How to make hostelling more popular in the USA?

So maybe that is what is lacking in N America, together with hostels -- the two of them support each other. (They certainly do in Australia, sometimes aggressively.)

green tortoise does a tour up the west coast of the states (or at least between their 2 hostels in seattle and san fran)

There's a couple of other bus tours in the US like Suntrek Tours and Trek America. At least Suntrek uses hostels for their groups.

A couple more I just found with a Google search:

• http://www.backpackerbus.com/
• http://www.adventurebus.com/ap_home/ap_trips.asp

Maybe there needs to be better coordination between the tours and hostels, and better marketing for the bus tours?

Green Tortoise stopped their bus service between Seattle and San Fran several years ago. They still do tours to Grand Canyon, Death Valley and other scenic sites, all based on San Francisco.

I think the USA has plenty to offer travellers and it is close enough to Europe to be a much more popular destination than it currently is. I think it has more to offer than Australia and most travellers would combine it with a trip to Canada or Mexico.

Although there are some parts of the country that are very difficult to visit without a car there are some parts of the USA that are easy and cheap to get around. For instance there is a relatively good rail network in the Northeast, cheap Chinatown buses (again mostly in the Northeast) and the cheap $1 Megabus buses in California and the Mid West.

A lot of budget travellers in the US buy or rent a car to travel around and I think there is room in the market for a backpackers' car dealer providing a similar service to Travellers Autobarn or Wicked Campers as well as a rental car company specialising in cheap small manual hatchbacks instead of the big ugly automatics that you normally have to drive when you rent a car in the US.

I agree with santa klaus that the US will be the next big hostelling boom (one reason why I uploaded a lot of North American content to the BUG website last week).

I think it will start off with the bigger cities where transport networks already exist, with additional hostels filling in the gaps to create cross country travel routes and smaller hostels popping up in smaller towns that provide access to natural areas like national parks. There is a big opportunity for those that get in there first.

Many hostels are also not very fun. Hostels should offer many activities, and I think this should be a key marketing tool for the hostel.

I think it will take a while until US hostels will reach the same level as the European hostels. First of all, you will need a lot of young crowd traveling around the US, something like our 18-26 Interrailers -> Student discounts and bus passes would do, although it requires some interaction from the national tourism board... Which doesn't exist. I know there are a lot of Americans who are proud of their country, although the American dream is a rather nightmare nowadays and even a good wine needs some marketing, so it's not enough just to be proud of your country, you need some promotion as well.

Also the budget flights in Europe has brought a lot of 30's people to the hostels market, which helps a lot during off season. I wonder how the budget flight situation in the US is going alike?

When youth travel is popular, hostels will grow like mushrooms after rain. This could bring some healthy competition to the hostels, so the market will evolve by itself, just like in Europe. The bigger the competition is, the higher quality you can get, IMHO. So dodgy sofas won't be able to survive if travelers have a choice for alternate accommodation, also the race for the guests will increase the need for activities and all amenities, IMHO.