Hospitality Club

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Hospitality Club
HospitalityClub-GobuyanLogo.png
An unofficial logo designed in 2004 by Canadian Glenn Gobuyan shows two people with arms over each other's shoulders in friendship and waving for you to join them, in the shape of the letters "HC". It is reminiscent of cave paintings to illustrate that hospitality is as old as humanity.
Area servedGlobal
OwnerVeit Kühne
Founder(s)Veit Kühne
ProductsHomestay
ServicesSocial networking service
URLwww.hospitalityclub.org
LaunchedJuly 11, 2000; 21 years ago (2000-07-11)
Part of a series on
Homestays
Hospitality exchange services
Hospitality for work
Hospitality for money
Home exchange and others
  • v
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For other uses of "HC", see HC (disambiguation).

Hospitality Club (HC) was a hospitality exchange service accessible via a website. The platform is a gift economy; hosts are not allowed to charge for lodging and are also not obligated to host.[1] Hospitality Club implemented a reputation system, whereby guests can leave references (or comments in HC's terminology) for hosts and hosts can do it for guests as well.[2] For added safety, members are encouraged to check each other's passports, although it rarely happens.[3]

History[]

Hospitality Club was founded in July 2000 in Koblenz.[3][4]

In January 2005, founder Veit Kühne emailed members reiterating his control over decisions regarding the website.[5] This led to a disagreement between some members of Hospitality Club and its founder and to the foundation of BeWelcome also in 2005.[6] Many HC members, who become distinguished volunteers within Couchsurfing (so-called CS ambassadors), left HC towards CS because of its missing legal status and insufficient management transparency.[7]

In February 2006, Kühne was working full-time on Hospitality Club.[8] In the spring 2006, the thitherto biggest HC-Party took place in Riga counting 430 participants from 36 countries.[9] As of July 2006, the site had 155,000 members.[10] This number grew by a ca. 1,000 new members a week in 2006.[9]

In 2007, Google Trends search volume for hospitalityclub.org started to decline and was overtaken by the search volume for CouchSurfing.[11] According to a Ukrainian brochure, Couchsurfing had a more convenient user interface.[12] In 2007, HC's specified goals have been to facilitate "intercultural understanding ... bringing people together ... travelers and locals".[13]

In 2013, HC had more than a half of million members from 200 countries.[1]

In 2017, a scholarly paper mentioned HC as a means for unwanted foreigners travelling to countries with strict visa policies.[14]

See also[]

  • Hospitality club members on Wikipedia

External links[]

References[]

  1. ^ a b 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.
  2. ^ LAINE, NINA (2008). Trust in Superior-Subordinate Relationship: An empirical study in the context of learning (PDF). Retrieved 2 April 2021.
  3. ^ a b Baker, Vicky (27 June 2008). "Top 10 hospitality travel sites". The Guardian.
  4. ^ Rodemann, Julian (29 March 2016). "Couchsurfing mit Haken". Die Welt.
  5. ^ "HC democracy and strategy". WikiLeaks. 19 January 2005.
  6. ^ Baker, Vicky (18 April 2008). "Going local in Caracas, Venezuela". The Guardian.
  7. ^ "Managing a non-profit hospitality platform conversion: The case of Couchsurfing.com". Tourism Management Perspectives. 30: 138–146. 2019-04-01. doi:10.1016/j.tmp.2019.02.018. ISSN 2211-9736. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  8. ^ Thomas, Amelia (28 February 2006). "Backstory: Extreme vacation". Christian Science Monitor.
  9. ^ a b "Freunde in der Fremde". stern.de (in German). Retrieved 24 April 2021.
  10. ^ Stellin, Susan (July 9, 2006). "Go to Strangers (and They'll Come to You)". The New York Times.
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ Александрова, А. Ю.; Химченко, О. А. (2013). "Гостевой туризм как инновационная форма туризма (экономико-географический анализ)". Географія та туризм (24): 24–32.
  13. ^ Luca, Lucian C. (2007). Staying without paying: Heading towards free tourism (PDF). Budapest: Central European University. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  14. ^ Janik, Wojciech J. (2017). "Acquisition of documents and legalization of Islamic terrorists as one of the stages of the logistics preparing a terrorist attack". World Scientific News (72): 159–168. ISSN 2392-2192. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
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