The YHA hostel at Ambleside, due for a refurbishment
The charity that runs 150 youth hostels in England and Wales is to spend £10m in a modernisation programme to shed its public perception of rickety beds and compulsory chores.
YHA (England & Wales) will establish a new hostel in the South Downs and upgrade five others including two at outdoor honeypots.
The hostels at Ambleside in the Lake District and Malham in the Yorkshire Dales are set for a major refurbishment, along with those at Stratford on Avon, York and Canterbury.
YHA said it has worked hard to shed outdated public perception of its accommodation involving sleeping bags, compulsory membership and 1960s dormitories by investing more than £19.5m in recent years.
The charity, born as a provider of Spartan accommodation catering for the needs of young people visiting the countryside, has increasingly moved into budget hostels aimed at young families and visitors seeking more modern facilities.
The changes led to YHA London Central appearing in the French edition of Cosmopolitan, the international style bible for women.
All six hostels are currently undergoing extensive refurbishment and will open from February 2013 onwards. They will have en suite accommodation, private family rooms and restaurant and education facilities.
Although they will be available for anyone, YHA members will still get a discount on their bookings.
Caroline White, chief executive of YHA (England and Wales) said: “We’re continuing to invest in our hostels to make sure they continue to offer the great welcome and friendly stay of which we are rightly proud.
“We want to make sure that we continue to have world-class hostels in fantastic locations and to make sure that as many people as possible know about what a great time they can have when they stay with us.”
The new South Downs hostel, costing £5m, will be at the Itford Farm site.
YHA provides bursaries to help young people take part in educational or recreational visits with their friends or classmates through its Breaks for Kids scheme. In 2011, YHA provided 5,553 of these funded trips.
In 2011, YHA recorded 1,719,348 overnight stays and had 218,054 members.
TheManOnThe172Bus
07 December 2012Good luck to YHA - but I do worry that they are moving away from a market where they had a unique edge (lowest cost in unique rural locations), to a market where they are taking on competitors who have structural advantages over YHA (quasi-hotels, often in towns and cities)
Many hotels can make good money from business users on weekdays in term time, and then discount if necessary to fill up during weekends and school holidays. But these are the very periods when YHA needs to be earning their top whack. Result - YHA can often look expensive.
In 1950, someone on the average wage (£7.08/wk) had to work 25 minutes to gross the cost of a 1s6d YHA overnight. In 2011, that was about 85 minutes (£26.2k average salary, £18.40 overnight). You'd need to have earned c £90k in 2011 to find YHA as affordable as the average worker did in 1950.
john robinson
11 December 2012tend to agree with the man.....but rickety beds??? compulsory chores....not for a long time.
Yes they can sometimes look expensive but to my mind still have immense advantages in their often special locations, quirky buildings and abilty to self cater or be fed depending on what you want.
Recently on visits to the lakes I become aware of restrictions on the menus at some hostels...apparently cost cutting by regional management. To my mind allowing individual hostels to play to their strengths with locally sourced and cooked food would do far more to attract and retain punters than poshing up the hostels into mini hotels.
Duncan Noble
26 December 2012The YHA hostels lack atmosphere that you can find in other hostels. The curtains and bed frames are much better, but they have lamented A4 signs everywhere in the kitchen and they have 3 x 3 foot hoses and a large drum of washing up liguid. Surely one tesco value bottle would be cheaper.
Also, no free wi-fi, you have to pay extra for wi-fi.
No dvd player, no remote for TV.
Hostels should be like a home, who does not have a remote for their TV at home.
I will always avoid YHA hostels if there is an independent one as an alternative.
Also the YHA should change if name to avoid the three word anacorym. Something like, Hostel England and Wales.