Youth hostels to have open day

Press, 8 March 1982, Page 4

Youth hostels to have open day

Youth hostels in Canterbury and throughout New Zealand and the world will open their doors to the public on May 2 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the hostelling movement.

Canterbury was one of the first regions outside Europe to set up youth hostels with a Y.H.A. group being founded in Christchurch in 1932. The first hostels were established in farmhouses and shearing sheds on Banks Peninsula, but it was not until soon after World War II that a building was bought as a hostel. It was an old store at Arthur’s Pass and it was bought by some tramping club members who put up 5200 between them as a deposit and returned to Christchurch to tell their club about it, said the Y.H.A.

treasurer, Mr Jim McKie. New Zealand became a formal member of the international Y.H.A. federation and began issuing membership cards for overseas travel in 1947.

Today the Y.H.A. is a 32,000 member organisation with 45 permanent hostels from Kaitaia to Invercargill. Of these, Christchurch’s Rolleston House is the most profitable with a record year-round occupancy rate of 77 per cent.

The movement is growing. Last year 228,000 overnight stays were recorded. More than 80 per cent of these bookings were from overseas travellers and the Y.H.A. estimates, based on a survey carried out in October, that they spent more than $3 million in New Zealand.