Hospitality Club

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Hospitality Club is a so-called online hosting service . It was founded by Veit Kühne in Dresden in July 2000 , making it the first online service of its kind. In the period that followed, it found many supporters, first family and friends, and later volunteers worldwide. In mid-August 2010, according to the club's website, there were over 615,000 members offering each other free accommodation and help with travel.

Membership and Features

Membership in the Hospitality Club as well as the use of an overnight stay or a private sightseeing tour are free of charge.

Entry to the HC camp in Monnai , France . hospitality throughout the world

To become a member, the administrators only need to be given their name and address to ensure that their identity can be verified. Potential guests can access the database either geographically or using an advanced search method e.g. B. search for common interests. An internal control mechanism for establishing contact should ensure the confidential handling of e-mail addresses and prevent spam. The guidelines of the Hospitality Club explicitly prohibit other types of use, such as B. Dating, job search or commercial use.

The length of stay and other agreements - for example whether meals and other additional services are also free or not - can either be entered in your own profile or are individually agreed between the individual members.

After using the service, you can leave a comment about your guest or host. Similar to z. For example, the eBay rating system is intended to build mutual trust.

Until the end of 2008 there were regular larger meetings. Since then, only those that were organized directly by the members.

organization

The club is managed by the founder and by volunteers all over the world, most of the work is done in so-called "volunteer teams" that take care of certain areas of the club. There is no information about the legal status of the organization and its financing on the website, which is hosted by a German provider, and there is no legal notice. An address in Radebeul on Augustusweg is given as the contact address for the Hospitality Club . The lack of transparency led to a controversy with some volunteers and ultimately to the fact that they founded their own network with BeWelcome under the umbrella of their own non-profit organization.

history

Hospex, the first internet-based hospitality network founded in 1992, joined and became part of the hospitality club in 2005.

In 2006, an agreement with several volunteers who called for the project to be opened up (business structure, financial transparency, co-determination) failed. That led to the start of BeWelcome .

In 2012, the club and Airbnb , a commercial agency for private accommodation , started a cooperation . During this campaign, all members of the club were written to and asked to rent out accommodation for a fee through Airbnb, with part of the proceeds going to the hospitality club as a donation. Critics viewed this cooperation as a sell-out of the club's addresses. The founder Veit Kühne justified the action with the need to cover the server costs.

In 2019 it was announced to start a relaunch with a new website and own app. Both should be open source.

See also

Web links

  • hospitalityclub.org
  • Cosima Schmitt: Be my guest. Worldwide and free of charge, the members of an internet forum offer a bed in their apartment. On a test visit to Hungary. (No longer available online.) In: Die Zeit . July 29, 2004, archived from the original on December 4, 2016 (from: Die Zeit. July 29, 2004, No. 32; experience report).;

swell

  1. ↑ Couchsurfing Alternatives in 2019 , Cycloscope, accessed on August 9, 2019
  2. ↑ About us page HC.
  3. ^ Stop Spam in the Hospitality Club.
  4. ↑ Request to centralops.net for the domain hospitalityclub.org. In: centralops.net, accessed on June 20, 2019.
  5. ↑ Contact. Hospitality Club website, accessed January 16, 2014.
  6. ↑ History of BeVolunteer , accessed August 9, 2019
  7. ↑ hospex.org.
  8. ↑ History of BeVolunteer , accessed August 9, 2019
  9. ^ Hospitality Club and Airbnb Partnership. ( Memento of July 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Hospitality Club website.
  10. ↑ Discussion about the cooperation with AirBnB. In: Hospitalityclub.org, discussions. Retrieved October 18, 2015.
  11. ↑ Facebook posting by Veit Kuehne