Hospitality Club
| Founded | 2000 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Veit Kühne |
| Focus | Hospitality exchange, international understanding, networking |
| Location | |
Area served | Global |
| Method | Hospitality service |
| Website | www.hospitalityclub.org |
The Hospitality Club is an international, Internet-based hospitality service of appr. 707,000 members in 226 countries[1] Its members use the website HospitalityClub.org to coordinate accommodation and other services, such as guiding or regaling travelers. Hospitality Club is currently the second largest such hospitality network.
History
Hospitality Club was founded by Veit Kühne in July 2000 at Coblence / Rhineland with the help of his brethren Kay and Kjell Kühne, and friends[2] as a general-purpose Internet-based hospitality exchange organization. The organization, open to anybody, followed from a similar network organized by Veit Kühne exclusively for members of the student exchange organization AFS. The concept for Hospitality Club was inspired by the SIGHT hospitality network of Mensa and it is the successor of Hospex, the first Internet based hospitality exchange network, established in 1992 and with which it joined forces in 2005.[3] Membership has since increased dramatically.
Functioning
Membership in the organization is free and is obtained simply by registering on the website. The core activity of the organization is exchange of accommodation. Acting as a host, a member offers the possibility of accommodation at his leisure. As a guest, a traveler may find possible hosts and contact them through the website. No money is involved — guests and hosts do not pay each other. The duration of the stay, whether food is provided for free, for a fee or not at all, and all other conditions are agreed on beforehand to the convenience of both parties.
After meeting, the host and guest may comment about each other. This provides a means to establish reputation which is the main security measure. Users had to provide their real identity, which was screened by volunteers, and protected against changes. Apart from accommodation, members exchange other forms of hospitality, such as guiding visitors or providing travel-related advice. There are also forums where members may seek partners for travels, hitchhiking etc. Volunteers within the club formerly arranged meetings or camps which were events that lasted several days and "brought people together".
Organization and policies
The club was based on the work of hundreds of volunteers around the world. The motivation behind it was the idea that bringing people together and fostering international friendships will increase inter cultural understanding and strengthen peace. By sheer numbers, it is one of the largest hospitality networks, and there was a mission to find 1,000,000 friendly people.
The policy of the club explicitly forbids alternative uses, such as dating, job-seeking, commercial use, and website promotions.[4] The website includes a forum with certain rules - for example it is forbidden to post personal data of other members, and volunteers preferred not to discuss the organization's strategy on the forum, but encouraged members to contact them directly.[5] In order to protect members' mailboxes from spam and to keep trust in the network at high levels, a volunteer team scanned the messages being sent across the site, which frequently caused months' long delays in delivery. Members may also opt-out of this service and receive all messages directly.
Website analysis
There is no registered company behind the website, and the domain name is directly registered to the founder of the site, Veit Kühne,[6] who in 2006 was working full-time on Hospitality Club.[7] The site contains advertising from Google's AdSense - not to the amusement of members who dislike "Ukrainian Women for Free" on a non-profit club's homepage.
In recent years
Despite dramatic increase in numbers, M. Kühne did not want to rent an office, nor engage staff. The volunteers, who sacrificed their entire time for running the club, got increasingly uneasy with his ways to handle governance and finances. In November 2005, they asked him
- to give the Club a legal frame;
- to set up provisions that decisions be arrived at and solutions found through democratic processses;
- to make the Club’s finances transparent;
- to ensure respectful treatment of volunteers and members.
Veit Kühne never set seriously about probing into these issues; instead he gave the volunteers more workload. A commission was set up, and 6 months later dissolved; thousands of hours of discussing were lost with no outcome. When finally confronted, the founder was not ready for any compromise (summer 2006), so the most engaged and influential volunteers split off and set up BeWelcome with seat at Rennes, Bretagne.
After the volunteers had left, operations began to take considerable time. From summer 2006 onwards, applicants for membership or for volunteering had to wait for weeks and months for an answer to their request. The Club’s websites got abandoned one after the other; the “Meetings” website e.g. with Dec. 2008. The homepage exhibits Ambassadors and Volunteers that quit in 2006. Homepage Copyright: 2006 ! (11) Bed requests using the official channels might take 6 months or more - all communications were being spam-tested, which purportedly took time.
M. Kühne engaged other volunteers, but ever evaded transparency of rules. In 2007/08, some of the most faithful and devoted volunteers got kicked out by e-mail without any reason - even after not having logged in for 15 months! Arbitrariness reigned - the founder was aware and did nothing to stop it. - The Club lost most engaged volunteers; more members became inactive.( ) Regulations reminding of George ORWELL’s 1984 invited to abuses of power. Recourses to the founder proved futile( ); in 2007/08, there raged a censorship debate ( ). Volunteers that left, complained of unbearable conditions (5).
The Club’s websites got abandoned one after the other; the “Meetings” website e.g. with Dec. 2008.( ) Posts like >Why is HC death?< ( ) eliciting manifold similar experiences did little to encourage potential members / volunteers. -
In November 2011, the founder announced a partnership with the Californian hôtel broker Airbed & Breakfast [AirBnB]. All over sudden, in July 2012, he mailed a long letter to several members asking them to subscribe the scheme within short delay. The partnership - resented by most members - yields HC a provision with every booking. The broker's profit scheme contrasts diametrically against HC's and its members' idealism; apart from advertising for their own competitor, as each bed can either be marketed with profit, or be ceded for philanthropic reasons for free.
As of 2014, the grief goes that > 90 % of members are inactive since ages - a fact that can be ascertained by clicking the profiles. With such a degree of participation, even some major cities have but 1 - 10 active members left (7).(8) - The exchange websites are functioning, provided you find a host still ‘’’active’’’. – On the other hand, the forum’s posts normally elicit no response - except the thread which claims that HC needs a most thorough overhawl.( ) The primary reasons for the disillusionment you find in every forum, every blog are a) the huge percentage of "dead wood" = inactive members, and b) the leader's inaction and inaccessibility. The basic problem is that M. Kühne is keeping all the reins in his hands, but all enquiries to his ‘’’personal’’’ e-mails go nowhere.
- Last not least, all improvement schemes of motivated members meet dead silence from Dresden Headquarters, and the founder posts but every couple of years, announcing improvements that never materialize - this stalls and stifles whatever initiative (9, 10). The young ones join CouchSurfing; the dead wood stays.
See also
References
- ^ Based on statistics from Hospitality Club 'Main Menu' page visible for logged-in members only; retrieved on September 9, 2013.
- ^ Hospitality Club About us page HospitalityClub.org
- ^ http://hospex.org/
- ^ Stop Spam in the Hospitality Club
- ^ Hospitality Club Forum rules
- ^ Registration of hospitalityclub.org from WHOIS
- ^ Christian Science Monitor: Backstory: Extreme vacation (at Christian Science Monitor)
External links
- Hospitality Club website
- Hospitality exchange organisation grows to 100,000 members at Wikinews
- Detailed Volunteer Information
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