Hitchhikers drawing more attention from travel professionals

The image of hostels in Canada may be changing as investors see the business potential from young travelers.

Hitchhikers drawing more attention from travel professionals

Hitchhikers and hostels … they go together like a hand in a glove. If you’ve ever traveled to Europe in summer, you’ve seen young people with backpacks roaming everywhere.
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Always viewed with disdain by most professionals in the real estate investment community, hostels may finally be looking more like a potential asset than a liability.

In fact, some savvy investors on both sides of the Atlantic believe strongly in hostels as assets … and in their future.

There is a sound reason for that. According to industry analysts, global youth tourism has been growing steadily since 2005 when 166 million youth tourism trips took place. In 2011, that number climbed to 196 million. And by 2020, if current trends hold, the number will increase by an impressive 100 million more trips.

Most young people stay in hostels and with youths accounting for as much as twenty percent of all global tourism, it’s easy to see why investors are now showing interest in hostels as potential assets.

I’m curious which industry analysts provided these data. Do youths constitute 20% of all global tourism based on the number of trips, the amount of money spent, total bednights, or some other metric? It’s an impressive statistic even without clarification, so it’s no wonder that investors are taking more serious interest in the backpacker market and hostels.

It’s interesting that the author refers to backpackers as hitchhikers. Perhaps that’s the connotation of the word 'backpacker' in Canada? In the US 'backpacking' means hiking and camping out in the wilderness for many people, so maybe up North the popular perception is of hitchhikers. (At least hitchhiking is a little closer to a hostel’s view of backpacking than camping is!)