Hospitality Club
| Part of a series on |
| Homestays |
|---|
| Hospitality exchange services |
| Hospitality for work |
| Hospitality for money |
| Home exchange and others |
| Area served | Global |
|---|---|
| Owner | Veit Kühne |
| Founder | Veit Kühne |
| Products | Homestay |
| Services | Social networking service |
| Launched | July 11, 2000 |
| 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. HC's specified goals were to facilitate "intercultural understanding ... bringing people together ... travelers and locals".[1]
History
[edit | edit source]
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
[edit | edit source]Hospitality 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 | edit source]- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b c Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b c Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
External links
[edit | edit source]- A podcast about hospitality club on German RTL