Global |
|---|---|
| Owner | Veit Kühne |
| Founder(s) | Veit Kühne |
| Products | Homestay |
| Services | Social networking service |
| Launched | July 11, 2000 |
| Current status | Offline |
History
edit
Hospitality Club was founded in July 2000 in Koblenz, by Veit Kühne, who was inspired by a trip to South America.[2][3][4][5] It later incorporated technology from Hospex.org, a similar service.[6]
In 2005, a disagreement between some members of Hospitality Club and its founder led to the foundation of BeWelcome.[7] Many HC members, who became volunteers within Couchsurfing, left HC towards CS because of its missing legal status and insufficient management transparency.[8]
In February 2006, Kühne was working full-time on Hospitality Club.[9] In the spring of 2006, an event took place in Riga with 430 participants from 36 countries.[10]
As of July 2006, the site had 155,000 members.[11] This number grew by around 1,000 new members a week in 2006.[10]
In 2007, Google Trends search volume for hospitalityclub.org started to decline and was overtaken by the search volume for CouchSurfing.[12]
In 2008, HC had more than 400,000 members from 200 countries.[4]
In 2013, HC had more than a half of million members from 200 countries.[13]
By 2017, only one third of members were still active.[3]
By April 2022, the website was completely offline.[14]
Safety measures
editHospitality Club had a reputation system, whereby members left references for others.[10] For added safety, members were encouraged to check each other's passports, although it rarely happened.[4]
References
edit- ^ "The Hospitality Club" – via LiveJournal.
- ^ "Netzwerk eines Träumers" [Network of a dreamer]. Der Spiegel. 2 August 2006.
- ^ a b Calderara, Jesko (2 August 2017). "Ein umstrittenes Geschäftsmodell" [A controversial business model]. St. Galler Tagblatt (in Swiss High German).
- ^ a b c Baker, Vicky (27 June 2008). "Top 10 hospitality travel sites". The Guardian.
- ^ Rodemann, Julian (29 March 2016). "Couchsurfing mit Haken" [Couchsurfing with a hook]. Die Welt.
- ^ "Welcome to HOSPEXerver". Hospex.org.
- ^ Baker, Vicky (18 April 2008). "Going local in Caracas, Venezuela". The Guardian.
- ^ o'Regan, Michael; Choe, Jaeyeon (2019-04-01). "Managing a non-profit hospitality platform conversion: The case of Couchsurfing.com" (PDF). Tourism Management Perspectives. 30: 138–146. doi:10.1016/j.tmp.2019.02.018. ISSN 2211-9736. S2CID 150755845. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
- ^ Thomas, Amelia (28 February 2006). "Backstory: Extreme vacation". Christian Science Monitor.
- ^ a b c "Freunde in der Fremde" [Friends abroad]. Stern (in German). 27 January 2006.
- ^ Stellin, Susan (July 9, 2006). "Go to Strangers (and They'll Come to You)". The New York Times.
- ^ Rustam Tagiew; Dmitry I. Ignatov; Radhakrishnan Delhibabu (2015). Hospitality Exchange Services as a Source of Spatial and Social Data?. (IEEE) International Conference on Data Mining Workshop (ICDMW). Atlantic City. pp. 1125–1130. doi:10.1109/ICDMW.2015.239.
- ^ Локша, Анна Владимировна (2013). "О необходимости повышения социальной составляющей молодежного туризма в России". Телескоп: Журнал Социологических И Маркетинговых Исследований (in Russian) (5). ISSN 1994-3776.
- ^ "Der Hospitality Club – ein Nachruf" [The Hospitality Club – an obituary]. unsere-zeitung.at (in Austrian German). 24 August 2022.
External links
edit- A podcast about hospitality club on German RTL