Part of a series on
Homestays
Hospitality exchange services
Hospitality for work
Hospitality for money
Home exchange and others
Hospitality Club
Area servedGlobal
OwnerVeit Kühne
Founder(s)Veit Kühne
ProductsHomestay
ServicesSocial networking service
LaunchedJuly 11, 2000 (2000-07-11)
Current statusOffline

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.

History

Hospitality Club banner; taken in July 2005 in Monnai, France.

The first hospitality exchange service based on internet technology was Hospex.org in 1992 from Poland, which was later folded to Hospitality Club.[1][2] Hospitality Club was founded in July 2000 in Koblenz, by Veit Kühne.[3][4]

In 2005, a disagreement between some members of Hospitality Club and its founder led to the foundation of BeWelcome.[5] Many HC members, who became distinguished volunteers within Couchsurfing (so-called CS ambassadors), left HC towards CS because of its missing legal status and insufficient management transparency.[6]

In February 2006, Kühne was working full-time on Hospitality Club.[7] In the spring of 2006, the hitherto biggest HC-Party took place in Riga counting 430 participants from 36 countries.[8] As of July 2006, the site had 155,000 members.[9] This number grew by around 1,000 new members a week in 2006.[8]

In 2007, Google Trends search volume for hospitalityclub.org started to decline and was overtaken by the search volume for CouchSurfing.[10] In 2007, HC's specified goals have been to facilitate "intercultural understanding ... bringing people together ... travelers and locals".[11]

In 2008, HC had more than 400,000 members from 200 countries.[3]

In 2012, HC made a partnership with AirBnB, inviting its members to join AirBnB.

In 2013, HC had more than a half of million members from 200 countries.[12]

By 2017, only one third of members were still active.[13]

Maintenance of the portal stalled in 2019, since early 2021 Hospitality Club was unusable, since April 2022 it is not possible to access the website.[14]

Safety measures

Hospitality Club had a reputation system, whereby members left references for others.[8] For added safety, members were encouraged to check each other's passports, although it rarely happened.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Sierra, Mayra Eugenia (2019). Couchsurfing: Un estudio exploratorio de las motivaciones en la experiencia turística (Tesis) (in Spanish). Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
  2. ↑ Koszewska, Julia Maria (2008). Gift, Exchange and Trust.
  3. 1 2 3 Baker, Vicky (27 June 2008). "Top 10 hospitality travel sites". The Guardian.
  4. ↑ Rodemann, Julian (29 March 2016). "Couchsurfing mit Haken" [Couchsurfing with a hook]. Die Welt.
  5. ↑ Baker, Vicky (18 April 2008). "Going local in Caracas, Venezuela". The Guardian.
  6. ↑ 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.
  7. ↑ Thomas, Amelia (28 February 2006). "Backstory: Extreme vacation". Christian Science Monitor.
  8. 1 2 3 "Freunde in der Fremde" [Friends abroad]. Stern (in German). 27 January 2006.
  9. ↑ Stellin, Susan (July 9, 2006). "Go to Strangers (and They'll Come to You)". The New York Times.
  10. ↑ 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.
  11. ↑ Luca, Lucian C. (2007). Staying without paying: Heading towards free tourism (PDF). Budapest: Central European University. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  12. ↑ 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. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  13. ↑ "Ein umstrittenes Geschäftsmodell". tagblatt.ch (in Swiss High German). Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  14. ↑ "Der Hospitality Club – ein Nachruf". unsere-zeitung.at (in Austrian German). Retrieved 26 August 2022.
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