The religion of our guests

Most of the travelers staying at the Shelter City hostel have a neutral (51%) or positive (37%) attitude towards the Christian identity of the hostels. Only 5% finds it irritating. This is one of the outcomes of a research that was done in the spring of 2006.

The results are based on 363 questionnaires that were filled out by guest in the Shelter City hostel. Most of these guests are between 21 and 30 years of age and were staying in Amsterdam for 2 or 3 nights.

Nearly all travelers in the Shelter City indicated that they visited the Red Light district (94%), of which 21% classified it as “fun”. Almost 50% occasionally uses drugs or have tried drugs in the past. The liberal attitude of the Dutch government regarding prostitution and drugs is regarded as good by 42% and wrong by 22%, while 32% of the guests have no opinion about this.

Interestingly, most of the hostel guests have a church background: 36% comes from Roman Catholic origin and 28% from a Protestant background. Atheists are the next big group with 19%, followed by Buddhist (5%). Hindus, Jews, Muslims and New Age followers together make up 6% of the guests.

Although most hostel guests have a religious background, they practice their religion very little: 45% never or seldom prays, 61% almost never visits a house of prayer or worship (church, mosque, temple, etc), and 63% never reads a holy book (either Bible, Koran or Hebrew Scriptures).