G Adventures and Hostelworld have joined forces to ‘change the face of youth travel’ with the launch of a new brand called Roamies, which combines hostel stays with small group adventure travel. Jenny Southan reports
Designed for Gen Zs and young Millennials aged 18 to 35, Roamies brings together Hostelworld accommodation with G Adventures itineraries.
The new collaboration launches with a collection of 38 trips in 15 countries, with stays across more than 50 hostels.
Roamies trips are priced from £149 for three days. Destinations in the collection include Albania, Austria, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Peru, Thailand and Vietnam.
Departures will begin on May 8, 2022, and all are available to book now, with between 16 and 24 people per group.
Sample itinerary:
The Peruvian Coast: Seafood, Sandboarding & Dune Buggies – Buckle up for this five-day adventure of the Peruvian coast. Heading out from Lima, stop at a small coastal town to devour fresh seafood and to try your hand at sandboarding before zooming around on dune buggies at sunset.
Spend a couple of nights by a desert oasis with lots of time for optional activities nearby or at the hostel and catch a boat to the Ballestas Islands before settling into your hostel in the bohemian neighbourhood of Barranco that’s jam-packed with trendy bars, restaurants, and art galleries.
Priced from £449 for a five-day Roamies trip featuring funky hostels like Kokopelli Hostel Barranco in Lima.
According to G Adventures, the Roamies collection is the “start of a longer-term partnership that will see more trips being added across further locations”.
G Adventures said in a statement: “Roamies captures the free-spirited nature of adventure travel and combines it with the inherently social side of hostels. The collection brings independently-minded travellers together to explore the world on trips between five and 34 days duration, with maximum freedom and flexibility.
“Extra free time, with optional activities available to book, has been built in, with all trips having the support of an expert chief experience officer (CEO) every step of the way.”
G Adventures’ founder, Bruce Poon Tip, says the partnership with Hostelworld was born out of the desire to create something entirely new for younger travellers, many of whom have been deprived of the opportunity to travel over the past 20 months.
He says: “We’ve always had great respect for Hostelworld – it’s an amazing company with an incredible commitment to the advancement of travel, a quality we appreciate and share. The pandemic gave us the opportunity to act like a start-up again.
“As we learned more about Hostelworld’s business, we realised there was an opportunity to create something special by bringing our brands together to create the perfect mix of backpacking and organised travel.
“Together we’re creating a new style of travel for our customers that will allow them to have a better travel experience and support our model of community tourism, which is based on investing in as many local and small businesses as possible. There is no better representation of that than in the hostel market, of which many are family-run businesses.”
Gary Morrison, chief executive officer of Hostelworld Group, said the partnership presented an exciting opportunity to create a new type of backpacking adventure for young travellers.
“Our mission is to help hostellers meet other travellers they want to hang out with while travelling, so partnering with G Adventures to offer a combination of hostelling and adventure travel made absolute sense. When young people travel, they want to do more than just see places – they want to make meaningful connections and have new experiences that positively change their perspective on themselves and the world.
“We truly admire G Adventures’ ability to create tailored group trips that put meeting new people and supporting local communities as the focal point, something our customers are extremely passionate about. With so many young people missing out on trips of a lifetime in the last couple of years, Roamies will offer them an entirely new type of planned backpacking adventure in 2022,” says Morrison.