GL hostel Competitors

Sonder is revolutionizing hospitality through innovative, tech-powered service and inspiring, thoughtfully designed accommodations combined into one seamlessly managed experience. Welcome to the future of hospitality. Officially launched in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, Sonder is making a world of better stays open to all with a variety of accommodation options — from rooms to suites and apartments — found in more than 30 cities spanning eight countries and three continents. Sonder’s innovative app empowers guests by making self-service features and 24/7 on-the-ground support just a tap away. From simple self check-in to boutique bathroom amenities, we bring the best of a hotel without any of the formality.

Founded in 2000 by Oliver Winter, a&o Hostels is Europe’s largest independent hostel chain with over 40 locations across 28 cities in 11 countries. Combining the best of hostels and hotels, we offer a variety of accommodation including single and double rooms, family rooms, dorms and female-only dorms alongside 24/7 service, lively common areas, coworking spaces and an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. Our diverse guest mix includes backpackers, solo travellers, families, school groups, business travellers and senior guests, making a&o a welcoming space for all. Growth remains strong with recent expansions into Brighton, Brussels and Antwerp plus the newly opened a&o Firenze Campo di Marte in early 2025. As a company, we’re committed to making travel both affordable and sustainable, having reduced CO₂e emissions per guest per night by 78% since 2015, now at just 3.32kg per overnight stay—one of the lowest in the industry. Beyond hospitality, we are passionate about education, arts and sports. Through our a&o educare initiative, we support equal access to education, while a&o Kunsthalle provides a platform for emerging artists. We also actively sponsor youth sports teams, helping to foster talent and community spirit. Backed by investment from Stepstone and Proprium, a&o continues to expand and modernise, ensuring budget-conscious travellers have access to high-quality eco-friendly stays across Europe.

Hostelworld Group PLC a ground-breaking social network powered OTA focused on the hostelling category, with a clear Mission to help travellers find people to hang out with. Our Mission statement is founded on the insight that the vast majority of travellers go hostelling as a means to meet other people; which we facilitate through a series of Social features on our platform that connect our travellers in hostels and cities based on their booking data. To date the strategy has been extraordinarily successful: accelerating revenues beyond pre pandemic levels, generating significant word of mouth from our customers, and strong endorsements from our Hostel partners. As a consequence, we expect to serve almost 8M travellers on our platform with a GMV in the range of €500M in 2022; and continue to grow GMV to €700M+ by 2025. More details of our growth strategy and our significant growth ambitions are available in our recent Capital Markets Day presentation on our corporate website. Founded in 1999, Hostelworld is a well-known trusted brand with 250 employees across 11 countries; hostel partners in 170 countries; and a strong commitment to building a better world in all that we do. It’s hard to capture why it’s so great working at Hostelworld. But here’s a little snippet of some of the great policies we have in place to enable all our colleagues to work in a way that suits them to really get the best from everyone. We offer Agile Working including flexible working hours, Quiet Wednesdays (aka, no meetings Wednesday), and the ability to work from anywhere you like in the country you’re employed in – café, hostel, rooftop bar anyone? We also have ‘Work From Abroad’ policy which allows our people to work from other countries for up to 30 days a year. Check out our Careers page with our open vacancies here: https://global.hostelworld.com/careers