How welcome, then, to find on my doormat a new incarnation of an old friend. The new YHA News is a twelve-page colour newsletter combining news from the network and features about hostelling at home and abroad. It’s still a piece of marketing of course, but it feels more like a magazine and less like a sales brochure than Discover ever did.

Of particular interest to readers of this site is a letter from Margaret Bray, now living in New Zealand, remembering her days in an (unnamed) YHA Local Group just after the war:

For Ken and me, with no secure home life, our local Youth Hostels association groups which sprang up after the war became family, and for many other teenagers feeling similarly displaced. Several members, like us, came from broken homes, a few were young men demobbed from the armed forces, most of us probably feeling a bit lost after six fractured years of war. We met socially every Thursday night in a nearby hall. Spare cash was non-existent, but Youth Hostels were cheap We democratically organized ourselves with a committee and a constitution. We organized our own programmes.

Thriving from the friendship, we hostelled by either biking or walking as a group almost every weekend and summer holiday, leaving bombed out London behind to explore the English countryside. We’d wander down to the village pub in the evening, making a glass of sweet-and-sour cider, or a glass of beer last all the evening before going back to our dormitories. We even spent our Christmasses together at a hostel despite them closing between ten and five. We went for walks round the villages to fill in those winter hours outdoors and made our own simple fun in the evenings with games, ghost stories, or playing cards. On Christmas Eve we went to the poorly attended midnight service in those old village churches, often doubling the congregation, to the vicar’s delight.

We looked out for each other, affirmed each other, knew the good and bad sides of us all. More like brothers and sisters really. After all not much glamour remains after hours of cycling, walking or climbing in pouring rain, or coping with punctures, tiredness, grumpiness, sunburn or getting lost. My father always thought, wrongly, that we were “up-to-no-good” but romance did of course eventually blossom, and thirteen couples married in our early twenties, almost all proving successful and rewarding.

An experience not entirely unrecognisable to YHA group members today, I think. It’s just a shame that they fail to point out that hostelling groups aren’t some vanished artefact of the 1940s and 50s, but alive and well and meeting in a town near you! Oh well, maybe next issue.

An accompanying questionnaire invites feedback on YHA’s communcations, and what you’d like to read about in the future. All-in-all, I think this marks a very promising development in YHA’s relationship with its members.

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Just make your booking, via the web site or central booking, before 31st March using the special code 995Beds-en1. Oddly, there’s no mention of this offer on the YHA website’s front page or special offers page, why have a sale and not tell everyone about it? However, a little Googling soon turns up the full details.

If you’re looking for a way to use this offer, how about coming to the YHA Groups Conference at National Forest next month? £9.95 a night is less than half price!

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There’s not much in the article that will surprise seasoned YHA-watchers, but it’s interesting to see one particular shift spelled out explicitly:

While the YHA’s fundamental product is good-value accommodation, it decided that the market for young backpackers travelling on a budget was already well catered for, and plumped for honing in on the market for young families instead.

The shiny new website (combined with press advertising and coverage that the article doesn’t mention) improved the public image of the YHA, but the job’s not done yet:

Changing people’s perceptions of the YHA is an ongoing issue. “We’ve been measuring the perception of the YHA brand through focus groups and telephone surveys and, at first, the new website did mean that people were responding to the brand more positively.

“But we didn’t see the same level of progress last year,” [Duncan] Simpson admits. “There is a stereotype of the hostelling industry that I have to fight against every day.”

Keep fighting, Duncan!

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Something I find interesting is that they brand themselves as “Hostelling Scotland” rather than anything to do with youth hostels. Is this a new thing?

Personally, I think it’s a good idea and reflects the age profile of the people you meet in hostels better than the Y word does. Maybe we can come up with something similar south of the border.

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Thanks to their Wales Early Bird Offer, you can save up to 25% at Borth, Bryn Gwynant, Conwy, Newport and Brecon hostels during August if you make your booking by the 27th February. All good hostels for a group weekend, and if you pick Conwy you’ll be able to take advantage of the refurbishment it’s currently undergoing.

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An update to the last issue of the Guide will be mailed in early March. Meanwhile, [the YHA] website is the best way of getting up to date information about Youth Hostels, and YHA more generally.

It’s not clear, but I assume that “an update to the last issue of the guide” will be a slim supplement to that document listing hostels which have closed and detailing ones that have opened since 2007.

This is better than nothing, but a long way short of ideal. We need a new handbook!

However, if we have to wait for one, let’s put the hiatus to good use and give YHA a steer as to what should go into it when (or if) it comes out. Let’s hear your thoughts, either on the YHA forum or in the comments here.

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The 21st century marketing term for this is “segmentation”, but the purpose is the same: helping hostellers know what to expect at any particular hostel. Is it a plush place full of private rooms and en-suite facilities, or a cottage with toilets and showers at the bottom of the garden? Since the  YHA network includes both extremes and everything in between, it makes sense to have some way to identify which is which.

Plans to reintroduce frizzy perms, acid-washed jeans and Bros have been denied…

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Of course, the scheme is beset by YHA marketing’s beloved “from” prices, so you’ll need to stay midweek to take advantage of the lowest rates. Still, even at weekends the prices are pretty low. So why not take the opportunity to blow out some post-Christmas cobwebs? Just remember to stay safe out there.

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Hostellers will have to make do with the website (due for an overhaul in the near future) or with old copies of the book. That’ll be no change for many seasoned members, who use old handbooks for bits of information dropped in more recent editions – such as maps to help you find each hostel.

It has not yet been decided whether to permanently abandon paper in favour of electronic publication. It would be a brave decision. The internet is a marvellous thing, but it’s a lot less convenient to shove into a rucksack, pannier or glove compartment.

Does a paper hostel guide have to be a glossy, full-colour, perfect bound behemoth? Scotland get by with a 36-page booklet (pictured left), some countries just issue a road map with the hostels marked on it and with their addresses on the back. Admittedly, YHA has a big network to publicise, but could this be a way forward?

Just this week, an email was sent to this website asking:

Is there a book which lists all the youth hostels in the UK, so that I know where to go when I get to town?

Setting aside the issue of the UK being covered by three HI associations, is that really a ridiculous thing to ask for?

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It’s a shame that, thanks to flexible pricing, the sale price is sometimes less than the “from” price. For example, if your thrilled at the prospect of staying at Minehead for only £10 a night, the shine may be taken off when you discover that the normal price promoted on the hostel’s web page is £9.95.

That’s the problem with flexible pricing – if the only price you show with any prominence is the lowest price ever charged, anything above that mark looks like a rip-off, especially if it’s a “sale” price. Oh well, at least you can now find out the correct price for any given night if you can access the web site and know where to look. If you don’t know where to look – try clicking the “Check Availability” box on a hostel’s page. As well as availability, it also has the prices!

Even more buried on the site is even better news about pricing:

The Government’s decision to cut VAT from December 1st 2008 gives a much needed boost to YHA and will now enable us to freeze our price bands at 2008 levels throughout 2009.

So, for once, there won’t be anybody grumbling about excessive rises in overnight prices next year – because prices aren’t going to change at all!

STOP PRESS: A post in the uk.rec.youth-hostel points out an interesting case. Thurlby YH was already being promoted with a £9.95 per person per night midweek winter offer. Now, as a result of this “sale”, the midweek price has gone up by 5p!

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