Published April 2010

Thanks to young people travelling more frequently, more widely and more independently, the global youth tourism market continues to expand. In 2009 there was an estimated worldwide market of around 176 million international youth tourism trips a year, compared with about 160 million in 2005.

This market growth has created a growing demand for youth accommodation, and stimulated the development of new forms of accommodation. Professionalisation and commercialisation of the sector continue to drive a convergence between youth travel accommodation (YTA) providers and other sectors of the accommodation market, particularly budget hotels.
Information on how the YTA sector operates is useful in allowing operators to benchmark their business and assess their own performance relative to industry standards.

Former Sector Association STAY WYSE has, for the fourth year running, reviewed the global business operations of the Youth Travel Accommodation Sector.

Key takeaways

The survey of 2009 provides more detailed information than previous reports, including new questions on social networking and environmental issues. This edition looks at average bed rates, occupancy rates, marketing activities, booking trends and sources of revenue during 2009 and provides national data comparisons for Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany and the UK.