Hospitality Club

Short description: Hospitality exchange service

Hospitality ClubArea served| Global

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Owner| Veit Kühne
Founder(s)| Veit Kühne
Products| Homestay
Services| Social networking service
Launched| July 11, 2000; 23 years ago (2000-07-11)
Current status| Offline

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.

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Safety measures
* 3 References
* 4 External links

## 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.[citation needed]

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 español). Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
2. ↑ Koszewska, Julia Maria (2008). Gift, Exchange and Trust. https://issuu.com/julitxu/docs/ma_thesis.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Baker, Vicky (27 June 2008). "Top 10 hospitality travel sites". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2008/jun/27/travelwebsites.top10.
4. ↑ Rodemann, Julian (29 March 2016). "Couchsurfing mit Haken". Die Welt. https://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/finanzen/article153750482/Couchsurfing-mit-Haken.html.
5. ↑ Baker, Vicky (18 April 2008). "Going local in Caracas, Venezuela". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2008/apr/19/caracas.adventure?page=all.
6. ↑ o'Regan, Michael; Choe, Jaeyeon (2019-04-01). "Managing a non-profit hospitality platform conversion: The case of Couchsurfing.com" (in en). Tourism Management Perspectives 30: 138–146. doi:10.1016/j.tmp.2019.02.018. ISSN 2211-9736. https://researchonline.gcu.ac.uk/files/58160942/finalsubmit10.pdf. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
7. ↑ Thomas, Amelia (28 February 2006). "Backstory: Extreme vacation". Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0228/p20s01-wome.html.
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "Freunde in der Fremde" (in de). Stern. 27 January 2006. https://www.stern.de/digital/online/hospitality-club-freunde-in-der-fremde-3504590.html.
9. ↑ Stellin, Susan (July 9, 2006). "Go to Strangers (and They'll Come to You)". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/travel/09prac.html.
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.. Budapest: Central European University. http://www.etd.ceu.hu/2007/luca_lucian.pdf. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
12. ↑ Локша, Анна Владимировна (2013). "О необходимости повышения социальной составляющей молодежного туризма в России" (in ru). Телескоп: Журнал Социологических И Маркетинговых Исследований (5). ISSN 1994-3776. https://www.elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=20380753. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
13. ↑ "Ein umstrittenes Geschäftsmodell" (in de-ch). tagblatt.ch. https://www.tagblatt.ch/ostschweiz/appenzellerland/ein-umstrittenes-geschaeftsmodell-ld.609319.
14. ↑ "Der Hospitality Club – ein Nachruf" (in de-at). unsere-zeitung.at. https://www.unsere-zeitung.at/2022/08/24/hospitality-club-ein-nachruf-2/.

## External links

* A podcast about hospitality club on German RTL

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