Based in Welwyn Garden City, near London, the organisation provides services for travellers and coordinates the national organisations. Seventy-one National Youth Hostel Associations are members of Hostelling International, with over 4000 hostels available worldwide.
Youth hostels in the United States (where backpackers have not made as much of an impact as elsewhere), started by Monroe Smith, are still closest to the original setup. Youth hostels originally differed in setup from other modern hostels, although the growing popularity of the backpacker culture forced them to adapt so as not to lose customers, most notably abandoning the idea of chores in all but a few of their locations. In 1933 Richard Schirrmann became the president, but the German Government forced him to resign in 1936. The movement spread worldwide, leading to the founding of the International Youth Hostel Federation (IYHF) in October 1932 in Amsterdam by representatives from associations in Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Britain, Ireland, France, and Belgium. Schirrmann thus founded the nationwide German Youth Hostel Association in 1919.
In 1912 a hostel in Altena Castle superseded the school-building, and as of 2013 a hostel still stands in the castle grounds. They started with schools being used during the holidays, and the first Jugendherberge (youth hostel) was opened in Schirrmann's own school, in Altena, Westphalia. The youth hostel movement began in 1909 when Richard Schirrmann, a German schoolteacher, and Wilhelm Münker, a conservationist, saw a need for overnight accommodation for school groups wanting to experience the countryside. Origins of youth hostelling and the IYHF
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