people to participate in international exchange programmes. One of its initiatives is the IOU Respect Programme (I Owe You Respect), which seeks to develop friendship, peace and respect between participants from some Islamic countries (Egypt, Tunisia, and Lebanon) and some western countries (United States, France, and Germany) through twoweek residential sessions hosted in one of the programme's participating countries.
Data collection involved: a questionnaire survey of applicants to the programme; in-depth interviews with representatives of the Egyptian Youth Hostels Association (EYHA); internet survey of participants who had participated in the programme before; participant observation in the IOU Respect programme held in Egypt in 2008, at the Ismailia Youth Hostel. The paper recommends that the marketing techniques used by the EYHA need improvement as the Egyptian applicants were exclusively from Cairo due to poor marketing across the rest of Egypt.