Credit Crunch Fuels Budget Travel

On the other hand, we might have less Aussie backpackers because they can´t afford it any more.

Not necessarily. What we lose is those people who turn to Sth America n Asia, from those who supposed to travel directly to Europe. We already lost a lot of them due our industry prices highrise but doesn't mean we can't loose more. Another change was when Sydney fellows disappeared for a while, as I've been told "they are busy with their mortgages".

At least it's been compensated with more European travellers but indeed some of these could be very picky, also they don't really belong to the hostel atmosphere.

On the other half, strong pounds against the aussie dollars could attract more aussies to UK, so we could gain more travelers having working holiday visas, people who work a year in the UK so they could have a holiday visa for another one. There are some statistics available but nothing this year, however the slowliness of bureaucracy won't be faster if you have to deal with 2.8 million visas annually.

Exactly my point!

We have really amazing numbers of guests from Brazil this year. (They are perfect for the hostel atmosphere!) Did you notice that, too?

Haven't looked into the papers yet, but I've seen a lot of Latin Americans around these days (Which makes me wondering as they rather come around the very off season, which is their holiday break.)

However, at HW it's about 3% of our annual segment for Brasilians (Same as last year, similar to Spanish and Mexicans). Do they come by groups or rather individuals? (We don't deal with groups.) We also have a lot of Portuguese walk ins... but not many Argentinians.

a LOT of aussies that travel europe work in the UK too, the pound to euro rate is probably almost as important as the aussie to euro. that and europe has NEVER been cheap for australians; but we're always still over here.

whilst i dont think it would have too big an impact on the number coming over; it probably will change their travel patterns - focussing more on the cheaper destinations... so pretty well anywhere outside the eurozone. it'd be interesting to see if there a change between say munich and berlin where there are quite big price differences - wanna look into that one for us klaus? ;)

spaniards/sth americans etc always seem to be en mass (we have LOADS here... not sure why) but they often seem like a lot more because theyre so damn loud and always hang around in groups. you never seem to find solo travellers and then on the rare occasion you do; they latch onto the otehr spanish speakers within a night.

and theyre all too damn cheap to drink in the bar! its hard to compete when you can buy a crate of beer around the corner for £10. aussies gravitate to the bar, spaniards to the kitchen.