Look, its nearly a hotel!

The YHA pricing in Australia sucks. We travelled from Alice Springs to Brisbane (via Coober Pedy, Adelaide, GOR, Melb, Syd) and I had the little YHA book ready to go, dreaming back to my days in Europe, thinking we'd be saving money and staying in quaint buildings where we'd meet interesting people - ha! We didn't stay YHA at all - we couldn't afford to!

Onsite cabins/vans in caravan parks and hotels above pubs were always cheaper than the local YHA and often more lively.

Sydney is another example. I mean, sure, the big cities can charge more, but the prices at the Sydney YHAs are obscene - each time I've been there I've gone to an independent for close to half the price of a similar room at either of the YHAs (even at 'member' prices). There are often cheaper deals at PROPER hotels on wotif.com and I don't have to pay for a dinky membership card to stay there.

Boo hiss YHA Yamba. There's a caravan park in the centre of town that has cabins/motel rooms for same/cheaper price - go there instead!

They must be trying to move into an area they see as more profitable, but in some ways they're becoming budget hotels. Which is OK...

It is not OK, because they often do this at the taxpayer´s expense, and they don´t even pay those taxes back.
There are two YHA hostels in Vienna. They have been build with money of the city council. Which is a huge competetive advantage - WE have to take out bank loans to pay for construction. Then, since they are non-profit organizations, the do not have to pay taxes. No VAT, no profit tax, nothing. Which is again a huge competetive advantage.

Thank heaven they are too incompetent to make use of those remarkable advantages over independent hostels. If those YHA hostels would be well managed, they could wipe out a lot of their independent tax-paying competitors.

I´m not against YHA (or other non-profit) hostels in general. If you want to increase tourism in rural areas like the Outer Hebrides, government subsidies (or tax breaks) for providers of cheap accomodation are probably a good idea.

I´m getting pretty pissed off though if my tax Euros are used to ruin tax-paying businesses, which in effect decreases the tax base, so I´ll eventually end up paying even more taxes.

There is no need at all to hand out government money (or give tax breaks) to hostels in large cities, where independent hostels manage to provide better service for cheaper rates. It´s also a total waste to hand over luxurious real estate like the Abbey House in Whitby or the castle of Nuremberg to the YHA. Those buildings could well be sold to the highest bidder, so the huge sales revenue could be used in much better ways.

So, why don´t the governments do exactly that? Because politicians benefit from this corrupt system. There are two youth hostel associations in Austria, each one in the sphere of influence of one of the two big political parties. That´s right - we have a "social democrat" youth hostel assiciation and a "conservative" one. Both are used to provide well-paid jobs for "friends" who would otherwise have no hope to find a decent job in the real world. It´s an open secret that those apparatchiks use those jobs to stuff their pockets.

The first hostel I worked at was one of Munich´s YHA hostels. It had more than 500 beds, well over 90% occupancy rate, did not have to pay anything for the building (a wealthy widow donated it in the 1920ies), did not have to pay any taxes and only had to pay very little for most of the staff (you can work in YHA hostels in Germany instead of being drafted into the army). It still did not make a profit.
So, where do you think did all the money disappear?

Oh, it does. It just never appears in the books, just in the pockets of the apparatchiks.

YHA associations around the world has huge governance problems. Most of them are run by old fashion boards and most of them are not at all budget tourism minded. They are run my odler YHA life members and bureaucracy is so so heavy. A lot of money are spend in useless meetings and the politics behind it all is a non-sense. While YHA managers would love to see the association leaping in modern time, the administrative structure behind it all is discouraging.

YHA in Australia is dirrerent than most YHA Association around the world. They had cut lots of it's administrative structure in the pass 15 years and is now managed like a hotel chain with hotel industry minded managers. And yes, I agree the youth tourism is changing and private rooms demand is real, it's no reason for neglecting the dorm market. My opinion on this is that YHA Australia is targeting the youth tourism flashpacker market but not the budget tourism market. There is a difference between the two as many young travellers have big accomodation money . It's for us guys to take advantage of this and specially that independent hostels won't ask for membership for special prices.

As for their non-profit advantages, it' still very strong in Europe where YHA's have long traditions and are run like a movement and are full of self-imposed commercial restrictions ( FUAJ in France is still banning Hostelworld) but like in Australia, here in Canada,about 5 years ago, the goverment took out the charitable status of the associations around the country so now they have to charge taxes like any other buisness even if they are still non-profit. Some has still some local council tax credit but this is also in the radar screen of local authorities.

So, I beleive it's up to local hostel owners to benchmark their product to offer the best service for the best price and all competition is there to make us better.

;)
Have a nice one
Marc