Hospitality Club
Template:Short description Template:Homestay service Template:Other uses of Template:Infobox website 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".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
History
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Hospitality Club was founded in July 2000 in Koblenz, by Veit Kühne, who was inspired by a trip to South America.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=umstrittenes/><ref name=top10>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It later incorporated technology from Hospex.org, a similar service.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 2005, a disagreement between some members of Hospitality Club and its founder led to the foundation of BeWelcome.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Many HC members, who became volunteers within Couchsurfing, left HC towards CS because of its missing legal status and insufficient management transparency.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
In February 2006, Kühne was working full-time on Hospitality Club.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In the spring of 2006, an event took place in Riga with 430 participants from 36 countries.<ref name=stern/>
As of July 2006, the site had 155,000 members.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> This number grew by around 1,000 new members a week in 2006.<ref name=stern>Template:Cite news</ref>
In 2007, Google Trends search volume for hospitalityclub.org started to decline and was overtaken by the search volume for CouchSurfing.<ref>Template:Cite conference</ref>
In 2008, HC had more than 400,000 members from 200 countries.<ref name=top10/>
In 2013, HC had more than a half of million members from 200 countries.<ref name=noobligation>Template:Cite journal</ref>
By 2017, only one third of members were still active.<ref name=umstrittenes>Template:Cite news</ref>
By April 2022, the website was completely offline.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Safety measures
[edit]Hospitality Club had a reputation system, whereby members left references for others.<ref name=stern/> For added safety, members were encouraged to check each other's passports, although it rarely happened.<ref name=top10/>
References
[edit]External links
[edit]- A podcast about hospitality club on German RTL