A&O Hostels


a&o Hotels and Hostels GmbH is a chain of hostels, headquartered in Berlin, that targets young travelers and backpackers, offering cheap group rooms and hotel rooms for two. The hostels are generally centrally located, mostly close to train stations. A&O has 43 subsidiaries in eleven countries, making it the biggest privately owned hostel-chain in Europe. In 2024 it recorded about 6.2 million overnight stays and realised sales of €232 million.
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History

Founder Oliver Winter had the idea of opening a hostel after several trips through Europe in the late 1990s. There were few hostels in urban areas in Germany at that time; hostels in Germany were mostly situated in suburban or rural areas and were run by the German Youth Hostel Association; this was a problem for foreign travellers, because only members of the organisation could stay there.
In the year 2000 Winter and his landlord Michael Kluge opened the first a&o Hostel in Berlin Friedrichshain with 164 beds. After a year they doubled the number of beds, and in the years 2002 and 2004, they opened new hostels in Berlin. In 2005 the company opened its first houses outside Berlin, in Prague, Hamburg and Munich. From then on the company established various subsidiaries every year, mostly in Germany, but also in bordering countries.
In 2009, the company made headlines by winning a nearly 5-year-long Lawsuit against the DJH, the German Youth Hostel Association. In 2005, the DJH accused a&o of illegally using the word "Jugendherberge", the German term for youth hostel, which DJH had registered word as a brand in 1998. a&o objected and wanted the brand to be deleted, claiming that the word "Jugendherberge" is too common to be protected. Finally, in 2009 the Federal Patent Court of Germany decided that "Jugendherberge" should be deleted from the brand register.
In 2017, the Investment company TPG Capital purchased the majority of the company shares. Since a&o has been acquired by TPG, they massively reinforced their expansion plans. The company published a list of 25 cities in Europe, where new hostels shall be opened in the near future. Besides nine locations in A&O's core markets Germany and Austria, the list also contains cities in Ireland, Scotland, England, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Properties

Current locations

As of 2025, A&O maintains one or more locations in 30 cities in 10 European countries.
NameCountryOpened
Berlin FriedrichshainGermany2000
Berlin MitteGermany2004
Munich HauptbahnhofGermany2005
Hamburg Hammer KircheGermany2005
Munich HackerbrückeGermany2006
Hamburg HauptbahnhofGermany2007
Dresden HauptbahnhofGermany2007
Leipzig HauptbahnhofGermany2008
Vienna StadthalleAustria2008
Hamburg ReeperbahnGermany2009
Düsseldorf HauptbahnhofGermany2009
Cologne NeumarktGermany2009
Berlin HauptbahnhofGermany2010
Cologne DomGermany2011
Nuremberg HauptbahnhofGermany2011
Dortmund HauptbahnhofGermany2011
Hamburg CityGermany2012
Graz HauptbahnhofAustria2013
Vienna HauptbahnhofAustria2013
Frankfurt Galluswarte Germany2013
Aachen HauptbahnhofGermany2014
WeimarGermany2014
Munich LaimGermany2014
Amsterdam Zuidoost Netherlands2015
Stuttgart CityGermany2015
Berlin KolumbusGermany2015
Cologne HauptbahnhofGermany2016
Salzburg HauptbahnhofAustria2016
Copenhagen NørrebroDenmark2017
Venice MestreItaly2017
Bremen HauptbahnhofGermany2017
Frankfurt OstendGermany2018
Prague RheaCzech Republic2018
Warsaw WolaPoland2020
Budapest CityHungary2020
Copenhagen SydhavnDenmark2020
Edinburgh CityUnited Kingdom2021
Rotterdam CityNetherlands2022
Brighton BeachUnited Kingdom2024
Antwerp CentraalBelgium2024
Brussels CentrumBelgium2025
Florence Campo di MarteItaly2025
Milano Ca GrandaItaly2025
London Docklands RiversideUnited Kingdom2025