Handbook Update Planned
Last month I reported that the old Accommodation Guide will not be replaced this year. Now there’s been a post on the YHA forum giving (briefly) the latest state of play:
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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Chris,
If you could provide me with a summary of responses regarding ideas for a new guide, then I will forward this directly to the Marketing department.
Karl.
P.S. I already have ‘map of YHA location’ for each Youth Hostel on my list.
OK, Karl – here goes, but having become quite brassed off with the YHA over recent years I don’t expect miracles. The handbook should be precisely that – a handbook. It does not have to have an expensive glossy cover. The National Trust’s 2009 handbook has a cover of what looks like recycled paper but it’s still a handbook.
Yes, it should have a little map of each hostel, PLUS the grid reference, PLUS the distances to the next hostels, PLUS the opening times, PLUS details on whether there is a bike shed PLUS the cost per night to stay there (ha! ha!). The YHA did, after all, list the overnight price for years and years and members knew exactly where they stood. ‘Flexible pricing’ is now the reason that I, once an avid hosteller, now use hostels infrequently. I no longer take my family to them because they are so jolly expensive and I know that I am not alone in this!
I would also suggest that they put back in some photos of walkers and cyclists, who have more or less been airbrushed out. If producing a new (and useful) handbook is going to put too much strain on the YHA’s finances then I suggest that they produce a mini-handbook (1972-style) with all the above information that could be used to complement the website (excuse me while I get my computer out of my panniers).
I do admit to loathing the current Guide as it is next to useless.
I would suggest to YHA that a annual guide is required as a number one marketing tool ( as we now have no magazine anymore… now just a news sheet).
If the YHA don’t want a big guide handbook format due to production costs then as second best i would have an A5 booklet and use the production style as used in past editions of booklets used for Rent a Hostel/Family breaks.
If flexible pricing is to be standard than I cannot see why we don’t have : Price band A £9 to £12 for Adult / £6 to £9 for U18 as an example and other hostel services with the standard symbols.
Other possible options is a joint publication with dare i say the Independent hostel annual guide…which has improved greatly over the years.I realise that in the independent guide that each hostel entry is charged an advert fee.
Looking forward to see what we get in March.
It has been suggested that the abandonment of the Handbook / Guide was planned a few years ago, the cunning scheme being to first produce it only in alternate years, then omit vital information such as opening dates and prices, measures that have reduced the publication to something that will hardly be missed such that its demise doesn’t result in mass protests to the YHA. Is this so ?
How about producing a handbook, as YHA did until sometime in the 1980s, which easily fits into a pocket, and contains useful information about each hostel, like nearest store (if rural hostel), distance to other hostels, nearby attractions (including hills and their heights in mountain areas)- indeed all the things that haven’t appeared in the more recently produced “Guides”?
I quote from a letter that I received from the YHA’s Head of Communications when I complained in 2007 about the deletion of opening times from the Guide:
“The primary focus of the Guide has been on promoting the accommodation available to help members choose the destination which best suits them. Opening information is by its nature unhelpful since there is no guarantee that all the accommodation has not been taken. Members and others need to know what accommodation is available and to be able to book this quickly and easily. You can now make a single phone call to our contact centre or visit our web site to discover what accommodation is available and to book the accommodation you want.”
I suspect that Lounge Lizard is on the right track and that the YHA is looking at doing away with the handbook altogether.
Marie, that’s interesting.
The Guide is sent solely or primarily to MEMBERS who are well enough aware what the YHA offers so why has “the primary focus of the Guide has been on PROMOTING the accomodation available” when MEMBERS need basic information such as ‘Simple, Standard or Superior’ while “promoting the accomodation available” should be targeted at non-memers and non-users by more suitable forms of publicity than the Guide.
As for “opening information is by its nature unhelpful”, surely the Head of Communications can’t claim that it’s “unhelpful” for a YHA member to know that a certain hostel is for example closed, or closed except for Rent A Hostel, from October to March. Of course there’s “no guarantee that all the accomodation has not been taken” but that’s no reason not to readily provide members with the information they want.
Yes, the internet has its uses, but not everybody has internet access, and not all of those that do would want to use it for booking YHA accomodation, so there should still be the option of simply looking at the Guide to check opening dates and prices in a particular area, phoning to check bed availability and posting a cheque to the hostel.
With almost a complete change of senior management in the last year I’m not convinced that a two year old letter is necessarily indicative of current thinking.
I suspect that the website will remain the primary source of information because it’s what can be kept the most accurate but some form of paper is needed for when internet access isn’t possible for whatever reason.