YHA Accommodation Guide
The new handbook’s been out for about a month now, so a review of it is long overdue. Here’s an overview of what’s in it, what’s no longer in it, and what needs to go back into the next one…
The front cover sets the family-friendly tone that the YHA is clearly keen to emphasise, and also sets the stage for the bold use of photography throughout the book.Having opted for glossy, full-colour printing on every page, YHA have maximised the return on this investment by using plenty of good pictures to illustrate the world of hostelling. Outside the hostel door, images drawn from VisitBritain’s photo agency Britain on View complete the picture.
The first fifteen pages introduce the YHA and its services, covering issues like “What to expect in a Youth Hostel” and “Great Food Available”. I’m pleased to see they’re attacking people’s preconceptions of what youth hostels are like – perhaps remembered from some dim-and-distant school trip – with statements like this:
Relax
Times have changed. You don’t have to share, do chores or stay out in the rain. Sit back and relax for as long as you like or explore the wide world outside day or night. It’s up to you.
Then we’re into the hostel listings. As usual they’re split up into regions, but the regions have been reorganised as follows:
- London
- The Island of Jersey
- The South West
- Home Counties and the South East Coast
- East Anglia, Fens and Beaches
- Sherwood Forest and Lincolnshire Wolds
- Stratford and the Welsh Borders
- Derbyshire Dales, Peaks and Staffordshire Moorlands
- Yorkshire Dales, Moors and Coastline
- North West Cities and Lakeland
- Northumberland, Durham and Hadrian’s Wall
- Welsh Mountains, Moors and Coastline
A fold-out map inside the back cover allows you to trace the boundaries of the new regions (it appears that the decision to merge the old North West Cities and Lakeland was taken so late that the map shades them in two different colours). The more descriptive names may be helpful to tourists, but what won’t help them is that the web site still uses the old regions – making it more difficult to use the two in conjunction with eachother.
Each region’s section opens with a large-scale road map (railway stations are marked too) which helps locate the hostels in broad terms. Of course the more rural places tend to be away from the roads and towns marked on the map, but it’s still a big improvement on what’s gone before and should be welcomed.
After that come the accommodation listings, listed three per page in the case of hostels, up to six per page for bunkhouses, camping barns and other places. Hostel locations are classified as “City”, “Countryside” or “Coast” and labelled with a coloured bar on the edge of the page. The classification idea is a good one, but it’s a shame to lose the colour-coded sections that made it easy to find a particular region in the book.
The listings follow the regrettable trend of putting less and less information about hostels in the handbook. Once upon a time the handbook would tell you
- What dates the hostel was open
- How much it cost to stay
- A map and directions to help you find it
- Which OS map you’d find it on
- How far to the nearest shop/pub/bus stop/railway station
Now, in the age of Information Technology, all this information is excised from the book. Instead we get a picture, a star rating, a price band (which can be cross-checked with the table on the bookmark to get a minimum price), an address, a paragraph of text, and a row of icons indicating the hostel’s facilities (there’s a key to them in the back cover). Only if it’s a camping barn do you get distances to shops and pubs, an OS (Landranger) map number and a map reference. I’d like to see this information available for all properties.
The lack of maps and/or directions is a serious omission. I worry for the family attracted by this glossy brochure to spend a weekend at, say, Tanner’s Hatch – who spend the night wandering the woods trying to find it. Sure, the information is available (up to a point) on the internet, but that’s not a lot of help when you’re in the middle of a wood at one o’clock in the morning!
The volume finishes with a web-style “Frequently Asked Questions” section and two indexes, one listing hostels by City/Countryside/Coast location, the other listing them alphabetically. Guest houses, bunkhouses and camping barns have their own separate indexes.
Though there are odd pages placed between the regional sections covering aspects of hostelling such as volunteering or Hostelling International, there’s no mention of affiliated groups anywhere in the book. As there’s nothing about us on the website either it means that there’s no mention in any YHA publication that groups even exist. Group members may be forgiven for being sceptical about the YHA establishment’s professed enthusiasm for YHA groups!
Conclusion
So what is the final verdict on the latest incarnation of the handbook? As a glossy brochure intended to attract people – especially young families – into the world of hostelling, it’s a pretty good piece of work. I hope it succeeds in that ambition. However, as a guide, which is what it says on the cover after all, it’s less useful. Form has been allowed to triumph over function. There’s simply not enough information there to guide you to the hostel – which is what one might expect the purpose of a hostel guide to be. Let’s hope for better in 2009…
Hello,
very impressed by YHA, could you tell me how to order latest ACCOMMODATION GUIDE.
Many thanks
Allen,
If you live in England or Wales, just join the YHA and they’ll send you a copy. You can join on their web site.
If you live elsewhere (your email address implies you’re in France), I suggest you contact them to find out how to get one (Customer Services is probably the best place to start). Failing that you should be able to pick up a copy at a YHA hostel, but that might be a little late!
There really ought to be a section on the YHA web site aimed at foreign visitors. There’s quite a bit for YHA members going abroad, but nothing for those going the opposite way. I’ll suggest it…
Please add another comment to let us know how you get on – there may be others reading this page with the same problem.
I thought I’d received a Mothercare catalogue by mistake! Couldn’t find many glossy photos of rucksacks or touring bicycles – seems they have been airbrushed out.
The biggest annoyance for me has been the total lack of information on when the hostels are open. I contacted the YHA and received a predictable reply about the information being available on the internet (great when you’re travelling). They also told me that I could phone them to find out. BUT the numbers are those 0870 numbers which (correct me if I’m wrong) cost more to call than a standard STD number and for which the YHA receives a proportion of the cost of each call. Hence the YHA appears to be charging their customers for the privilege of finding out when the hostels are open!
I have not liked the guide ever since they went to every two years which combined with the flexi pricing made it impossible for them to include current overnight prices. When I first started hostelling and didn’t have access to the net, the guide book was my only way of knowing what a hostel was charging. Now anyone who can’t get access to the net has no idea what a particular hostel charges. The card with the abc etc categories is no help.
With the new handbook I was surprised at there being no map references, the MBA got in to problems several years ago, as if they where a secret society, do lets know where your hostels are, as not everybody has the internet and the new ones are not even on the OS maps, so how do we find them and use them?
I’ve hardly looked at the latest handbook, mainly because it’s of little use without opening dates, prices, maps and other such useful information that always used to be included.
Absence of small, detailed map and OS map reference to hostel locations is so silly!! Have we learnt nothing over the past years?
I met up with some members of my old YHA Group in the summer. During after-dinner conversation it became clear that the biggest YHA bugbear (other than en suites) is ‘flexible pricing’. This was clearly putting people off using hostels because of a perception that they were being ripped off. If someone is the first to book a hostel in advance, how does the manager know whether he/she will be the only occupant or whether the hostel will be bursting at the seams, and so how can they quote a price based on ‘flexible pricing’? I booked a friend into a hostel for two nights and was quoted over £2 more for the second night. When I queried it, I was told, ‘Flexible pricing!, as if it were some kind of favour. Well, I couldn’t exactly check the right price in the handbook, could I? Can’t help thinking that there must be a law against this sort of thing. Anyone from the Consumers’ Association or the Office of Fair Trading out there?
Hotels, B&Bs even campsites all do exactly the same thing. If the anticipated demand for a particular night is thought to be greater than for other nights the price for that night goes up.
YHA sets it’s prices 12 months in advance. if you look a hostel up on the website and click on the ‘check availability’ button you can find the price for any night up to 31st October 2009.
I beleive it’s called supply and demand.
Yes – the hostels supply the service but the demand for them is going down owing to their suspiciously-viewed pricing strategy.
“Suspiciously viewed” = “misunderstood” or if I’m being cynical “can’t be bothered to find out, so I’ll just moan about it instead”
Incidentally variable pricing rates are nothing new in YHA. Go back to the 1950s and you’ll find different prices for high summer, spring/autumn and winter (if the hostel was open). The current position is still the same but just has more effort put into identifying when the peaks and troughs of demand are.
It seems that I have caused you to rattle the bars of your cage, which wasn’t my intention. I was not moaning at all, just reporting an observation made during a discussion with a group of former hostellers. You are quite right regarding the current pricing system being ‘misunderstood’; it would appear that it is so widely misunderstood that, if my experience is anything to go by, people are looking elsewhere to find accommodation because they are feeling ripped off by ‘flexible pricing’.
One of the YHA’s strengths (certainly during the 1970s onwards) was that the bednight prices were the same throughout the year, You could glance in the handbook (not everyone has a laptop in their rucksack) and know exactly where you stood. I was never left feeling that the price was too expensive, but that is not the case now. I am a little taken aback by the wording of your postings but so be it. Hope the weather is not too bad up there in Matlock. Don’t forget to put the 1950s handbooks back in the archive.
LOL – you think I’m a member of YHA staff. Oh how far from the truth you are.
I think you are confusing too expensive with flexible pricing. I’d bet that even if hostels reverted to a single price all year round there would be complaints that it’s too expensive and there would be suggestions that prices should be lower in the off season. I’m sure we would all love to see prices lower but I suspect the current economic climate won’t allow it.
I apologise if my tone upsets you as I have no intention of shooting the messenger but I have little tolerance with those who pontificate without bothering to check the validity of what they spout without checking why the situation is what it is or bemoan the good old days through some sort of rosy eyed spectacles which society today cannot support.
I should add that I work for a firm who deal with company administration and winding up. All too often the problem was an unrealistic business case and poor adaptability to what was going around them. I don’t agree with quite a lot that YHA is trying to do but I do applaud it’s efforts to ensure that it does react to external pressures and not try to stick to a untenable course.
Sadly those pressures are more economic than social which is where my intolerance of those who think YHA can ignore economic factors comes in.
There is some stuff on uk.rec.youth-hostel about Travel Lodge’s Winter promontion which may or may not be a loss leader effort. I’m sure there are any number of us here who would like YHA to offer similar prices but I think it would be pretty silly to offer places at a loss. Loss leaders only work when they generate a growth in sales elsewhere (supermarket alcohol prices being a case in point), for YHA I don’t see this working, more customers in winter doesn’t necessarily relate to a significantly higher number of customers in summer.
the yha is supposed to be a charity providing accomodation for people with limited means. the flexible pricing policy is pure profiteering by thinking we can get away with charging more for this night so we will. who suffers? the very people they are supposed to be helping.
And the YHA suffers, too – hoist by its own petard. The group of former hostellers that I met with are mostly middle-class professionals with families, but most of them had, in the last few years, traded in their YHA membership cards for membership of the Camping and Caravanning Club. The general view was that hostels might be used on the odd night if they were in a convenient location but that they would not be considered for a holiday or even a short break.
The main reasons for this were:
1. Hostels are too expensive now (this was by far the main reason stated for not using them);
2. Flexible pricing is perceived as a rip-off, and Bed and Breakfast pricing (where you have to pay for the breakfast whether you want it or not) is a disincentive;
3. The ethos has changed; there is a sense of rejection among hikers and cyclists (plenty about this on the CTC’s website, incidentally);
4. En suites – these were considered all right for use by family groups but not when sharing a dorm with strangers;
5. The emphasis on ‘luxury hostels’ (which is an oxymoron!) rather than on clean, inexpensive accommodation.
I shall now wait for Neil to come out of hibernation!
Marie
much of me itches for an argument but frankly I can’t be bothered. Instead I’d like to here what these ex hostellers would like YHA to be. By that I don’t mean nice little one liners like ‘how it used to be.’ but things like what price would they, on their middle class professional salaries, be prepared to pay, what sort of ethos there should be and how is that achieved etc. Oh and is it actually possible without YHA going bust.
I don’t like everything about YH, in fact of the six things you list I agree about three (b&b pricing, ensuites & luxury hostels – although I don’t recall where YHA has ever made claims about this) but the lack of specifics by the critics about how they would do it were they running the show irritates me.
Elsewhere on this site Chris has posted about the opportunities for YHA members to get more involved, why don’t some of those who like to snipe get along to these events where among other things they can question and talk with the people who run YHA?
On 10th November Neil commented “Go back to the 1950s and you’ll find different prices for high summer, spring / autumn and winter”.
Having only been born in the mid 1950s I would be interested to see evidence of this especially as I have only heard older hostellers talking of “the magic shilling” not of “the magic 9d in winter, the magic shilling in spring or autumn and the not-quite-so-magic 1s 3d in high summer”.
However, if Neil is correct on this, then the YHA soon abandoned the system in favour of the simplified one price all year round as confirmed by my oldest handbook, the 1970 version which lists overnights as 6 shillings for Seniors, 5s. for Juniors and 4s. for Young.
By the 1973 handbook prices were further varied according to Simple, Standard, Superior and Special grading with higher rates for the three London hostels
I’ve had a look through my own collection and have the following which might help
1) Upto and including 1944 the overnight price was the magic 1/- per night. But hiring a sheet sleeping bag was 4d for up to 3 nights use.
2) 1945-47 Still 1/- per night but SSB hire now 6d hire
3) 1948 – 1950 Overnight up to 1/6 per night and SSB hire 9d.
4) 1951 – 1952 SSB increased to 1/- hire (still for upto 3 nights).
5) 1953 – 1955 The first flexible price. Overnight fees went up to 2/- per night April 1st – September 30th but 1/6 outside this period. SSB remained 1/- , however a 2d a night charge was made to ‘hostellers who have meals prepared in the members kitchen or use any of the kitchen facilities’!
6) 1956 Flexible pricing stopped and a flat 2/6 per night all year round (a 67% for the off season!). Other charges as 1955
7) 1957. As 1956 but use of the kitchen now 3d per night.
8) 1958 – 1959 Overnight now 3/- per night. Other charges as 1957 (In 1959 meal prices were standardised having been different at different hostels/regions until this point)
9) 1960 – 1961 As 1959 but one important difference. Until now juvenile fees were 50% of senior/junior fees. In 1960 although the senior/junior overnight remained 3/- the juvenile fee went upto 2/- per night.
10) 1962 As 1961 but SSB hire now 1/3
11) 1963 – 1964 Seniors/Juniors 3/6, Juveniles 2/-, others as 1962
12) 1965 Seniors/Juniors 4/-, Juveniles 2/6, other charges as 1964.
13) 1966 – 1968. Another big change introduced in 1966. Firstly separate rates are quoted for Seniors (21+), Juniors (16 – 20) and Juveniles (under 16) whereas previously Senior/Junior prices had always been the same. The new prices for 1966 were 5/-, 4/-, 3/- respectively. Secondly higher prices were applied to the two central London hostels (Holland House 7/6, 6/6, 4/- & Earls Court 6/-, 5/-, 3/6) This is the first record I can find of this. The third London hostel (Highgate) used the nationwide prices. Other charges remained as 1965.
14) 1969 Another increase to 6/-, 5/-, 4/-. (I’m not listing the London charges) Other charges as before. The Juvenile membership changed from to Young.
15) 1970 Prices as 1969 except kitchen use raised to 6d per night. 1970 also saw the first car parking being allowed at some hostels. Parking charges being levied at those hostels (2s per night for a car or minibus)
16) 1971. As well as decimalisation, this was also the year that hostels started to be graded as simple, standard and superior with different prices for each. SSB hire also went up to 10p (2/-). The hostel prices were simple 30p, 25p, 20p (no change from 1970), standard 35p, 30p, 25p, superior 40p, 35p, 30p
17) 1972. Yet more change as the charge for the use of the members kitchen was abolished but strangely all the overnight charges went up 5p per night. Also a fourth category of hostel was introduced Special. Each of the hostels in this category Earls Court, Highgate, Holland House, Patterdale and Pen-y-Pass had there own prices.
18) The introduction of VAT (at 10%) meant that all hostels as well as coming into the four categories previously listed (actually divided in to the previous 4 plus London) also had to be categorised as VAT or non VAT giving a total of 7 different prices for a senior member depending on which hostel they stayed at! (Sorry but my brain is starting to fry here so I’m not going to list all the separate prices) But of course there was only one price per hostel dependant on your age.
19) Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more complicated, in 1974 the VAT threshold was introduced for virtually all simple and most standard grade hostels. This meant that some hostels were VAT exempt and therefore there were two prices to stay at a simple hostel, A VAT price and a non VAT price. 1974 also saw the first £1 per night charge (for seniors at Holland House) this was more than double the price for seniors at simple grade hostels where it was 46p (or 42p if the hostel was non VAT).
20) This stayed the general pattern but with annual increases in overnight charges & SSB hire until 1984 when the different charges for VAT and non VAT hostels were scrapped and car parking fees were also abolished.
21) 1988 starts to lose me. Inside each grade of simple, standard, superior, it appears there was a lower and a higher rate so a hostel could be simple 1 or simple 2 etc. All special graded hostels were one price and London hostels had their own ranges. This gave 8 different price ranges.
22) In 1990 the eight ranges was increased to nine.
23) 1993 was the next set of changes when the membership categores were reduced to two, adult and under 18 and SSB hire charges were discontinued.
24) 1996 sees the first room pricing structure introduced for certain hostels.
That’s about it until the current regime was introduced in 2006. As a summary I hope this is of interest. Obviously there are oddities like the 3d per night charge at some hostels in the post war period for the oil used in lighting etc but I think I’ve captured the main points.
Finally if anyone has any of the following handbooks they are prepared to sell (give me? :) ) to complete my collection please email me at nepperATtotaliseDOTcoDOTuk. I’m after 1931 – 1934, 1940, 1941, 1944 and 1992 to finish the set off.