1. Tell us your story. How did Amistat Hostels get started?

The origins of Amistat date back to the 2010s, when faced with the opportunity to operate the first large Hostel in New York City, but a change in local regulations cut short the ambitious project. Later, after a long journey in Miami Beach, Amistat decided to open his first Hostel in the Barcelona cityin 2013, along Amistat Island Hostel on the island of Ibiza, form his main business area. At present, we pretend to expand the development of thebusiness in Southern Europe, mainly Spain and Portugal.The project came about with the purpose of creating venues where young tourists can socialise, interconnect,and generate new experiences anchored in human contact. This is the reason behind the name “Amistat”, which means “friendship”.Amistat’s name and purpose is based on offering what the socially avid generations (Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha) want the most: create real connections and meet others. The full satisfaction of their experience is themain goal, and that is the differentiating fact Amistat can offer above other hostels.

2.What makes Amistat Hostels different from your competitors?

Amistat vision is focus on providing the best experience to travellers with one distinctive deliverable: to be able to generate and facilitate friendships amongst travellers who stayed in Amistat Hostels.Amistat Hostels is a fresh hostel chain concept based on the lifestyle and economy segment seeking enjoyment and leisure in brand new refurbished hostels in major South European capital cities. One of the reasons that makes Amistat so unique is the fact that we are aware of the current needs and hopes on their target, working daily to provide and improve those high goals to our guests.

3.What is your favourite success story from your organisation?

We feel so proud about the feedback we have received during these years: both guests and team, are part of our disruptive concept.We have managed to create a transversal work team that allow us to enrich the experience of the travellerunderstanding that the best souvenirthey can get from us is the memories that will last forever.

4.Which trends do you see in educational and active youth travel?

In the educational area, we envision a clear shift towards travel as a pretext for learning knowledge (historical, cultural, social…) or learning a language that is more practiced every day, since youths have greater learning capacity.For active young people who are looking for an educational tourism experience, the most important thing that a trip can bring them is to learn new languages, complement their training, broaden their work horizons and live with different cultures, experiences that cannot always be bought through a study plan.In this area, we actively collaborate with young students from different Spanish universities who carry out their regulated and approved internships through the agreements signed, between the universities and Amistat. During the year we serve about 30 young people who carry out their internships in our hostels, especially during the summer period, with very good results for both parts.

5.How do you work to ensure the health and safety of young Travellersinvolved with Amistat Hostels?

We have a comprehensive scheme of procedures and protocols that help us comply with the strictest Health and Safety regulations, under the regulatory framework of the autonomous communities in which we operate.For us, the Safety and Health, both of Travelers and of our employees, is mandatory and irreproachable. We take our roadmaps very seriously and guarantee strict compliance with all the measures implemented.We have recently started an ambitious sustainability program to reduce our carbon footprint in our activity, in which we pretend to involve both our collaborators and young travelers who visit our facilities. These are medium and long-term programs that we hope to strengthen in the coming years.

6.What was your motivation to join WYSE Travel Confederation?

We have re-joined WYSE, after a short break, motivated by the pandemic and the logical structural adjustment suffered.Once the last crisis was over, we have not hesitated to return to be part of this great organization of which we are now a part again and therefore we hope to expand our collaboration to improve all trips for youth.

7.Have you attended a WYSE Travel Confederation event? (WYSTC, STAY WYSE, WYSE Exchange Australia, WETM-IAC) If so, what was your experience with the event?

With extensive experience in the sector, and after having attended countless fairs and conferences, I can affirm, without a doubt, that the WYSE event in Amsterdam is the best experience for youth travel operators organized in Europe and possibly all over the world.

8.What is an industry challenge your organisation is facing currently?

• world security, global and local crises.
• youth challenges, new interests in technological change.
• price and inflation = travel cost.
• local government limitations that restrict supply.

These are, in our view, the main challenges that the industry and specifically, our youth category must deal with and adopt the best practices to overcome. Obviously, it requires a coarse development to share.

 9.Which channel do you use to communicate with your target audience?

We are proactively communicating with our target and soon to be guests. We try to give a fun and interesting message for our community through Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Nowadays is fundamental to connect each other and we try to be as reachable as possible thanks to direct messages. Also, we try to make everyone feel include reposting their pictures and giving tips as exclusive promotions on internet.