Nomads, YHA fuel backpacker bandwagon

By ANNE GIBSON

A new backpacker management company has been formed with the association between UniLodge Australia and Nomads World.

The organisation's first move in New Zealand will be to rename the City Backpackers Hostel, at 38 Fort St in central Auckland, to the Fat Camel, with accommodation for 180 people.

The Fat Camel - partly based on Nomads' camel logo - would be the first New Zealand hostel to be run by the new management company, said Richard McLeod, managing director of Nomads World, which is based in Adelaide.

The Australians have blended a backpacker marketing and travel business with a student accommodation company to form Nomads World Hotels.

Sydney-based UniLodge is developing a 250-bed university accommodation hostel on Anzac Ave, to open next January.

Mr McLeod said Nomads marketed 16 backpacker hostels in New Zealand, all branded as Nomads but individually owned.

Most of its other New Zealand hostels would not come under the new company because they were too small, he said.

Nomads markets more than 7000 backpacker beds worldwide, while UniLodge manages 2000 beds for students in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

The two companies had $A250 million ($300 million) worth of assets under their combined control and accounted for 2 million bed nights in Australia and New Zealand, Mr McLeod said.

Meanwhile, YHA New Zealand is expanding its hostels in Auckland and Wellington to cope with growing patronage.

The entry of private owner/operators had shrunk YHA's share of the backpacker business from 90 per cent in 1985 to just 20 per cent now, said Mike Northmore, YHA New Zealand's acting chief executive officer.

But backpacker visitor numbers were increasing overall, causing YHA to add more than 350 beds to the hostels in Auckland and Wellington to help meet the needs of its 500,000 visitors annually.

Two years ago, YHA bought an office building at 5 Turner St in Auckland and converted it into the Auckland International YHA, a hostel with 170 beds.

YHA has now bought vacant land next its hostel at the bottom of Turner St in central Auckland and intends to build an extension that will add at least 140 beds.

It is also considering adding more floors to the building.

Mr Northmore said a total of between 210 and 230 extra beds were planned for the Turner St hostel.

YHA is also extending its Wellington City YHA on the corner of Cambridge Tce and Wakefield St, where room rates are from $20 to $23 a person.

An extra 140 beds would be added to the building, which was once the Port Nicholson hotel, Mr Northmore said.

He noted the shift of backpacker hostels from the suburbs into the city.

Auckland Central Backpackers said a week ago that it had bought an 11-storey Queen St office block in Auckland for $7.4 million.

The property will become a 500-bed backpacker lodge, replacing the company's Fort St lodge which it has to vacate.

www.nzherald.co.nz/travel

Auckland Central Backpackers

YHA New Zealand

Nomads World

Uni Lodge