In previous articles about Ukrainian tourism, I paid the most attention to one of my most successful projects – the development of tourism in the Sea of Azov region. But I consider the creation of a national network of hostels to be my top most successful project. Only a few remember the 20th anniversary of the creation of the first hostel in Ukraine. To be precise, only three people out of four who were involved in it. Then, in April 2004, the first Ukrainian hostel was opened in Uzhhorod. Why there? Almost by accident. This event was preceded by many years of painstaking work both by me and by my partners at the time. So, about this and not only in more detail.
Beginning
Since the beginning of the 90s, when I was a student leader, I had to stay in hostels in various countries in Europe and Asia. The idea of creating a network of hostels in Ukraine came to me in 1999, when my own tour operator company began to host groups of economy-class tourists in Kyiv and Lviv. At that time, our country experienced a significant shortage of inexpensive modern means of accommodation. At that time, I already had considerable experience in project management at the state level. Therefore, I decided to move from the idea to the implementation of the project.
Through acquaintances, I contacted the leadership of the Ukrainian National Committee of Youth Organizations (UNCYO). He was also called “Kuchma’s Komsomol”. There, they reacted rather sluggishly to my project. Six years later, I learned from a former youth leader who worked at the State Tourism Agency that 500,000 hryvnias (more than 100,000 US dollars at the then exchange rate) were even allocated from the state budget for my project to create the first Ukrainian hostel. Only the heads of UNCYO know where this money went. Especially since it is impossible to verify these facts now. In 2000, at one of the meetings of proactive youth with the then Prime Minister of Ukraine, Victor Yushchenko, I received verbal confirmation from him that the idea is still alive and the project of creating a hostel is supported by the government. No further action was taken by the country’s leadership regarding the hostels. I was developing my company, but I decided to postpone the implementation of the project until better times.
The first hostel in Ukraine
In the summer of 2003, my journalist friend told me that there are two guys who, like me, dream of hostels. That’s how we met Dmytro Zaruba and Roman Ponomarenko. It turned out that I had met Roman several times since my student years. So, we shook hands and got down to business. And it turned out to be a lot of things!
A little later, Roman’s charming wife Olena Ivashchenko joined us. First, we developed and made changes to the concept of creating a hostel movement, which I developed back in 1999. Then we adopted a strategy where the main emphasis of our actions was directed at hoteliers of the economy segment. First of all, we saw the sense in cooperation with hotels that were part of the “Sputnik” youth tourism network in Soviet times. Next, it was necessary to create a legal entity on behalf of which we will work. It was also necessary to establish international relations, in particular with the World Hostel Federation and its European branches.
All this activity was accompanied by a massive PR campaign on TV and in the mass media. Unfortunately, many of these materials have not survived. From the articles of that time that I found on the Internet, I can highlight the following sources (all in Russian): “Zerkalo Nedeli” (January 9, 2004), “Business Capital” (April 5, 2004) and “Podrobytsi (Details)” (April 15, 2004).
In December 2003, the Public Organization Ukrainian Youth Hostel Association was registered. In January 2004, negotiations began with the Odesa Hotel Yunist (ex-chain Sputnyk) about the creation of a hostel there. At the same time, partnership relations with the World Hostel Federation were established. We were invited to the international exhibition of hostels in Budapest, where we went in February 2004 with Olena Ivashchenko and Dmytro Zaruba.
We returned to Kyiv via Uzhhorod. In Soviet times, the local hotel Svitanok was also part of the Sputnik youth tourism network. Zaruba offered to hold negotiations with the owner of Svitanok – Vasyl Krychfalushiy. When we entered Mr. Vasyl’s office, introduced ourselves and I began to tell about us and our project, the hotelier said: “I know you – I saw you on TV. You say smart things. Let’s make a hostel.” In April 2004, the first Ukrainian hostel Svitanok in Uzhhorod officially started its work.
Different ways
In June of the same year, my views on how to develop the Ukrainian hostel movement diverged with my partners at the time.They developed the Hostel Association, and I created the Public Organization Ukrainian Youth Tourism Association (UYTA) and the Trademark “Youth Tourism and Hostels of Ukraine”. These organizations existed in different forms until 2014.
Our brand provided online outsourcing services and in the form of a marketing hostel chain united up to 26 hostels and similar accommodation facilities throughout Ukraine. Under the auspices of UYTA, the first Student Tourism Laboratory in Ukraine was created (2006), the first International Congress on Online Tourism was held (2009), etc. We were partners of the leading worldwide hostel operator HostelWorld, representatives of the Italian HostelsClub. In 2009, for the first time in the history of Ukraine, we started online sales of tour packages to Kyiv, Lviv, the Carpathians, Crimea. Also in the period 2011-2013 we cooperated with the largest worldwide OTA Expedia.
Our network included not only small accommodation facilities. In different years, we cooperated with such large and serious hotels as Ungvarskyi (Uzhgorod), Kirov Holiday Center (Yalta), OK Odesa (Odesa), Kyiv boat hotels Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, Pearl of Dnipro, Dniprovskyi and Pharaoh. According to the information of Kirov Holiday Center, within three full years of our cooperation, they provided accommodation services to more than 2.5 thousand foreign tourists from 82 countries of the world. Before that, there were no foreign tourists in their hotel at all.
We stopped working with hostels in 2013, when, according to the results of 2012, our inbound tour operator received total commissions for tourists from all 26 members of our network almost the same as for a group of 11 people who lived a one week in a Kyiv five-star Premier Palace hotel.
The present day
Thanks to our competition with the Hostel Association, conditions were laid for the creation of such powerful players on the Ukrainian and international hostel market as DREAM Family. In addition to excellent hostels in 7 cities of Ukraine, they also opened hostels in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In general, data on the total number of hostels in Ukraine are different. As of April 2024, there were 981 of them according to the Hotels-of-Ukraine website, 235 on Booking.com and only 38 on HostelWorld. We understand that hostels go through a thorough compliance check and must verify their legal identity before being listed for sale on HostelWorld. Probably, that is why so few Ukrainian hostels are registered there.
In any case, I am sure that we should not forget about how the Ukrainian hostel movement began. As I said at the beginning of the article, only three of the four “fathers” of Ukrainian hostels are alive. Roman Ponomarenko died suddenly in 2016. Sit tibi terra levi! But life goes on. Many more obstacles and achievements await us. We believe in ourselves, we believe in Victory!
(c) 2024. Oleksandr Fainin
