Wot? No Handbook?
Two years have passed since the publication of the last YHA handbook, so you might be expecting to see a new one hitting your doormat amidst all the other Christmas post. Well, you’re going to be disappointed as YHA have decided not to issue a new guide, at least not yet, as they deem it too expensive.
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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I thought that a new Guide was in process, this was the reason given for the September(ish) copy of the ‘wonderful’ sales brochure, sorry, Discover magazine not being published!
I’ve heard that Independant Hostels have got together to publish a guide covering the whole of the UK.
If that’s too difficult for YHA, HINI and An Oige, then surely it might be possible for the YHA Guide to include a double page featuring basic details such as a map, addresses and phone numbers.
There was one until a few months ago. It needed updating e.g. phone numbers for E&W hostels but as I understand it isn’t to be republished because one of the other associations won’t contribute towards the cost.
All that is needed is a small handbook (the size of the 1972 one) with hostel names, addresses and contact details and other useful information such as overnight prices, opening times, grid references, location maps, distances to the next hostels and symbols representing the facilities on offer. This cheap-to-produce little handbook would complement the website. In 1972 it was used without a website and worked very well! Of course, the puffery that infests the current (or outdated, take your pick) Guide along the lines of “Shattered parents can relax in a luxury deckchair as the children enjoy themselves plucking hermit crabs from kelp-covered rockpools” would have to be omitted but I think I could live with that. You are right – the Guide does not need to be glossy and expensive (nor does it need to resemble a Mothercare catalogue). It needs to be practical – which means putting back into it the information that will make it useful again.
1972 – far too big. 1945 is what you want. Everything you list except the location maps and in a book so small you can almost forget it’s in your pocket.
For one I don’t miss the location maps as I found them next to useless in a lot of cases due to the lack of scale.
I would like to get some old handbooks, I nearly have a full set but would like to get the rest especially 1964 any one out there can you help please mail me if you can Alan
So yet another thing that us members get is being sacrificed. what exactly do we pay our membership fee for?
HANDBOOK Why not go like the Scots? Excellent for pocketing and locations, bookings, etc. very much cheaper to produce. I find them very useful.
I have just received my copy of the ‘2009 YHA Network Update’, which has been produced in a useful size for travelling (about the size of the 1975 handbook) but which contains very little information apart from the name of the town or village in which the hostel is situated, the phone number, and a few symbols of what is on offer. The entry for Crowden, for example – that new hostel that apparently has no members’ kitchen – gives the address as ‘Glossop, Derbyshire’ along with the postcode. There is, of course, still room for the usual irritating puffery.
There is a little bit inside the front cover that reads, “Members have asked for more information to be included and we will be looking at this in planning the next full edition [of the Guide]“. Too right. Information such as price, opening times, full address, map and everything else that has been taken out to the extent that the Guide is now next to useless.
Marie, if you go to the forum on the YHA website you’ll find that most of the things you want are mentioned there and that forum is monitored by YHA mamnagement.
The addresses quoted in this update are the full postal addresses. I use the postcode to get a streetmap map of the location which I then use for navigation (the third level of magnification up is 1:25000 which I find right for what I want).
Crowden’s facilities are discussed in the thread on conference motions.
Er … yes, but this is hardly going to help anyone without access to a computer who has just got off the bus in the middle of Glossop or wherever.
I have read the comments about Crowden on the other thread, which is how I know it has no members’ kitchen. Another one to avoid.
Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. If anyone tries to navigate by either the information provided now or by the sketch map provided in the past then I’d rather not they be navigating for me.
So you can’t cook a full meal at Crowden – big deal.
Well, yes, it is a big deal. Being able to have access to a kitchen where you can cook your own food is/was one of the YHA’s strengths. Never mind – I’m sure the independents are taking note.
The YHA, by its very nature, caters for – or used to cater for – independent travellers who often want a flexible itinerary, not some concrete schedule that they have worked out on a computer in advance. The handbook as it used to be provided all the detail required to do this, and in a lightweight format – as the SYHA still manages to do.
I’m not disagreeing about the general importance of s/c but you’re focusing on one hostel, which incidentally isn’t owned or operated by YHA, as a sympton of a general decline. Looking through the update I found 6 (out of 160+)YHA operated hostels which don’t have s/c kitchens (St Paul’s, St Pancras, River Dart, Lee Valley, Cambridge & Helmsley – I’m checking this one out as I find it very surprising if it’s correct) together with 4 (Abergavenny, Danywenallt, Swansea & Crowden) Enterprise hostels. In total that’s about 5% of the overall total. So if s/c is that important to you that it overrides any other reason you have for going to an area/hostel then you know now which ones to avoid.
You might alse be surprised to learn that I don’t disagree with you about what should go in the guide. I don’t think prices will ever go back in as I don’t see flexible prices going away but I don’t see why the price range shouldn’t be quoted. Similarly with opening dates I don’t think these will exact but a note about generality e.g. open Summer only or weekends only in Winter would hurt.
One of the reasons for not producing a guide this year is that there’s some work going on to define customer expectations at each hostel things like what time is it open, are the beds made for you (as happens in some bigger city hostels) so that users know if they go from statying at Oxford Street to Jordans it isn’t going to be possible to arrive at 2 am and find your bed made for you.
Not having a current SYHA handbook does it have the prices for every night in as they operate felxible pricing too? I learnt this week that at their flagship hostel in Edinburgh they review and adjust as necessary the prices for the next few nights up to 4 times a day!
Sorry guys but a full handbook is expensive and a waste of vital resources. SYHA gave up the handbook 7 years ago and the small guide with basic info works well. More detailed information is available on the website and remember most people prefer to use web for researching holidays, that is a fact. I don’t wish to appear rude, but is it not supposed to be a YOUTH orginisation, almost all young people at home and from overseas use the web daily, its what they expect. To have YHA policy designed to meet the needs of a tiny minority of older members who love the smell of paper is totally misplaced.
I found this in the 1953 handbook and I think it’s still relevant today:-
A final warning – Each year members experience difficulties because they have not read the handbook correctly. Make sure the hostels will be open on the nights you wish to visit them, and read the YHA bulletin to keep in touch with importany changes in hostel details.
Vintage Handbooks:
I note that someone is looking for some old handbooks for their collections. I have some SYHA handbooks for sale if you want to let me know which years you are after.
I had to smile on receiving my Spring copy of YHA Life this morning.
“Double whammy for Sussex” it proclaims in its front-page heading. There follows an article on the opening of two new hostels on the South Downs Way.
A ‘double whammy’? According to the Oxford Dictionary, and as I expect most people outside of Matlock know, a whammy is ‘an event with a powerful and unpleasant effect, a blow’ (or, if one cares to apply the US definition, ‘an evil or unlucky influence’).
How on earth did this mass-mailing find its way out of Matlock uncorrected? Sounds like good news on the hostel front, though – especially the opening of a self-catering hostel at Eastbourne.