Hospitality Club
hospitality service
Hospitality Club (HC) was a hospitality exchange service (a gift economy network for finding homestays whereby hosts were not allowed to charge for lodging) accessible via a website. HC's specified goals were to facilitate "intercultural understanding ... bringing people together ... travelers and locals".
History
Hospitality Club was founded in July 2000 in Koblenz, by Veit Kühne, who was inspired by a trip to South America. It later incorporated technology from Hospex.org, a similar service.
In 2005, a disagreement between some members of Hospitality Club and its founder led to the foundation of BeWelcome. Many HC members, who became volunteers within Couchsurfing, left HC towards CS because of its missing legal status and insufficient management transparency.
In February 2006, Kühne was working full-time on Hospitality Club. In the spring of 2006, an event took place in Riga with 430 participants from 36 countries.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hospitality Club” as hospitality service. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as hospitality service. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q744312. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2005 and 2006.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Hospitality Club”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Hospitality Club primary sources, Hospitality Club archive and Hospitality research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Hospitality Club”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Hospitality Club” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.