Recipe for success – a&o simply the best

What makes us special and what makes us the most competitive company in the low-budget sector in Europe? One simple idea.

The company's founders Oliver Winter and Michael Kluge always wanted to create a professionally run, inexpensive and yet still very central place to stay for backpackers, youth groups and families! This concept distinguishes us completely from a youth hostel. Until that time youth groups had to make do with youth hostels in outlying districts or off-season dates and also be members of a youth hostel association, since all youth hostels were state-owned at that time.

Oliver Winter and Michael Kluge developed a hostel concept combining the most important and guest-oriented elements of hotels and youth hostels all under one roof.

The modern hostel concept is based on 3 fundamental pillars:

• professionalism
• central location
• and open to everyone.

a&o presents itself in the market distinctively and consistently, regardless in which city. This branding and market leadership in the youth travel segment has created a product that has a high recognition value. Moreover, we have optimized our concept such that all bookings done online are entered fully automatically in our auto-update system developed in-house, thus allowing us to offer very dynamic price management. We are the only provider with a real-time booking tool for groups. Since we are the leading youth travel hostel in Germany, security is a very important part of our work. For this reason we have had our locations classified by DEHOGA and the youth travel quality management group QMJ.

Through these innovations, a flexible workforce and a centrally managed sales and marketing team we are able to keep personnel costs at 12 %, much below the branch average. We don't just have strong links to our employees, by means of a turnover commission, but also to the organizers and customers we have won with our professionalism!

a&o - Zeitgeist, lifestyle and fun meet a classic hotel