We are three adults planning to stay in various youth hostels in Australia and New Zealand. Two of us our in our thirties and one in her fifties. Do we have to get memberships to stay in hostels? If so, which one? The y.h.a. membership or the HI-AYA? Can we stay in a y.h.a. hostel with a HI-AYA?

For New Zealand if you do not have a YHA/Hostelling International Membership and still want to stay at a YHA NZ Hostel you will be required to pay an additional NZ$3 per night on arrival. (This information is displayed if you start going through their online booking process at http://www.yha.org.nz/)<BR><BR>As for Australia I'm not sure, try looking at http://www.yha.org.au I'm guessing it may be something similar. <BR><BR>I have no idea what HI-AYA means, but if you have membership of the hostelling association in your home country then more than likely you also have membership of Hostelling International(HI) which allows you to use your card globally, including Australia & New Zeland. This is because the majority of national hostelling organisations are affiliated to HI. For more information about HI see http://www.iyhf.org I also suggest you check with your national hostelling association to see where their card is valid. Hope this helps.

Lauren,<BR>In Australia (and probably NZ) there are lots of backpacker places which are cheap and friendly where you don't have to be a member of anything. You could probably find a listing if you search on 'backpackers'. They seem to have fewer rules and regulations than YHA.<BR>Kay

Kay is right of course, there are plenty of backpacker hostels where you don't need to be a member of anything. The YHA sometimes get bad press because they look for membership cards. In their defense they are non-profit, provide a great service & membership is usually a small amount so why not support them....

When I backpacked around Oz and NZ I had a YHA membership which came in handy when I wanted to book ahead and also because you get discounts at the hostels and other sevices.<BR><BR>In both NZ and Australia I found that I stayed in a mixture of YHA and non-YHA hostels. If I remember rightly, lots pf hostels were VIP Backpacers members or something but I nenver had any probem staying without membership.<BR><BR>In NZ, there is a great free guide available which rates ALL hostels in NZ based on customer surveys. I found it totally reliable and saved myself some time in bad hostels when I saw they had got bad reviews. You can pick this guide up from any hostel or tourist info place in NZ.<BR><BR>You can join YHA at any age and we now live in Australia and are still memebers. We get concessionary prices to many galleries etc so it is worth getting.