Hostels have long attracted globetrotters on a budget who enjoy mingling with like-minded travelers, and group travel has provided benefits ranging from planned itineraries to a sense of community and camaraderie.
Now, young adult travelers from 18 to 35-year-olds can get both.
A new venture, “Roamies,” was announced in December by Hostelworld, part of the Hostelworld Group, a global Online Travel Agent (OTA) that represents hostels in 179 countries, and G Adventures, a small group adventure tour operator.
The collaboration launched with a collection of 38 trips in 15 countries. Small groups of 16 to 24 travelers will be able to join adventures from less than a week to 34 days.
More than 50 hostels are the home-base “to both hang out and kick-start adventures,” the organizers said, and all trips have the support of an expert “chief experience officer.”
“When young people travel, they want to do more than just see places - they want to make meaningful connections and have new experiences that positively change their perspective on themselves and the world,” Gary Morrison, chief executive officer of Hostelworld Group, said in a statement. “Our mission is to help hostellers meet other travelers they want to hang out with while traveling, so partnering with G Adventures to offer a combination of hostelling and adventure travel made absolute sense.”
Morrison said Hostelworld was attracted to how G Adventures created “tailored group trips that put meeting new people and supporting local communities as the focal point, something our customers are extremely passionate about.” Roamies will offer them “an entirely new type of planned backpacking adventure in 2022,” he added.
Currently, trips are planned in Albania, Austria, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Peru, Thailand, and Vietnam.
For example, for 17 days on the “Gotta-See Europe: Germany, Austria, Italy - Amsterdam to Rome,” adventure, participants will take in Berlin’s history and vibrant art scene, the “jaw-dropping architecture” of Prague and Vienna,” and hike around “a ridiculously scenic mountain lake on the way to Salzburg.” Hostel stays on the tour include the Czech Inn in Prague.
“The pandemic gave us the opportunity to act like a start-up again. As we learned more about Hostelworld’s business, we realized there was an opportunity to create something special by bringing our brands together to create the perfect mix of backpacking and organized travel,” Bruce Poon Tip, founder of G Adventures, said in a statement.
“Together we’re creating a new style of travel for our customers that will allow them to have a better travel experience and support our model of community tourism, which is based on investing in as many local and small businesses as possible,” Poon Tip added. “There is no better representation of that than in the hostel market, of which many are family-run businesses.”
Departures start on May 08, 2022.
